Selim Temizer Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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I recently graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology with my Ph.D. degree in Computer Science and Engineering (February, 2011).
My dissertation, titled “Planning under Uncertainty for Dynamic Collision Avoidance”, can be reached here.
I will gladly consider academic positions or offers in industry/consulting.

Contact

Resume

Research

Dynamic Collision Avoidance I have been working on techniques to quickly compute safe trajectories by starting with possibly dangerous nominal trajectories and modifying them such that the new trajectories are clear from estimated intrusions, feasible, and the deviation from nominal trajectories are small. Advisors: Prof. Leslie Pack Kaelbling and Prof. Tomás Lozano-Pérez Cooperative modification with uncertainty - before/after Cooperative modification (68KB)

Past Projects

	POMDP Based Collision Avoidance I worked on designing partially observable markov decision process (POMDP) based collision avoidance models for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Comparison of the models with an actual collision avoidance system currently used on piloted aircraft (TCAS II Version 7) showed that the designed logic leads to more frequent maneuvers, but it is about 20 times safer. I also implemented versatile visualization software to analyze encounters between aircraft. 1, 2 An early description of the project Software screenshot, My logo design
	Dynamical Navigation Model I helped the design and improvement of a biologically-inspired navigation model by building extensive simulation software, analyzing the model, investigating various parameter settings and comparing the model to other navigation methods. 7, 9 Software screenshot, Sample run with potential-field method (animated, low frame rate) Sample run with potential-field method (65KB) My old project page (check out Technical Information links)
	Navigation Using Optical Flow A significant portion of my master's thesis work consisted of using image sequences to compute optical flow, estimate time-to-contact with surfaces and extract depth information. I also studied how those computed features could be used for navigation. 9 B21r robot avoiding chairs using optical flow (638KB) My old project page (check out Technical Information links)
	Topological Map Making Here is my recipe for extracting topological structure from a metric map of walls and possibly other obstacles: First, enlarge walls until doorways close up (i.e. take Minkowski sum of walls and an appropriately sized disk). A shrunk version of sought features (rooms, hallways, etc.) are now isolated and can be identified by, for example, flood filling. Then enlarge back each feature to restore original shape and size. Also during this second step, the overlapping areas between restored features will indicate doorways between them. To generate input for testing the technique, I also prepared software that simulates a robot with laser range finder and generates metric maps. Project goal, Sample metric map, Sample step 1, Sample step 2 Simulator sample run: High resolution, low frame rate (2.58MB), Low resolution, better frame rate (4.19MB)
	The Front-Point Method I devised a very useful and practical technique I call The Front-Point Method that enables the treatment of an agent with certain non-holonomic motion constraints as being holonomic. I have used the method to easily navigate robots with synchro-drive and differential-drive systems on many projects and it might even be possible to apply the same principle to other driving mechanisms, too. 8, 9
	Parallel Volume Rendering For my senior design project at Middle East Technical University, I came up with an adaptive volume rendering algorithm, in which, processing units exchange messages to balance the load of rendering images, and a master process dynamically keeps track of the weight of each pixel to further speed up rendering by trying to distribute the initial load between processing units in such a way that there will be minimal need for messages. 10
	Advice-of-Charge GSM Service Advice-of-Charge (AoC) is the call charge as calculated by the mobile station, which might vary from the actual invoice generated by the network operator. As part of my internship appointment at ASELSAN (the largest and leading military electronics corporation in Turkey), I designed the AoC service software module for ASELSAN 1920 GSM mobile phones using Specification and Description Language. ASELSAN 1920 GSM terminal, Terminal and desktop charger

Hobby Projects

	Physical Network Topology Design My brother and I are currently working on heuristic techniques for designing resilient physical network topologies. We have implemented a few methods to construct symmetric topologies and topologies that optimize arbitrary design criteria. MIT 6.442 Course: Website 1, Website 2
	Shooting Trainer My brother, my cousin, one of my friends from my military service days, and I designed a prototype system for shooting training. The hardware part of the system is in the form of a tripod that monitors the orientation of the attached gun/rifle during shooting and detects when the trainee pulls the trigger to take the shot. The software part is in charge of presenting stationary/mobile targets at various ranges, simulating shots in digital environment and evaluating the performance of the trainee based on accuracy and precision of the shots. 4 Demonstrating prototype at a conference, Virtual shoot-out
	Facilitating Software Engineering Tasks I designed an experimental meta-language that can be used to describe the semantic structure of computer programs by tagging source code chunks, where the tags can be embedded in source code as comments. I studied how this additional piece of embedded information can be extracted and used to facilitate common forward and reverse software engineering tasks such as instrumenting code, unit testing and generating activity diagrams, test scenarios and software requirement specifications. 3, 6
	Graphics System API and Testbed I worked briefly on an inspiring project (ran jointly by L-3 Display Systems and AYESAŞ in 2005) for developing a graphics and a windowing library that were planned to be used on F-35 Lightning II cockpit displays. Later on, I designed my own experimental graphics system API as a hobby. To test the feasibility of my design, I also implemented a fully functional testbed application that allows multiple client applications to connect to it (either locally or remotely via sockets), open up their own graphics windows and render images/animations using their separate graphics contexts, all managed by the testbed application. Testbed: Start screen, Screenshot with 7 sample client windows Testbed sample run with 7 clients running and exiting (114KB)

Publications

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1. Selim Temizer, Mykel John Kochenderfer, Leslie Pack Kaelbling, Tomás Lozano-Pérez and James K. Kuchar Collision Avoidance for Unmanned Aircraft using Markov Decision Processes Proceedings of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Guidance, Navigation, and Control Conference American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics August 2010 Sheraton Centre Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada August 2-5, 2010
   
   
   
2. Selim Temizer, Mykel John Kochenderfer, Leslie Pack Kaelbling, Tomás Lozano-Pérez and James K. Kuchar Unmanned Aircraft Collision Avoidance Using Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Advanced Concepts Program Project Report ATC-356 September 2009 Lexington, Massachusetts, USA September 22, 2009
   
   
   
3. Selim Temizer Using a Meta-language to Bridge the Gap between Natural Languages and Computer Languages Journal of Aeronautics and Space Technologies Turkish Air Force Academy 3 2 25-36 July 2007 1304-0448
   
   
   
4. Selim Temizer, Haluk Eliş and Namık Kemal Temizer SAGES: HLA-Compliant Combat Capability Training Simulator in Virtual Reality Environment with Stereo Vision, Rigid Body Dynamics and Environmental Audio Support Proceedings of the 2nd National Defense Applications Modeling and Simulation Conference (USMOS 2007) 5-14 April 2007 Ankara, TURKEY April 18-19, 2007
   
   
   
5. Selim Temizer The State of the Art and the Future of Modeling and Simulation Systems Journal of Aeronautics and Space Technologies Turkish Air Force Academy 3 1 41-50 January 2007 1304-0448
   
   
   
6. Selim Temizer Software Structuring Techniques: The Temizer System Proceedings of the 2nd National Software Engineering Symposium (UYMS 2005) 305-313 September 2005 Ankara, TURKEY September 22-24, 2005
   
   
   
7. Brett R. Fajen, William H. Warren, Selim Temizer and Leslie Pack Kaelbling A Dynamical Model of Visually-Guided Steering, Obstacle Avoidance, and Route Selection International Journal of Computer Vision Springer Netherlands 54 1-3 13-34 August 2003 0920-5691 (Print), 1573-1405 (Online)
   
   
   
8. Selim Temizer and Leslie Pack Kaelbling Holonomic Planar Motion from Non-holonomic Driving Mechanisms: The Front-Point Method Proceedings of Photonics Boston, Intelligent Systems and Advanced Manufacturing (SPIE, Mobile Robots XVI) Douglas W. Gage and Howie M. Choset 4573 56-67 October 2001 Newton, Massachusetts, USA October 29-30, 2001
   
   
   
9. Selim Temizer Optical Flow Based Local Navigation Massachusetts Institute of Technology September 2001 Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
   
   
   
10. Selim Temizer, Ömer Sinan Saraç and Veysi İşler Intelligent Parallel Volume Rendering Using View Coherence on MIMD Architectures Proceedings of the 14th International Symposium on Computer and Information Sciences (ISCIS 1999) 900-907 October 1999 Kuşadası, İzmir, TURKEY October 18-20, 1999
    
    

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