Kristen Ravenel

Kristen is the COO of Ubicept, an MIT spin-out bringing single photon and quantum perception from research to commercialization. She is a former System Design and Management Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has previously led teams in digital engineering and systems architecture in defense and mobility domains. She has earned degrees in Engineering and Management from MIT and Mechanical Engineering and Systems Engineering from Cornell University. In 2020, she was MIT SDM Award for Leadership, Innovation, and Systems Thinking, the highest level of recognition awarded by MIT System Design and Management.

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Presentation

Reliable optical perception in harsh environments

Industrial cameras often blur in challenging lightning environments when under motion, translating to poor visual data for computer vision algorithms. This poses an issue for industrial vehicles as they transition to autonomous operation, as most industrial applications involve some combination of motion with uncontrolled lighting, high vibration, shadowing, low light, or solar glare. Despite the advances in LiDAR to offset these shortcomings, visual imaging remains desirable for scenarios such as characterization and differentiation of objects of interest. This talk discusses new perception systems for real-time, fast-motion, color optical imagery under the harshest environmental challenges: single photon perception.