Date: Thursday, Feb 27, 2025

Time: 12:00 p.m.

Location: Centergy Building 5126

Speaker: Shurjo Banerjee

Speakers' Title: Senior Localization Engineer at Kodiak Robotics

Seminar Title: Scaling Localization to Millions of Miles

Abstract: Kodiak Robotics has recently achieved a significant milestone, completing over 3.5 million miles of autonomous driving. A key highlight of this achievement is the recent successful execution of 100 driverless commercial loads delivering freight in the Permian Basin, demonstrating the scalability and reliability of autonomous systems in real-world environments. Central to the performance and adaptability of the Kodiak Driver is its robust localization system, which is capable of operating across a diverse range of environments—from highways to dirt roads, dense wooded trails, and even snowy fields. Furthermore, this localization system is designed to generalize across various vehicle types, including Class 8 trucks, Ford F150s, and tracked vehicles. In this talk, we will delve into the technical and operational workflows that are crucial to productionizing localization systems, ensuring their reliability, and making them effective for use in real-world products.

Bio: Shurjo Banerjee is a Senior Localization Engineer at Kodiak Robotics, where he has played a pivotal role in the generalization of Kodiak's localization stack from highway-only operations to off-road domains, including dirt roads and snowy fields. Before joining Kodiak, Shurjo earned his PhD from the University of Michigan's COGLab, specializing in Computer Vision, Robotics, and Artificial Intelligence. His research focused on End-to-End Navigation and Vision-And-Language Navigation, equipping him with a deep understanding of how to integrate vision systems with navigation solutions in complex environments. Prior to graduate school, Shurjo worked at Georgia Tech, contributing to the development of the Tongue Tracking system, where he focused on Localization and Tracking problems. His expertise bridges multiple domains, including robotics, computer vision, artificial intelligence, and localization.