b'MAPPING THEhospitals, schools, and industrial facilitiesare so heavilymodifiedthatevenrecentblueprintsare outofdate.Inothercases,thesedrawings,floor WORLD, ONEplans, and computer-aided drafting (CAD) are non-existent.Whensuchfacilitiesarebeingmodified, renovated, or documented, people use measuring SCAN AT A TIME DR. KEVIN DOWLING is the CEO oftapes and clipboards and then convert those hand measurements to a CAD format, or if they are more Kaarta, a company that provides world- sophisticated,theymayuseexpensiveandtime-class 3D mapping and localizationconsumingsurveyingequipmentandhigh-end solutions for people and robots.2 Retail store 3D map tripod mounted lidar systems.BY KEVIN DOWLING, CEO, KAARTA Previously, Kevin was VP of Engineering for 4Moms, a consumer products companyAll of this capability adds up to game-changing means A tractor trundles along the edge of a large field. A car winds its waywhere he led the 50-person engineeringcontract manufacturers. Jabils subsidiary, Badgertomeasureandnavigatespaces,createaccurate throughtraffic.Adronecarefullyfloatsinmidairtodelivermedicalteam to build the worlds coolest juvenileTechnologies,basedinLexington,Kentucky,isand up-to-date models and maps, and much more. supplies. A last-mile robot makes a home delivery. What do all of theseproducts. Before that, Kevin was VP ofactively deploying robots into grocery retailers inThefutureoftransportationgivespeoplemany have in common? All of these vehicles are autonomous and need a map.R&D at Cambridge-based MC10 and drovethe Eastern U.S. One of the many jobs for thesechoicesfrompersonaltransportationintheform Plus, they need to know where they are on the map. But how does itMC10s high-performance stretchablerobots is to monitor mop and spill issues in theof bicycles and scooters, to rideshare options and determine the position in a map? How does it create the map in the firstelectronics technology into products andgrocery store aisles. However, these robots needautonomoussystemsandautomatedparkingand place? Kaarta, a Pittsburgh-based company, offers solutions to theseapplications. Prior to that he was Viceaccurate maps to navigate. That is where Kaartascurbmanagement.Thiscapabilitycoupledwith problems and much more. President of Strategic Technologies forStencilscannercomesintoprovideamasterthe most current information and maps will enable Philips Color Kinetics, the pioneeringmap to give the robot an accurate sense of whereefficient and effective travel from here to there and We take for granted the ease with which we find our way today with theinventor and leader of LED illuminationit is and captures the complete geometry of thebeyond.Kaartacontinuestoadvancethescience aidofsmartphonesandGlobalNavigationSatelliteSystems(GNSS).products. Kevin was also a member ofstore. This scanning is initially done by a personofmappinganddeterminingwhereyouarewhile The U.S. pioneered this capability with the Global Positioning Systemthe senior management team as CKcarrying Stencil up and down the aisles to capturedeploying products worldwide. (GPS),usingaconstellationofsatellitesandspecialtimingsignalstransitioned through an IPO (2004) andthe complete geometry of the store. This data is to allow people with smartphones and cars to navigate through many$800M acquisition by Philips (2007). then processed into a map that the robot uses to environments. But what happens when that signal is weak, lost, or evenfigure out where it is and to easily navigate through denied? Systems that rely on these signals must stop because thesePrior to Color Kinetics, Kevin was Chiefthe aisles, allowing the robot to focus on its primary people, robots, drones, and vehicles will not know where they are andRobotics Engineer for PRI Automationtask of monitoring for spills. When it identifies a spill, how to get where they are going. and has more than 20 years of experienceit sends an alert to the store manager with the exact in advanced robotics engineering at thelocationoftheincidentsoitcanbeimmediately ThesearesomeofthemanyproblemsthatKaartasolvedusingaRobotics Institute of Carnegie Mellonaddressed and reduce the risk of accidents. Kaarta combinationofsensorsandadvancedalgorithms.KaartacreatedUniversity where he built some of thesystemshavebeenusedtomapmorethan500 systems that both map and localize in real time. A combination of sensorsworlds first autonomous vehicles. Kevinstores in the first half of 2019.including laser radar (lidar), tracking cameras, and inertial measurementhas more than 75 issued US Patents and units (IMU) are used with special algorithms and standard computingreceived his BS in Mathematics, andThisisnotwhereKaartascapabilitiesend.The tosolvebothproblemsmappingandlocalizationatthesameMS and Ph.D.degrees in Robotics fromabilitytomapalsoallowstheusertomodelas-time. Kaarta supplies hardware solutions, self-contained mapping andCarnegie Mellon University. builtstructuresaccurately.Mostbuildingsdonot localization tools, and software licensing; Kaarta also created a Softwarehave accurate or up-to-date building floorplans and3 3D Color point cloud of an officeas a Service (SaaS) platform to build maps from raw data. overall design. In many cases, buildingsespecially Oneaspectofsatellitenavigationsystemsisthattheydontwork indoors. As a result, some interior localizing products use special radios, beacons, or target infrastructure to help vehicles and robots determine theirlocationindoors,buttheseareproblematicduetoinstallation,KAARTA CONTINUES TO ADVANCE THE SCIENCE OF maintenance, the need to carefully survey locations, reliability, and other factors. Ideally, such a system would be self-contained and thus wouldMAPPING AND DETERMINING WHERE YOU ARE WHILE beabletonavigatewarehouses,factories,distributioncenters,retail stores, airports, and offices without such deployed infrastructure. DEPLOYING PRODUCTS WORLDWIDE.One example of a Kaarta indoor mapping solution is being deployed byJabil,aU.S.basedcompanyandoneoftheworldslargest1 Robots Using Kaarta Mapping Tools13'