Summer did not arrive in Innsbruck yet, but our OeWF Spacesuit laboratory transformed into summer busyness already. Since several years summer time is also internship time at the Austrian Space Forum and we are happy to welcome our first intern in 2016: Vishnu from India.

Vishnu Teja Yalakuntla in Innsbruck

Name: Vishnu Teja Yalakuntla

University: Sardar Vallabhbhai National Institute of Technology, Surat, India.

Studying: Bachelor’s in Computer Engineering

How did you get involved with OeWF?
Though I am studying Computer Engineering, I am equally passionate about Physics and Astronomy. Being a research enthusiastic, I started contributing to an open source organisation, Italian Mars society, from where I came to know about Austrian Space Forum. I was looking forward to involve in a research project for the summer and I am really happy to be here with Austrian Space Forum.

Getting involved with Italian Mars Society:
Initially, when I was in my 2nd year of my Bachelor’s, I used to be contributing some open source organisations which are mainly based on development. After spending enough time on development, having a good background Mathematics, I started exploring the major research areas in Computer Engineering where I came across Machine Learning. After I am done with courses on ML, I wanted to contribute any open source organisation when I came Italian Mars Society. Antonio Del Mestro kept on helping me with whatever help I needed and that drove me here :)

What will you be working on?
The work is mainly on predicting the traversability based on the terrain and detecting the objects or the regions that are already seen by a rover or an astronaut in the spacesuit. The project proves to be helpful to keep track of different kind of objects that a rover or an astronaut has already seen and to classify different types of Terrains. It would also help in showing an exact path that would be safest to traverse for an astronaut or a rover.

Highlight of living in Innsbruck:
This is my first visit to Europe and I am really lucky to start to enter it through Innsbruck. I felt a lot connected with the nature seeing all the mountains covered with snow, greenery, beautiful lakes, clean and pure rivers flowing all over the city, nice and helping people. It’s a small, peaceful and beautiful city to live in. The best thing here is you don’t need to carry your water bottle all the way you go but water here in Innsbruck is drinkable everywhere and it’s free ;)

Screenshots of my initial work:

In the project, Visual odometry is the first part that should be running and below are the visuals of initial work.

Visual odometry screenshot example

We are glad that Vishnu is working with us this summer & we wish him a great time!