Thomas Netter Ph.D., Aerospace and Robotics engineer

I have a strong interest in using vision to guide Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAV) or Micro Air Vehicles (MAV) (visuo-motor feedback control). For my PhD I have focused on insect vision as a source of inspiration to develop a low-cost and low-energy guidance system applicable to MAV's.

In relationship with aerial robotics I have experience in:

  • Aerodynamics
  • Flight control & real-time issues
  • Vision
  • Flight testing

I also have an interest in project management (quality, WBS, and risk assessment).

Education
Ph.D.(2000) Robotics and Vision, Univ. of Nice and CNRS, France
Designed, built, and tested a rotorcraft Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) featuring a motion detection electronic circuit inspired from biological vision systems. Real-time flight control using RT-Linux. Demonstrated visually-guided terrain following and obstacle avoidance.
M.S.(1995) Robotics and Computer Vision, Univ. of Nice, France
Internships at Alcatel Space (Toulouse) and at the Space Astronomy Laboratory (CNRS LAS in Marseilles).
B.Eng.(1990) Aerospace Systems Engineering, Southampton Uni. , UK
Project: Design and wind tunnel tests of a 3-seat car-plane.

Professional experience
Institute of Mechatronic Systems, University of Zürich Winterthur. (Feb.03 - Oct.03)
Developed signal processing and adaptive noise cancelling method for a wearable pulsed-light oximeter (blood oxygen saturation analyzer) developed by the institute. Special effort in adapting algorithm to low-power requirements. Used Matlab and dSPACE. Installed PHProjekt and Sourceforge project management software.
Bertin Technologies, Saint Quentin en Yvelines, France. (Oct.02 - Feb.03)
Miniature UAV project. Prepared budgets, planned development, wrote requirements. Prepared presentations and documents to obtain governmental funds. Coordinated meetings with business and academic partners. Reviewed patents, audited the project, fixed legal documents.
See a funny picture of me scanned from the magazine "Ça M'intéresse", May 2003.
Institute of Neuroinformatics, University of Zürich/ETH. (2001 - Apr.02)
Ada interactive exhibit for Swiss Expo.02. Worked on vision (visitor detection), image processing, graphics, scenography, construction, documentation.
Webmaster, Bluecoat Flight Management Systems Forum. (Since 1996)
Originator and administrator of a world reknown internet server on aircraft cockpits, Human Factors, Man-Machine Interface, procedures, pilot and ATC training. Over 1500 professional subscribers worldwide. Collaboration with US pilots and Eurocontrol. http://www.bluecoat.org
Space Astronomy Laboratory (LAS), CNRS, Marseilles. (Jul - Sep. 95)
Compression of three-dimensional data. Application to solar coronagraphy data sent from the LASCO instrument onboard the SOHO space observatory. http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov
Alcatel Space, Toulouse. (Feb - June 95)
Study of path planning using vision for a lunar rover (Marsokhod type of rover).
Linux CRS4 Research Center, Cagliari, Italy.(Feb - Aug. 94)
Linux-based low-price internet connection prototype for high-schools in Sardinia.
INRIA, RobotVis team, Sophia-Antipolis, France. (Jan - Oct. 93)
Computer Vision. Programmed feature tracking through an image sequence for robot guidance. Used correlation methods combined with Kalman filtering.
Weizmann Inst. of Science, Dept. Comp. Sci. & Appl. Math., Israel (90 - 92, & end 93)
Robotics and Psychophysics. Military service as scientific cooperant. Programmed Real-Time tracking of human arm movement and robotic interaction. Interfaced an OptoTrak 3D system with an Adept manipulator, a PC, the UNIX network, and a Symbolics LispMachine. System was used for human arm and visual perception research.
Aérospatiale (EADS), Space and Strategic Launchers Division (Summer 1989)
Hermes space shuttle onboard flight software group. Report on space-hardened microprocessors. Tested a CASE tool for Object-Oriented Programming in Ada.
Air France Industries, Orly. (Summer 1988)
Maintenance planning.

Publications
Signal processing in a low-power wearable oximeter, T.Netter, M.Stalder, and C.Brom , Proc. 17th EURASIP/IEEE EMBS Conf. BIOSIGNAL 2004, Brno, Czech Republic, June 23-25, 2004 (Accepted)
Neuromorphic motion detection for robotic flight guidance, T.Netter and N.Franceschini, Inst. of Neuromorphic Engineering The Neuromorphic Engineer, p.8, vol.1, no.1, Spring, 2004.
Download the full newsletter [3.7 Mb]
A robot that flies with a neuromorphic eye, T.Netter and N.Franceschini, SPIE Robotics and Machine Perception Newsletter, vol.12, no.2, September, 2003.
Download the full newsletter [1.2 Mb]
A robotic aircraft that follows terrain using a neuromorphic eye, T.Netter and N.Franceschini, Proc. 2002 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2002), Lausanne, 2002. [A4 paper version] [US letter version]
Ada: Constructing a Synthetic Organism, K.Eng, A.Bäbler, U.Bernardet, M.Blanchard, A.Briska, J.Conradt, M.Costa, T.Delbrück, R.Douglas, K.Hepp, D.Klein, J.Manzolli, M.Mintz, T.Netter, F.Roth, U.Rutishauser, K.Wassermann, A.Whatley, A.Wittmann, R.Wyss, and P.Verschure, Proc. 2002 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2002), Lausanne, 2002.
From natural vision to artificial vision: applying the visuo-motor control of the fly to pilot a reactive flying robot, T.Netter, Ph.D. Thesis, University of Nice - Sophia-Antipolis, 2000.
Towards UAV Nap-of-the-Earth flight using optical flow, T.Netter and N.Franceschini, ECAL 99, Lausanne, 1999.
Neuromorphic optical flow sensing for Nap-of-the-Earth flight, T.Netter and N.Franceschini, SPIE Photonics East, Boston, 1999.
Synthetic images of the solar corona from octree representation of 3-D electron distributions, D.Vibert, A.Llebaria, T.Netter, L.Balard, and P.Lamy., Proc. Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems VI, 1997.
IEEE Reviewer in the fields of:
  • Micro Air Vehicles (MAV)
  • Vision and visual guidance systems applied to Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAV)

Invited presentations
How MAVs can use insect vision to avoid obstacles
  • BGT Bodenseewerk Gerätetechnik GmbH, Überlingen, Germany, Nov. 18, 2003
  • DLR German Aerospace Center, Wessling, Germany, Nov. 7, 2003
  • European Micro Air Vehicle (MAV) meeting, Toulouse, France, October 1-3, 2003.
A flying robot that follows terrain
  • Carnegie Mellon University Field Robotics Center, Pittsburgh, PA, June 24, 2002.
  • Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, University of Zurich, Switzerland, April 23, 2002.
  • Athena Technologies/Aurora Flight Sciences, Manassas, VA, April 1, 2002.

Computer systems
Unix, Real-Time Linux, Internet administration, C, C++, Ada, Lisp, X Window, Tcl/Tk, Perl, GNU tools, Matlab, Simulink, dSPACE, Scilab, Maple, LaTeX, XFig, Gimp, Emacs, Applixware, OpenOffice, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, MS-Project, HTML, National Instruments acquisition cards, OptoTrak, microcontrollers (Parallax), computer vision libraries: OpenCV and VXL, graphics: Imlib2.
Nationalities EU and more...
Languages French and English
Other interests
Glider pilot
Jazz drums & piano