Welcome

In recent years, mixed-reality (MR) interfaces in robotics have gained much traction, with applications in immersive remote telepresence and telerobotics. One critical component is capturing 3D environments in real-time using sensors like RGB-D/LIDAR and streaming them to MR interfaces. However, achieving optimal performance in this context entails meeting demanding latency, throughput, and quality criteria.

I'm a postdoctoral researcher at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) in Genova, Italy, in the Advanced Robotics research line. My research focuses on creating immersive telepresence and telerobotics interfaces that enhance users' sense of presence by designing dynamic 3D reconstruction, perception-driven rendering, and advanced compression and streaming techniques.

Things I Do

My area of interest revolves around researching, developing, and implementing real-time immersive telerobotics interfaces with the aim of pushing the limits of perception using advanced robotic interfaces. Here are the primary topics I am enthusiastic about exploring and investigating:

  • Perception & Localization: Design real-time dynamic dense 3D reconstruction and scene understanding system via RGB-D camera to create maps and locations in the world.
  • Design Immersive Interfaces: design telerobotics/ telepresence interfaces using 3D reconstructed scenes with modern virtual reality (VR) interfaces.
  • Compression: Design and integration of Point Cloud Compression (PCC) techniques: L-PCC, S-PCC, and V-PCC.
  • GPU Programming with OpenGL Shading Language (GLSL) and CUDA: impliment highly parallel general-purpose computations and visualization on GPU accelerators.
  • Programming robots through ROS : writing different packags and set of tools to provide mutiple functionalitys and capablities to robots.
  • Immersive video delivery: Design, Stream, and render 3D and eXtended reality (XR) experiences for single and multi users.

A Few Projects

Throughout my Ph.D. study and as a postdoctoral researcher, I have had the opportunity to engage in several projects focused on the research, development, and implementation of real-time immersive telerobotics interfaces.

Meeting the Hon. President Mattarella through Immersive Robot Interaction.

A remarkable interaction between a remote teleoperator and the President of Italy, Sergio Mattarella with the hyqreal. It captures the moment when hyqreal presented a copy of the Constitution.

Immersive Telerobotics in hazardous or inaccessible enviroments

Firefighting is one domain where immersive telerobotics can play a crucial role in enhancing the safety and effectiveness of firefighting operations. Our lab did this project with the Italian institutional agency for fire and rescue service (Vigili del Fuoco).

MR Interface for Immersive Remote Telerobotics

This immersive remote telerobotic interface presents a significant leap forward in the field of human-robot interaction. We have created a robust system that enables operators to control robots remotely while experiencing immersion and presence.

Foveated Rendering for Immersive Remote Visualization

Network latency and throughput requirements negatively impact user's experience. The human visual system was taken as an inspiration to design a novel immersive remote visualization system to improve transmission, interaction and visualization in VR.

Selected publications

  • Yonas Tefera et al., “Towards Gaze-contingent Visualization of Real-time 3D Reconstructed Remote Scenes in Mixed Reality”, AIR 2023 - Advances in Robotics, 6th International Conference of the Robotics Society, Jul 5–8, 2023, IIT-Ropar, India.

  • Yonas Tefera et al., “FoReCast: Real-time Foveated Rendering and Unicasting for Immersive Remote Telepresence”, ICAT-EGVE 2022 - International Conference on Artificial Reality and Telexistence and Eurographics Symposium on Virtual Environments, Dec. 1, 2022, Yokohama, Japan.

  • Yonas Tefera et al., “A Perception-Driven Approach To Immersive Remote Telerobotics”, in First XR-ROB Workshop @ IEEE/RSJ IROS, Oct. 20, 2022, Kyoto, Japan.

  • Yonas Tefera et al., “Towards Foveated Rendering for Immersive Remote Telerobotics”, In 5th International Workshop on Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed-Reality for Human-Robot Interactions (VAM-HRI), Mar. 7, 2022, Sapporo, Japan.

  • A Naceri et al., “The Vicarios Virtual Reality Interface for Remote Robotic Teleoperation” Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems 101 (4), pp. 1-16.

  • Yonas Tefera et al., “Perception-driven approaches to real-time remote immersive visualization” 2022 University of Verona.

  • Yonas Tefera et al., “MOTION DETECTION AND VIDEO TRACKING IN THE COMPRESSED DOMAIN" 2018 University of Trento.

  • Yonas Tefera et al., “3DNOW: Image-based 3D reconstruction and modeling via WEB" 2018 The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences.

  • Yonas Tefera et al., “Real-time moving object detection and segmentation in H. 264 video streams" 2017 IEEE International Symposium on Broadband Multimedia Systems and Broadcasting (BMSB).

  • Yonas Tefera et al., “3D reconstruction with a collaborative approach based on smartphones and a cloud-based server" 2017 The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences.

Let's Connect!

I'm thrilled that you've taken the time to explore my work and learn more about me. If you have any questions, comments, or simply want to say hello, I would love to hear from you and reach out to me in the following addresss: Linkedin Email Twitter