Summit Speaker

Joseph Auchter, a Lead Engineer in the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) Robotics Department, has more than 12 years of experience in R&D for autonomous ground vehicle (AGV) technology. He specializes in modeling & simulation (M&S) systems, tools, and techniques to support off-road AGV algorithm development and testing for a variety of clients in government and industry. Auchter's recent M&S research has focused on scene generation, sensor modeling, and model validation for applications in passive-sensing, GPS-denied AGV technologies and austere operating environments. Many of the tools his group has developed are built on Unreal Engine 5 (UE5) to take advantage of UE5's capabilities in photorealism, lighting, very large worlds, and camera optical effects. Current client-funded work supports simulation-based development and testing of full-stack autonomy in software-in-the-loop (SIL) and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) setups. Mr. Auchter is interested in using simulation to complement and augment real world testing, such as in environments and situations when real testing is not possible or practical.