Raja Sengupta

Sengupta’s research focuses on transportation, wireless communications, and inertial navigation for vehicle systems. Here are a few of the research projects he is currently working on below:

• Sensor networks for forest fire monitoring: The objective of this project is to distribute small sensors in the wild that detect the onset of fires through measurements of temperature, pressure, or humidity. Sengupta is working on the sensor positioning and localization aspect.
• Neighborhood Mapping: Vehicle Neighborhood Map, developed in the University of California PATH, is an in-vehicle sensing and communication system which allows a vehicle to learn its neighborhood. Vehicles exchange their location information among themselves over the 802.11a wireless network in Ad-hoc mode. In-Vehicle safety applications (e.g., gap assistance, forward collision warnings) can base on this information to assist drivers in potential conflicts. Each vehicle is equipped with a GPS receiver and 802.11a wireless radio, and our software system. The software system consists of a GPS Broadcaster and a Neighborhood Map Builder. GPS Broadcaster broadcasts the vehicle’s position onto the 802.11a wireless network when it receives a new measurement from the GPS receiver. Neighborhood Map Builder listens to the wireless channel and uses the Geo-cast protocol to filter out any messages which are outside of its neighborhood. Higher-layer applications take these messages and transform them into the vehicle’s body-fixed coordinate frame. After the information is processed, the in-vehicle display delivers it to the user.
• Vision-Based Navigation: Sengupta’s fundamental research thrust is to make unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) capable of self-directed, collaborative navigation. We work toward a world where teams of unmanned vehicles will make possible what once was not. Whether aiding in firefighting, border patrol, search and rescue, convoy protection, remote environmental monitoring, or traffic radio reports, many aspects of commercial and structural life will be enhanced by the incorporation of autonomous collaborative vehicles.