Erik Wilthil

Research scientist, maritime situational awareness

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Expert on target tracking, sensor fusion and situational awareness, with focus on maritime applications. With a PhD from the Department of Engineering Cybernetics at NTNU, I have a strong theoretical background combined with valuable practical experience from full-scale field work.


Work Experience

Also see the full project descriptions of my involved research projects.

Postdoctoral fellow

Norwegian University of Science and Technology | 2019 - Present
I work on sensors and situational awareness for a prototype of an autonomous urban passenger ferry. In urban environments, multiple sensors are needed to safely detect all objects within the vicinity of the ferry. Because of this, my current focus is on developing software for interfacing multiple sensors, and fuse them.

PhD Candidate

Norwegian University of Science and Technology | 2015 - 2019
My research focus was on target tracking for maritime collision avoidance, using a low-cost maritime radar. This was part of the Autosea research project, in collaboration with Maritime Robotics, Kongsberg Maritime and DNV GL. In addition to working on my PhD thesis, I was also a teaching assistant for three years.

Summer intern

Kongsberg Defence and Aerospace | 2013 - 2014
Employed in the GNC group of the LocalHawk summer project in both 2013 and 2014. Worked primarily with navigation system design, and developed a strapdown inertial navigation system.

Education

PhD, Engineering Cybernetics

Norwegian University of Science and Technology | 2015 - 2019
Thesis title: Maritime Target Tracking with Varying Sensor Performance

Msc, Engineering Cybernetics

Norwegian University of Science and Technology | 2010 - 2015
Thesis title: Singularity-free Navigation System for an Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

Selected publications

Also see the full list of publications.

Estimation of Target Detectability for Maritime Target Tracking in the PDA Framework

Conference | 2019
E. F. Wilthil, Y. Bar-Shalom, P. Willett and E. Brekke
22nd International Conference on Information Fusion (FUSION), Ottawa, 2019.

The Branching-Course MPC Algorithm for Maritime Collision Avoidance

Journal | 2019
B.-O. H. Eriksen, M. Breivik, E. F. Wilthil, A. L. Flåten and E. F. Brekke
Journal of Field Robotics, 2019; 36: 1222–1249.

Track Initiation for Maritime Radar Tracking with and without Prior Information

Conference | 2018
E. F. Wilthil, E. Brekke and O. B. Asplin
21st International Conference on Information Fusion (FUSION), Cambridge, 2018.

A Target Tracking System for ASV Collision Avoidance Based on the PDAF

Book chapter | 2017
E. F. Wilthil, A. L. Flåten and E. Brekke
Sensing and Control for Autonomous Vehicles, T. I. Fossen, K. Y. Pettersen and H. Nijmeijer, Eds., Springer, 2017, pp. 269–288.