Defense of the doctoral dissertation: Pēteris Račinskis

On 23rd of January, 2026, at 16.00 in person, at the University of Latvia (Raiņa bulvāris 19) Room 13, as well as remotely, the UL Promotional Council of Computer Science and Informatics, and Electrical Engineering, Electronics and Communication Technology will hold an open meeting, during which Pēteris Račinskis will defend his doctoral thesis (Ph.D) in natural sciences.

Topic: "Perception and control in autonomous robotics using vision-language embeddings".

Scientific supervisor: Dr. sc. comp. Modris Greitāns.

Abstract:

This doctoral thesis presents advancements in perception and control for autonomous robotics, integrating vision-language semantics to address challenges in unstructured environments. The research focuses on developing semantic Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) systems. Key contributions include the application of visual open-set semantics within large-scale LiDAR maps for terrain segmentation in autonomous robot navigation, and the integration of Large Language Model (LLM)-based high-level planning with these semantic maps in a tabletop object stacking scenario. The study aims to fuse various sensor data — LiDAR, depth camera, color images, and GNSS — into a unified, language-grounded environmental model, facilitating human-robot interaction through voice or text. Experimental results also validate novel data set collection methodologies, demonstrating that visual fiducial markers positioned using surveying tools can substitute for GNSS-INS-based ground truth position and orientation estimates in scenarios when these are unavailable or inadmissible. The results of this work have been published across three first-author articles in indexed journals, two international conferences and a project report technology description publication. This work introduces two publicly available resources — the EDI-SLAM dataset and the open-source SLAMVDB software package. Two demonstrators developed in this dissertation — a semantic perception system and static manipulation-focused robot control architecture — have been positively assessed by industry representatives.

Reviewers:

1) Dr. sc. comp. Inguna Skadiņa, University of Latvia;

2) Dr. Vytautas Bučinskas, Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, Lithuania;

3) Dr. Po Ting Lin, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taiwan.

The doctoral thesis is available at the University of Latvia Library, Raiņa bulvāris 19.

Participation in the remote session is subject to prior registration by writing to sintija.silina@lu.lv by 20th of January.