About Me
I'm a Computer Science student at California State University, Bakersfield, graduating in 2027 with a focus on robotics and autonomous systems. My research interests lie in robotics perception, computer vision, and autonomous vehicles.
Currently, I'm gaining hands-on experience with autonomous racing through the F1TENTH platform and developing expertise in 3D scanning and sensor fusion technologies. I'm particularly interested in how perception systems enable robots to understand and navigate complex environments.
Research Interests
My research focuses on advancing robotics perception systems to enable more robust and reliable autonomous operation in real-world environments. I'm particularly interested in:
- 3D Perception & Reconstruction: Leveraging depth sensors and multi-view geometry for accurate environmental mapping
- Autonomous Navigation: Developing perception pipelines for self-driving vehicles and mobile robots
- Sensor Fusion: Combining LiDAR, cameras, and IMU data for robust state estimation
- Computer Vision: Object detection, tracking, and scene understanding for robotic applications
Projects
F1TENTH Autonomous Racing
Developing perception and control systems for a 1/10th scale autonomous racing platform. Implementing LiDAR-based SLAM, trajectory planning, and real-time obstacle avoidance.
Dental Pathology Segmentation
Trained a self-configuring 9-stage U-Net (nnU-Net) on the DENTEX MICCAI 2023 dataset to perform pixel-wise segmentation of dental pathologies on panoramic X-rays. Built a custom COCO-to-NIfTI conversion pipeline and trained on an NVIDIA H100 via Vast.ai, achieving Dice scores of 0.77 on impacted teeth and 0.53 on periapical lesions across 4 pathology classes.
GitHubDental Scribe AI
AWS-based serverless application using Claude AI to convert dental appointment audio into structured treatment notes. Implements speech recognition and natural language processing. This application is currently being used by a local orthodontic clinic reducing documentation time for assistants.
Contact
Feel free to reach out if you'd like to discuss robotics, research opportunities, or collaboration.
Email: dvillanueva8@csub.edu
Location: Bakersfield, California