Junaed Sattar

Research Interests

• Mobile robotics, human-robot interaction, computer vision, machine learning (particular interest in learning for machine vision), software systems for mobile robots, Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs), Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs).

Education

• Ph.D::School of Computer Science, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada. Expected completion: August 2011. Thesis titled "A Vision-Based Framework for Human-Robot Interaction for Mobile Robots in Arbitrary Environments". Supervised by Professor Gregory L. Dudek.
• M.Sc.::School of Computer Science, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada. Granted February 2006. Thesis titled "A Visual Servoing System for an Amphibious Legged Robot.". Supervised by Professor Gregory L. Dudek.
• B.Sc. (Engineering)::Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Granted August 2001. Undergraduate thesis titled "Discovery of Patterns from Databases-- an Evaluation of Methods in Knowledge Discovery.".

Awards

• Le Fonds Quebecois de la Recherche sur la Nature et les Technologies (FQRNT) Post-Doctoral Award (B3), ranked 4th among 9 candidates chosen for final consideration. 2011- 2013, Quebec, Canada.
• National Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Industrial Research and Development Fellowship (IRDF) post-doctoral award, 2009. (Declined)
• Best Robotics Paper Award, in the Canadian Conference on Robot Vision (CRV), 2009, held in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada.
• Le Fonds Quebecois de la Recherche sur la Nature et les Technologies (FQRNT) Doctoral Award (B2), ranked 5th among 26 candidates chosen for final consideration. 2008- 2009, Quebec, Canada.
• Best Presentation Award in "Electromagnetism: transmission across disciplines" entitled "A Vision-based Interaction Framework for Mobile Robots in Arbitrary Environments", at the Fifth Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Research Symposium, McGill University, Montreal, Canada, April 2008.
• "Precarn Scholar" award for research contributing to industrial applications, for the years 2005-2006 and 2007-2008, Canada.
• Dean's Honor List, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Dhaka, 1998-1999.
• Prime Ministers Award for excellence in Secondary School and Higher Secondary Certificate Examinations, 1992 and 1994 respectively. Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Books

• Junaed Sattar. A Visual Servoing System for an Amphibious Legged Robot. VDM Verlag Dr. Muller Aktiengesellschaft and Co. Kg. ISBN: 978363901433. ISBN (Ten digit): 3639014332.

Journal Publications

1. Gregory Dudek, Philippe Giguere, Chris Prahacs, Shane Saunderson, Junaed Sattar, and Luz-Abril Torres-Mendez, McGill University; Michael Jenkin, Andrew German, Andrew Hogue, Arlene Ripsman, and Jim Zacher, York University; Evangelos Milios, Hui Liu, and Pifu Zhang, Dalhousie University; Martin Buehler, Boston Dynamics; Christina Georgiades, MathWorks. Aqua: An Amphibious Autonomous Robot. IEEE Computer Magazine, Volume 40, Number 1, Pages 46-53, January 2007.
2. Junaed Sattar, Philippe Giguere and Gregory Dudek. Sensor-Based Behavior Control for an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle. International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR). Volume 28, No. 6, pages 701-713, June 2009.

Peer-reviewed Conference Publications

1. Junaed Sattar and Gregory Dudek. Towards Quantitative Modeling of Task Confirmations in Human-Robot Dialog. Proceedings of the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pages 1957-1963. May 2011, Shanghai, China.
2. Junaed Sattar and Gregory Dudek. Reducing Uncertainty in Human-Robot Interaction: A Cost Analysis Approach. To appear in the Proceedings of the International Symposium on Experimental Robotics (ISER). December 2010, New Delhi and Agra, India.
3. Junaed Sattar, Anqi Xu, Gabrielle Charette and Gregory Dudek. Graphical State-Space Programmability as a Natural Interface for Robotic Control. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pages 4609-4614. May 2010, Anchorage, AK, USA.
4. Ioannis Rekleitis, Gregory Dudek, Yasmina Schoueri, Philippe Giguere, Junaed Sattar. Telepresence across the Ocean. Proceedings of the Seventh Canadian Conference on Computer and Robot Vision (CRV), pages 261-268. May 2010, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
5. Junaed Sattar and Gregory Dudek. Underwater Human-Robot Interaction via Biological Motion Identification. Proceedings of the 2009 Conference on Robotics: Science and Systems V (RSS), MIT Press, pages 185-192. June-July 2009, Seattle, WA, USA. Nominated for Best Student Paper award.
6. Junaed Sattar and Gregory Dudek. Robust Servo-control for Underwater Robots using Banks of Visual Filters. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pages 3583-3588. May 2009, Kobe, Japan.
7. Junaed Sattar and Gregory Dudek. A Vision-based Control and Interaction Framework for a Legged Underwater Robot. Proceedings of the Sixth Canadian Conference on Computer and Robot Vision (CRV), pages 329-336. May 2009, Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada. Best Robotics Paper Award.
8. Junaed Sattar, Gregory Dudek, Olivia Chiu, Ioannis Rekleitis, Alec Mills, Philippe Giguere, Nicolas Plamondon, Chris Prahacs, Yogesh Girdhar, Meyer Nahon and John-Paul Lobos. Enabling Autonomous Capabilities in Underwater Robotics. Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), pages 3628-3634. September 2008, Nice, France.
9. Junaed Sattar and Gregory Dudek. A Boosting Approach to Visual Servo-Control of an Underwater Robot. Proceedings of the International Symposium on Experimental Robotics (ISER), as Experimental Robotics -- The Eleventh International Symposium. Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics (STAR), Volume 54, pages 417-428. July 2008, Athens, Greece.
10. Anqi Xu, Gregory Dudek and Junaed Sattar. A Natural Gesture Interface for Operating Robotic Systems. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference of Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pages 3557-3563. May 2008, Pasadena, CA, USA.
11. Junaed Sattar and Gregory Dudek. Where is your dive buddy: Tracking scuba divers using spatio-temporal features. Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), pages 3654-3659. October-November 2007, San Diego, CA, USA.
12. Junaed Sattar, Eric Bourque, Philippe Giguere and Gregory Dudek. Fourier tags: Smoothly degradable fiducial markers for use in human-robot interaction. Proceedings of the Fourth Canadian Conference on Computer and Robot Vision (CRV), pages 165-174. May 2007, Montreal, QC, Canada.
13. Gregory Dudek, Junaed Sattar and Anqi Xu. A Visual Language for Robot Control and Programming: A Human-Interface Study. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference of Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pages 2507-2513. April 2007, Rome, Italy.
14. Gregory Dudek, Philippe Giguere and Junaed Sattar. Sensor-Based Behavior Control for an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle. Proceedings of the International Symposium on Experimental Robotics (ISER), as Experimental Robotics – The Tenth International Symposium. Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics (STAR), Volume 39, pages 267-276. July 2006, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil.
15. Junaed Sattar and Gregory Dudek. On the Performance of Color Tracking Algorithms for Underwater Robots under Varying Lighting and Visibility. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pages 3550-3555. May 2006, Orlando, FL, USA.
16. Junaed Sattar, Philippe Giguere, Gregory Dudek and Chris Prahacs. A Visual Servoing System for an Aquatic Swimming Robot. Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), pages 1483-1488. August 2005, Edmonton, AB, Canada.
17. Gregory Dudek, Michael Jenkin, Chris Prahacs, Andrew Hogue, Junaed Sattar, Philippe Giguere, Andrew German, Hongyu Liu, Shane Saunderson, Arlene Ripsman, Saul Simhon, Luz Abril Torres-Mendez, Evangelos Milios, Pifu Zhang, and Ioannis Rekletis. A Visually Guided Swimming Robot. Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), pages 3604-3609. August 2005, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

Posters

1. Junaed Sattar. Visual Servoing and Navigation for an Amphibious Legged Robot. Intelligent Systems 2006, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.
2. Junaed Sattar. A Visual Servoing System for an Aquatic Swimming Robot. Center for Intelligent Machines. CIM 20-year anniversary, May 2005, Montreal, Canada.
3. Junaed Sattar. Tracking Humans Underwater using Spatio-Temporal Features. Intelligent Systems 2008, Windsor, Ontario, Canada.

Thesis

1. Junaed Sattar. A Visual Servoing System for an Amphibious Legged Robot. Master's Thesis, McGill University. August 2005.
2. Junaed Sattar. Discovery of Patterns from Databases-- an Evaluation of Methods in Knowledge Discovery. Undergraduate Thesis, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology. August 2001.

Other Publications

1. Junaed Sattar and Gregory Dudek. Cooperative task execution through Human-robot Interaction for an Autonomous Underwater Robot. Workshop on Aquatic Robotics: Ocean Science and Marine Systems, Robotics: Science and Systems VII (RSS). June-July 2011, Los Angeles, CA, USA.

Work Experience

BRAC University, Dhaka, Bangladesh.	Lecturer	September 2001 to August 2003
Iponics Bangladesh Ltd., Dhaka, Bangladesh.	System Analyst and Instructor	March 2000 to August 2001

Teaching Experience

McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada.	Lecturer, School of Computer Science	Winter 2007 to Fall 2008
McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada.	Teaching Assistant, School of Computer Science	Fall 2005 to Winter 2009
BRAC University, Dhaka, Bangladesh.	Lecturer, Department of Computer Science and Engineering	Fall 2001 to Winter 2003

Freelance

Innovea Design Concepts SP Inc., Montreal, QC, Canada.	Robotics Systems Programmer	September 2006
Constance-Lethbridge Rehabilitation Center, Montreal, QC, Canada.	Programmer, Aphasia Reserch Project	October 2005 to April 2006
BRAC University, Dhaka, Bangladesh.	Programmer, Cisco CCNA program	August 2003
Liberation War Museum, Dhaka, Bangladesh.	Web Developer and Systems Programmer	August 1999 to January 2000

Participation

1. Represented McGill University as an Information Ambassador at the Experience Canada event during the G8/G20 summits, Toronto, ON, June 2010.
2. Participated in the field trials of the NSERC AQUA Project, held at the Bellairs Research Center of McGill University, Barbados; 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 (as Team Leader, approximately 15 participants) and 2010.
3. Participated in regional ACM programming contests and the first National Computer Programming Contest (NCPC) held in Dhaka, Bangladesh, August 1998.
4. Participated in the on-line Programming contest at the University of Valladolid site organized by the Association of Computing Machineries (ACM), 1998-1999.

Patents

• Gregory Dudek, Philippe Giguere, Chris Prahacs, Shane Saunderson, Junaed Sattar, Michael Jenkin. Amphibious robotic device. US Patent 7427220. Granted September 23, 2008.
• Gregory Dudek, Philippe Giguere, Chris Prahacs, Shane Saunderson, Junaed Sattar, Michael Jenkin. Amphibious robotic device (Dispotif Robotique Amphibie). Canadian Patent Application 2555148. Patent Pending.

Technical Skills (Software)

• Real-time and Robotic Software Systems: Real-time OS experience with QNX, including system installation and tuning on solid-state media (CompactFlash, Disk-on-Chip systems). Experience with the QNX Momentics Development Suite. RT Linux; RT Application Interface (RTAI) for Linux; Created a Linux-based quasi real-time operating environment for the Aqua amphibious robots, that serves as the operating environment for real-time machine vision algorithms. Called Vizix, this Linux image is highly optimized for the vision computing hardware on the Aqua platform.
• Programming: C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, Pascal, PHP, Python, Lisp, UNIX shell scripting, x86 Assembly, SQL, DVCS (Mercurial, git), VCS (CVS, SVN), and others.
• Development Tools and Environments: Eclipse IDE, GNU/Linux build tools (the autotools tool set, Emacs/Vim environments), KDevelop, CMake, Qt and GTK+ development toolkits, Microsoft Visual Studio and Visual Studio.net tool sets, Sun NetBeans, Borland C++ Builder, Delphi and JBuilder, MacroMedia Dreamweaver and FireWorks.
• Information Technology: Networking (UDP, TCP, ARP, DNS, Dynamic routing), Service (Apache, SQL, PMWiki, POP, IMAP, SMTP, application-specific daemon design).
• Parallel Programming: Message Passing Interface (MPI) version 1, OpenMP.
• Computer Applications: TEX (L TEX, BibTEX, PSTricks), most common productivity packages (for Windows, OS X, and Linux platforms), Vim, EMacs.
• Matlab experience: linear algebra, Fourier transforms, nonlinear numerical methods, polynomials, statistics, visualization.
• Matlab toolboxes: image processing, statistics, communications, control system.
• Embedded Systems: Software development in several platforms (PC104, Beagle Boards).
• Operating Systems: Linux (Flavors of Ubuntu, Gentoo, RedHat/Fedora, Debian, Slackware), UNIX (AIX, HP/UNIX and several other variants), Windows 98/2000/XP/Vista/7, QNX (Up to RTOS Version 6.4).

Technical Skills (Hardware)

• Robotic Hardware: Hardware, operations and programming experience with the Aqua amphibious robot platforms, versions 1 and 2. http://www.aquarobot.net.
• Hardware, operations and programming experience with Nomadics Nomad 200 and SuperScout series of differential drive robots.
• Operating Experience with Procerus Unicorn UAV test platform with the Procerus Kestrel autopilot module.
• Imaging Devices: Significant experience with FireWire IIDC (Instrumentation & Industrial Digital Camera) imaging devices, including hardware installation and writing software drivers under Linux.
• Embedded Systems: PC104/PC104-Plus systems programming, Operating system Design and installation, system integration. Experience with the Arduino family of micro- controllers and Zigbee (802.15) networking.
Localization Devices: Installation and low-level programming of various GPS devices, including but not limited to Garmin and Venus GPS receivers.

Media

1. NSERC Impact Story. "Swimming Robots? Six-legged Style".
2. Participation in the Discovery Channel show "Daily Planet", January 2008 Aqua robot field trip to Barbados. Aired February 7, 2008.
3. New Scientist Online, article on the flipper-tracking for Aqua robots.
4. Photo credits. Gregory Dudek and Michelle Theberge. Gone Swimmin'. IEEE Spectrum Magazine, July 2006.

Seminars

1. University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. Robobuddies Seminar. July 2009.
2. Center for Intelligent Machines. McGill University, Montreal, Canada. Perception Seminars, October 2007 and April 2009.
3. BRAC University, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Advancements in Underwater Robotics and the Aqua Project. November 2006.
4. Montreal-Toronto Computer Vision Workshop, Montreal, Canada. "A Visual Servoing System for an Aquatic Swimming Robot". September 2005.

Outreach

1. Coordinator for Lab Tours at the Mobile Robotics Lab, McGill University, for the "Explorations: A Panorama of Sciences" program. 2005-2009.
2. McGill School of Computer Science Summer Camp. Keynote presenter on Robotics. July 2006.
3. St-Georges High School, Montreal, Canada. Presentation on "Tele-presence across the ocean", a demonstration of the capabilities of the Aqua robot as a real-time research and educational platform, coordinated with simulcast of live sea trials in Barbados. January 2009.

References Available Upon Request