Alberto Broggi
Encyclopedia
Alberto Broggi is a professor of Computer Engineering
at the University of Parma
in Italy
, and a pioneer of machine vision applied to
driverless car
s and unmanned vehicles in general.
at the
University of Parma
(1985–1990)
and was the first person to get the degree in Electronic Engineering
at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Parma
on Dec 20, 1990.
Broggi got a position as Researcher at the Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell'Informazione, University of Parma in 1994; shortly after he got
his PhD in Information Technology.
In 1998 he was with the University of Pavia as an Associate Professor
of Artificial Intelligence
. From
2001 he has been Associate Professor and then Full Professor
at the University of Parma, where he has been the founder and leader
of the artificial vision research group, worldwide renown as VisLab.
worldwide publications as a founder or as an Editor.
In particular he was the Founding Editor of a Regular Department
on 'Intelligent Transportation Systems' of the IEEE Intelligent
Systems Magazine (IEEE Computer Society) which he led from 1999 to 2003;
and the Founding Editor of the
IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Newsletter of the IEEE ITS Council
first, and ITS Society after, which he led as Editor-in-Chief from 1999
to 2003 again.
In 2004 he started serving the IEEE Transactions on ITS as
Editor-in-Chief and resigned from this position in 2008 since -in 2009- he
was elected President-elect of the IEEE ITS Society for the term 2010-2011.
He has been invited speaker and plendry speaker in a number of different conferences worldwide.
started in the early ’90s, when very few laboratories worldwide were
investigating the applicability of artificial vision on board
of moving vehicles. At that time no hardware architecture was
able to deliver sufficient processing power to run real-time
image processing algorithms.
At that time (1991–1994)
his group together with the Dipartimento di Elettronica,
Politecnico di Torino, Italy,
built their own hardware architecture (named PAPRICA,
for PArallel PRocessor for Image Checking and Analysis,
based on 256 single-bit processing elements working in SIMD fashion)
and installed it on board of a mobile laboratory (Mob-Lab) to
develop and test some initial concepts in the field of intelligent vehicles.
These activities were funded by the
EUREKA
-project 'PROgraMme for a European Traffic of Highest Efficiency and Unprecedented Safety' (PROMETHEUS
), which
ended with a demonstration in October 1994, in France.
The experience on Mob-Lab not only provided the ground for new ideas
on computer vision techniques, but
the typical problems of the automotive environment were also investigated,
creating a strong know-how on the application of artificial vision
in the real world.
The time spent from 1990 to 1995 in developing, installing, and testing
perception systems in a real automotive environment was of paramount
importance and was a key factor for the growing of Broggi's reputation
in the field.
In 1996 Broggi's entrepreneurial attitude triggered a very intriguing and challenging new activity that had to bring his research activities to a world-renowned level.
With very limited funding, Broggi's group worked to develop a real vehicle prototype (named ARGO, a Lancia Thema passenger car which was equipped with vision sensors, processing systems, and vehicle actuators) and developed the necessary software and hardware that made it able to drive autonomously on standard roads.
It was 1998; the processors offered by the market were Pentium 200 MHz;
despite this, the 6-day-long demonstration of ARGO capabilities was a milestone and
-thanks to an at-that-time innovative mobile link over
which ARGO aired a live video stream from the vehicle-
all the world was able to follow in real-time the results of that project, called MilleMiglia in Automatico.
94% of 2000+ km were driven autonomously; ARGO was able to follow the road, overtake slower traffic, locate obstacles,
and follow the vehicle in front. This was the first experiment of a vehicle running autonomously with vision as the only sensor and a low cost off-the-shelf processing system.
then became one of the most cited examples globally in the
Intelligent Vehicles field. Broggi's research group
(called VisLab from then on) gathered all their findings in a
book
which was then also translated in Chinese.
Starting from these results, VisLab was offered a series
of research opportunities by many car makers, automotive suppliers,
research centers, and scientific research communities to bring its
expertise and innovative flavor to a series of related applications.
Given his visible position in the research arena, Broggi
was asked to act as Program Chair of the main conference in this field
(the IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symp 2000 in Detroit)
together with Jim Rillings (General Motors) as General Chair.
When Broggi was with the University of Pavia, his research was
extended and applied to extreme conditions (automatic driving on snow
and ice): in 2001, VisLab lead the challenging research effort of
providing a vehicle (RAS, Robot Antartico di Superficie) with sensing
capabilities so that it was able to automatically follow the
vehicle in front. The vehicle was brought to the South Pole as a
support to Italian scientific expeditions with the aim to automate
the movement of goods from the Antarctic harbor to the Italian base.
VisLab also established a very strong relationship (2001–2005)
with a car manufacturer in Wolfsburg
, Germany
, and provided
research on applications such as pedestrian detection
and night vision to increment road safety. At that time the
research on pedestrian detection was just shaping up and VisLab’s
contribution (using thermal imagery) marked the start of new
investigations worldwide using this technology applied to
commercial vehicles. Similar research
topics (still very challenging and not yet solved) have been the
basis for another research activity with US Army TARDEC,
of which VisLab became a partner in 2001.
In 2004 Broggi was the General Chair of the IEEE Intelligent Vehicles
Symp, which took place in Parma, and at the same time he was asked to
act as Editor-in-Chief of the new scientific Journal
sponsored by IEEE related to ITS research topics: the IEEE Transactions on
Intelligent Transportation Systems.
VisLab was asked to partner with many teams to take part
in the DARPA Grand Challenge
and DARPA Urban Challenge,
namely races amongst autonomous vehicles that
had to drive in different environments without any human intervention.
VisLab took part in all 3 challenges (2004,’05,’07) and signed again
the history of autonomous vehicles: in 2005 TerraMax (vehicle)
-a 14 ton truck-
was one of only 5 vehicles worldwide to win the challenge and reach the
end of the 132 miles off-road race in the Mojave desert; in 2007
TerraMax was qualified for the DARPA Urban Challenge,
100 km of urban driving together with other vehicles.
Thanks to these achievements, in December 2005 Broggi
-together with Team Terramax- presented TerraMax
the Pentagon in Washington, DC.
In January 2006, at the US Army base in Yuma
, Arizona, VisLab -in
partnership with Oshkosh Truck Corporation and Rockwell Collins
- demonstrated
a new prototype vehicle to the US military: a concept vehicle able
to reach a predefined destination, unload, and get back to the starting
point with no human intervention.
Other multinational companies such as TopCon
and Caterpillar
followed and
started partnering with VisLab
to explore
new challenging opportunities, i.e. to integrate VisLab's
sensing technologies on off-road vehicles (tractors, handlers,
earthmovers,...).
In 2007
the Major of Parma awarded Broggi with a high recognition (‘for
contributing in increasing the visibility of Parma’)
and a local no-profit organization (Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio)
decided to partially support VisLab activities; this
contribution allowed VisLab to acquire a new vehicle, equip it
with sensors, and continue the research. The vehicle's name
is BRAiVE and soon became another milestone: with
10 cameras, 5 laserscanners, 16 laser beams, GPS, INS, and complete
x-by-wire (provided by VisLab's partner MANDO, South Korea) BRAiVE flew to China
in 2009 for the official presentation at the IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symp
2009, where it demonstrated fully automatic features.
In 2008 Broggi
was selected by ERC, European Research Council
, to receive an
Advanced Grant (about 2 million dollars) to support VisLab's research
in the following 5 years.
In 2009, the same research group started a spinoff company, named VisLab srl,
with the aim of transferring the technologies developed so far into products.
In 2010 Broggi's group embarked on driving 4 vehicles autonomously from Italy
to China with no human intervention. This challenge is called VIAC
, for
VisLab Intercontinental Autonomous Challenge
.
VIAC
has been presented in
a number of conference and symposia, with Broggi delivering plenary speeches.
at the University of Parma
University of Parma
The University of Parma is one of the oldest universities in the world, founded in the 11th century. It is organised in twelve faculties. The University of Parma has currently about 30,000 students.-History:...
in Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, and a pioneer of machine vision applied to
driverless car
Driverless car
An autonomous car, also known as robotic or informally as driverless, is an autonomous vehicle capable of fulfilling the human transportation capabilities of a traditional car. As an autonomous vehicle, it is capable of sensing its environment and navigating on its own...
s and unmanned vehicles in general.
Biography
Alberto Broggi was born in Parma, Italy, in 1966. He studied electronic engineeringElectronic engineering
Electronics engineering, also referred to as electronic engineering, is an engineering discipline where non-linear and active electrical components such as electron tubes, and semiconductor devices, especially transistors, diodes and integrated circuits, are utilized to design electronic...
at the
University of Parma
University of Parma
The University of Parma is one of the oldest universities in the world, founded in the 11th century. It is organised in twelve faculties. The University of Parma has currently about 30,000 students.-History:...
(1985–1990)
and was the first person to get the degree in Electronic Engineering
at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Parma
on Dec 20, 1990.
Broggi got a position as Researcher at the Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell'Informazione, University of Parma in 1994; shortly after he got
his PhD in Information Technology.
In 1998 he was with the University of Pavia as an Associate Professor
of Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
. From
2001 he has been Associate Professor and then Full Professor
at the University of Parma, where he has been the founder and leader
of the artificial vision research group, worldwide renown as VisLab.
Scientific Records
Broggi has been leading a number ofworldwide publications as a founder or as an Editor.
In particular he was the Founding Editor of a Regular Department
on 'Intelligent Transportation Systems' of the IEEE Intelligent
Systems Magazine (IEEE Computer Society) which he led from 1999 to 2003;
and the Founding Editor of the
IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Newsletter of the IEEE ITS Council
first, and ITS Society after, which he led as Editor-in-Chief from 1999
to 2003 again.
In 2004 he started serving the IEEE Transactions on ITS as
Editor-in-Chief and resigned from this position in 2008 since -in 2009- he
was elected President-elect of the IEEE ITS Society for the term 2010-2011.
He has been invited speaker and plendry speaker in a number of different conferences worldwide.
Pioneering Work in Autonomous Driving
Broggi's research activitiesstarted in the early ’90s, when very few laboratories worldwide were
investigating the applicability of artificial vision on board
of moving vehicles. At that time no hardware architecture was
able to deliver sufficient processing power to run real-time
image processing algorithms.
At that time (1991–1994)
his group together with the Dipartimento di Elettronica,
Politecnico di Torino, Italy,
built their own hardware architecture (named PAPRICA,
for PArallel PRocessor for Image Checking and Analysis,
based on 256 single-bit processing elements working in SIMD fashion)
and installed it on board of a mobile laboratory (Mob-Lab) to
develop and test some initial concepts in the field of intelligent vehicles.
These activities were funded by the
EUREKA
EUREKA
EUREKA, often abbreviated as "E!" or "Σ!", is a pan-European research and development funding and coordination organization. EUREKA aims to coordinate efforts of governments, research institutes and commercial companies concerning innovation...
-project 'PROgraMme for a European Traffic of Highest Efficiency and Unprecedented Safety' (PROMETHEUS
EUREKA Prometheus Project
The EUREKA Prometheus Project was the largest R&D project ever in the field of driverless cars. In today's money it received more than 1 billion dollars of funding from the European Commission, and defined the state of the art of autonomous vehicles...
), which
ended with a demonstration in October 1994, in France.
The experience on Mob-Lab not only provided the ground for new ideas
on computer vision techniques, but
the typical problems of the automotive environment were also investigated,
creating a strong know-how on the application of artificial vision
in the real world.
The time spent from 1990 to 1995 in developing, installing, and testing
perception systems in a real automotive environment was of paramount
importance and was a key factor for the growing of Broggi's reputation
in the field.
In 1996 Broggi's entrepreneurial attitude triggered a very intriguing and challenging new activity that had to bring his research activities to a world-renowned level.
With very limited funding, Broggi's group worked to develop a real vehicle prototype (named ARGO, a Lancia Thema passenger car which was equipped with vision sensors, processing systems, and vehicle actuators) and developed the necessary software and hardware that made it able to drive autonomously on standard roads.
It was 1998; the processors offered by the market were Pentium 200 MHz;
despite this, the 6-day-long demonstration of ARGO capabilities was a milestone and
-thanks to an at-that-time innovative mobile link over
which ARGO aired a live video stream from the vehicle-
all the world was able to follow in real-time the results of that project, called MilleMiglia in Automatico.
94% of 2000+ km were driven autonomously; ARGO was able to follow the road, overtake slower traffic, locate obstacles,
and follow the vehicle in front. This was the first experiment of a vehicle running autonomously with vision as the only sensor and a low cost off-the-shelf processing system.
Main Milestones
The first milestone was the completion of ARGO's test whichthen became one of the most cited examples globally in the
Intelligent Vehicles field. Broggi's research group
(called VisLab from then on) gathered all their findings in a
book
which was then also translated in Chinese.
Starting from these results, VisLab was offered a series
of research opportunities by many car makers, automotive suppliers,
research centers, and scientific research communities to bring its
expertise and innovative flavor to a series of related applications.
Given his visible position in the research arena, Broggi
was asked to act as Program Chair of the main conference in this field
(the IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symp 2000 in Detroit)
together with Jim Rillings (General Motors) as General Chair.
When Broggi was with the University of Pavia, his research was
extended and applied to extreme conditions (automatic driving on snow
and ice): in 2001, VisLab lead the challenging research effort of
providing a vehicle (RAS, Robot Antartico di Superficie) with sensing
capabilities so that it was able to automatically follow the
vehicle in front. The vehicle was brought to the South Pole as a
support to Italian scientific expeditions with the aim to automate
the movement of goods from the Antarctic harbor to the Italian base.
VisLab also established a very strong relationship (2001–2005)
with a car manufacturer in Wolfsburg
Wolfsburg
Wolfsburg is a town in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is located on the River Aller northeast of Braunschweig , and is mainly notable as the headquarters of Volkswagen AG...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, and provided
research on applications such as pedestrian detection
and night vision to increment road safety. At that time the
research on pedestrian detection was just shaping up and VisLab’s
contribution (using thermal imagery) marked the start of new
investigations worldwide using this technology applied to
commercial vehicles. Similar research
topics (still very challenging and not yet solved) have been the
basis for another research activity with US Army TARDEC,
of which VisLab became a partner in 2001.
In 2004 Broggi was the General Chair of the IEEE Intelligent Vehicles
Symp, which took place in Parma, and at the same time he was asked to
act as Editor-in-Chief of the new scientific Journal
sponsored by IEEE related to ITS research topics: the IEEE Transactions on
Intelligent Transportation Systems.
VisLab was asked to partner with many teams to take part
in the DARPA Grand Challenge
DARPA Grand Challenge
The DARPA Grand Challenge is a prize competition for driverless vehicles, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the most prominent research organization of the United States Department of Defense...
and DARPA Urban Challenge,
namely races amongst autonomous vehicles that
had to drive in different environments without any human intervention.
VisLab took part in all 3 challenges (2004,’05,’07) and signed again
the history of autonomous vehicles: in 2005 TerraMax (vehicle)
TerraMax (vehicle)
TerraMax is an autonomous tactical cargo hauler fielded by Oshkosh Truck Corporation, University of Parma's Artificial Vision and Intelligent Systems Laboratory and Rockwell Collins, also known under the name of Big Truck Robotics, that participated in both the 2004 and 2005 DARPA Grand...
-a 14 ton truck-
was one of only 5 vehicles worldwide to win the challenge and reach the
end of the 132 miles off-road race in the Mojave desert; in 2007
TerraMax was qualified for the DARPA Urban Challenge,
100 km of urban driving together with other vehicles.
Thanks to these achievements, in December 2005 Broggi
-together with Team Terramax- presented TerraMax
the Pentagon in Washington, DC.
In January 2006, at the US Army base in Yuma
Yuma
-Places:* Yuma Desert, desert in southwest U.S. and northwest MexicoUnited States* Yuma County, Arizona** Yuma, Arizona** Marine Corps Air Station Yuma** United States Army Yuma Proving Ground** Yuma Territorial Prison* Yuma County, Colorado** Yuma, Colorado...
, Arizona, VisLab -in
partnership with Oshkosh Truck Corporation and Rockwell Collins
Rockwell Collins
Rockwell Collins, Inc. is a large United States-based international company headquartered in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, primarily providing aviation and information technology systems and services to governmental agencies and aircraft manufacturers.- History :...
- demonstrated
a new prototype vehicle to the US military: a concept vehicle able
to reach a predefined destination, unload, and get back to the starting
point with no human intervention.
Other multinational companies such as TopCon
Topcon
Topcon is a Japanese manufacturer of optical equipment for ophthalmology and surveying. Their headquarters are in Itabashi, Tokyo. They are affiliated with Toshiba, which holds 40% of Topcon's stock.-History of Topcon:...
and Caterpillar
Caterpillar
Caterpillars are the larval form of members of the order Lepidoptera . They are mostly herbivorous in food habit, although some species are insectivorous. Caterpillars are voracious feeders and many of them are considered to be pests in agriculture...
followed and
started partnering with VisLab
VisLab
The Artificial Vision and Intelligent Systems Laboratory of the University of Parma is the artificial vision research laboratory of University of Parma, Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell'Informazione....
to explore
new challenging opportunities, i.e. to integrate VisLab's
sensing technologies on off-road vehicles (tractors, handlers,
earthmovers,...).
In 2007
the Major of Parma awarded Broggi with a high recognition (‘for
contributing in increasing the visibility of Parma’)
and a local no-profit organization (Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio)
decided to partially support VisLab activities; this
contribution allowed VisLab to acquire a new vehicle, equip it
with sensors, and continue the research. The vehicle's name
is BRAiVE and soon became another milestone: with
10 cameras, 5 laserscanners, 16 laser beams, GPS, INS, and complete
x-by-wire (provided by VisLab's partner MANDO, South Korea) BRAiVE flew to China
in 2009 for the official presentation at the IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symp
2009, where it demonstrated fully automatic features.
In 2008 Broggi
was selected by ERC, European Research Council
European Research Council
The European Research Council is the independent body that funds investigator-driven frontier research in the European Union . It is part of the Seventh Research Framework Programme ....
, to receive an
Advanced Grant (about 2 million dollars) to support VisLab's research
in the following 5 years.
In 2009, the same research group started a spinoff company, named VisLab srl,
with the aim of transferring the technologies developed so far into products.
In 2010 Broggi's group embarked on driving 4 vehicles autonomously from Italy
to China with no human intervention. This challenge is called VIAC
VIAC
VIAC, the VisLab Intercontinental Autonomous Challenge, is the challenge conceived by VisLabas an extremetest ofautonomous vehicles.It ran from July 26, 2010 to October 28, 2010, involving four driverless vehicles driving with...
, for
VisLab Intercontinental Autonomous Challenge
.
VIAC
VIAC
VIAC, the VisLab Intercontinental Autonomous Challenge, is the challenge conceived by VisLabas an extremetest ofautonomous vehicles.It ran from July 26, 2010 to October 28, 2010, involving four driverless vehicles driving with...
has been presented in
a number of conference and symposia, with Broggi delivering plenary speeches.
See also
- Driverless carDriverless carAn autonomous car, also known as robotic or informally as driverless, is an autonomous vehicle capable of fulfilling the human transportation capabilities of a traditional car. As an autonomous vehicle, it is capable of sensing its environment and navigating on its own...
- VIACVIACVIAC, the VisLab Intercontinental Autonomous Challenge, is the challenge conceived by VisLabas an extremetest ofautonomous vehicles.It ran from July 26, 2010 to October 28, 2010, involving four driverless vehicles driving with...
- DARPA Grand ChallengeDARPA Grand ChallengeThe DARPA Grand Challenge is a prize competition for driverless vehicles, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the most prominent research organization of the United States Department of Defense...
- DARPA Grand Challenge (2007)DARPA Grand Challenge (2007)The third driverless car competition of the DARPA Grand Challenge, was commonly known as the DARPA Urban Challenge. It took place on November 3, 2007 at the site of the now-closed George Air Force Base , in Victorville, California , in the West of the United States...
- VisLabVisLabThe Artificial Vision and Intelligent Systems Laboratory of the University of Parma is the artificial vision research laboratory of University of Parma, Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell'Informazione....
- GoogleGoogleGoogle Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
cars