Argall Visits Her Student Marc Gyongyosi at BMW Research Center
Over the past year, Gyongyosi has been developing “IFM” under the guidance of Professor Argall and with funding courtesy of the BMW Group.
On July 20, Prof. Brenna Argall visited her EECS undergraduate CS student Marc Gyongyosi at the BMW Research Center in Munich, Germany. Previously, researchers from BMW visited Prof. Argall and Gyongyosi at Northwestern's Evanston campus, where they presented a talk about human-robot collaboration in BMW’s factories.
Over the past year, Gyongyosi has been developing “IFM” under the guidance of Professor Argall and with funding courtesy of the BMW Group. IFM is a novel indoor flying robot, which can simultaneously navigate and localize itself using only a single onboard camera. This enables indoor autonomous behavior without the need for external systems.
Prof. Argall remarked of the excellent work Gyongyosi is doing with this project, while still completing his early studies as a Sophomore. She said, "By metrics of productivity, independence, impact and quality of work, Marc is already operating at the level of a top PhD student. His IFM platform is drumming up interest from research groups around the world. We expect this interest to only increase in the coming year as we begin publishing and presenting the work at scientific conferences, and he launches his startup IFM Technologies."
IFM is based on a novel frame design, invented by Gyongyosi and his grandfather Dipl. Ing. Jenö Hajto. Running Vision-SLAM and sensor fusion algorithms onboard, IFM can automatically fly predefined routes and – with the help of a laser scanner – even avoid obstacles on its way. In collaboration with BMW Group, Gyongyosi is researching and testing the potential of his indoor flying robot in settings like factory halls in the automotive industry. To find out more about IFM, check out http://ifm-tech.com