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About

Dominic Baril is a robotics researcher specializing in autonomous navigation, simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), and field robotics, with a particular focus on challenging, GPS-denied environments. His work addresses some of the most demanding scenarios in mobile robotics, from subterranean exploration to subarctic forest navigation. Baril gained significant recognition through his contributions to the DARPA Subterranean Challenge as part of the CTU-CRAS-NORLAB team, a landmark effort to advance search-and-rescue robotics in underground settings that has garnered 35 citations. His research on kilometer-scale autonomous winter navigation in forests (24 citations) tackles real-world obstacles such as low feature contrast, unreliable satellite signals, and dynamic environments — conditions that push autonomous systems to their limits. Beyond multi-robot systems, Baril has made meaningful technical contributions to sensor robustness and motion modeling. His work on gyroscope saturation-aware angular velocity estimation strengthens SLAM performance during aggressive robot motions, while his DRIVE framework introduces a principled protocol for gathering empirical data to train more accurate motion models, addressing terrain-induced slip and command uncertainty in off-road settings. Together, these contributions reflect a researcher committed to making autonomous robots reliably deployable in the world's most unforgiving environments.