Artur Dubrawski, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science, has received a Fulbright Specialist Program award to complete a project with the Łukasiewicz Research Network at the Poznań Institute of Technology in Poland. The project aims to exchange knowledge and establish partnerships benefiting participants, institutions and communities both in the U.S. and [...]
Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science will contribute fundamental and cutting-edge research to a government-led push to bring about life-changing advances through artificial intelligence. The U.S. National Science Foundation today announced a $220 million investment in 11 new Artificial Intelligence Research Institutes. School of Computer Science (SCS) researchers will participate in two of the [...]
Qualcomm has accepted Gengshan Yang and N Dinesh Reddy into its current class of Innovation Fellows for the pair's work on creating computer-generated 3D models of traffic, people, animals and their interactions in cities. They join 15 other projects selected from the hundreds that applied, and will receive $100,000 in funding and mentoring from top Qualcomm engineers. [...]
A CMU team developed a algorithm that could help an autonomous vehicle safely and efficiently navigate narrow, crowded streets like this one. It is a scenario familiar to anyone who has driven down a crowded, narrow street. Parked cars line both sides, and there isn’t enough space for vehicles traveling in both directions [...]
MoonRanger, a suitcase-sized rover developed by CMU and its spinoff Astrobotic in collaboration with NASA's Ames Research Center, passed NASA's key decision point review and is in the final stages of preparation for a 2023 mission. Joint Project Between CMU, Astrobotic, NASA Ames Research Center Eyes 2023 Launch MoonRanger, an autonomous rover headed [...]
CMU researchers are working with Apple to develop new ways to disassemble old technology, building on Apple's existing recycling innovations like recycling robots Daisy and Dave. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University are working with Apple to develop new ways to disassemble old technology. This work builds on Apple's existing recycling innovations, including its [...]
Wheels tested at CMU are driven on red planet By Jason Maderer Email Wearing 3D glasses and sitting at the flight operations console in Pasadena, California, Carnegie Mellon University graduate Vandi Verma (pictured at right) studies the contours and rocks that litter a barren landscape no human has ever visited. With a series of keystrokes and careful [...]
Robots That Readily Expand or Shrink Would Be Possible Carnegie Mellon University researchers have found a way to design telescoping structures that can bend and twist, enabling robots of various shapes to collapse themselves for transport or entering tiny spaces, and making possible robotic arms and claws that can reach over or around large obstacles. [...]
Professor Jessica Hodgins has earned the 2017 Steven Anson Coons Award for Outstanding Creative Contributions to Computer Graphics from the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques. The Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques (ACM SIGGRAPH) has named Jessica Hodgins, [...]
Real-Time Detector Sees Hand Poses and Tracks Multiple People PITTSBURGH—Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute have enabled a computer to understand the body poses and movements of multiple people from video in real time — including, for the first time, the pose of each individual’s fingers. This new method was developed with the help [...]
CMU's Interactive Tool Helps Novices and Experts Make Custom Robots PITTSBURGH – A new interactive design tool developed by Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute enables both novices and experts to build customized legged or wheeled robots using 3D-printed components and off-the-shelf actuators. Using a familiar drag-and-drop interface, individuals can choose from a library of components [...]
RoboTutor, educational technology developed at Carnegie Mellon University that teaches children basic math and reading skills, has been named a semifinalist in the $15 million Global Learning XPRIZE competition. An estimated 250 million children around the world cannot read, write or do fundamental arithmetic, and many of these children are in developing countries without regular [...]
Smell PGH App Helps Pittsburghers Report Foul Odors PITTSBURGH—Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s CREATE Lab are rolling out new features in Smell PGH, a smartphone app that helps Pittsburgh area residents collectively report foul odors and alert each other to suspicious smells that waft through city neighborhoods and suburbs. Smell PGH now includes time-lapse animations [...]
A Robotics Institute student is one of two School of Computer Science students named recipients of 2017 NVIDIA Graduate Fellowships. The company sponsors the annual program to recognize and support excellence in computing research using graphics processing units. Ph.D. student Xiaolong Wang was among the 11 fellows in the 2017 class, along with Adams Wei [...]
Now On Display at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry Daisy, a six-legged robot built by a Robotics Institute spinoff company, is one of several new robots featured in “Robot Revolution,” an exhibit at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry that runs through Feb. 4, 2018. Daisy is a hexapod robot that moves with a [...]
NASA Funding Could Establish New Paradigm For Extraterrestial Robots NASA has selected lunar logistics company Astrobotic Technology, in partnership with Carnegie Mellon University, to develop a new class of small, lightweight rovers, called CubeRovers, capable of small-scale science and exploration on extraterrestrial surfaces. The CubeRover, weighing no more than 4.4 pounds, would establish a new [...]
One of Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Professor Howie Choset's famous snake-like robots crawled up the even more famous leg of comedian Jimmy Fallon during an April 25 appearance on NBC’s "The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon." "Slow down there, mister!" Fallon exclaimed as the robot reached his knee, much to the delight of the studio [...]
The Girls of Steel robotics team and the team’s lead mentor, George Kantor, both won awards at the Greater Pittsburgh Regional FIRST Competition, March 15-18. The team, which includes 50 girls from 20 Pittsburgh area high schools and is sponsored by the Field Robotics Center, won the Engineering Inspiration Award, qualifying the team for its [...]
A School of Computer Science alumnus, Kiran Bhat, and a former Robotics Institute faculty member, Iain Matthews, are among the 18 winners of this year’s Scientific & Technical Achievements Awards, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science. Both were recognized for their work in capturing facial performances. The technical awards were presented [...]
Harry Shum, executive vice president of Microsoft’s Artificial Intelligence and Research group, has been elected as a foreign member of the prestigious National Academy of Engineering (NAE). Shum, who was born in China, earned a Ph.D. in robotics at Carnegie Mellon in 1996. Sridhar Tayur, a professor in the Tepper School of Business who specializes [...]
Takeo Kanade, Carnegie Mellon University's U. A. and Helen Whitaker Professor of Robotics and Computer Science, has been named the 2017 recipient of the IEEE Founder's Medal — one of IEEE's highest honors. The medal, which will be presented at the annual IEEE Honors Ceremony on Thursday, May 25, in San Francisco, recognizes Kanade "for [...]
Carnegie Mellon researchers in Qatar and Pittsburgh have joined forces to explore the behavior of successful negotiators. The study uses the Robotics Institute's Panoptic Studio, a two-story geodesic dome that is fitted with 480 synchronized video cameras to capture fine details in human interaction. John O’Brien, associate dean and associate professor of accounting at CMU-Q, [...]
Babies learn about their world by pushing and poking objects, putting them in their mouths and throwing them. Carnegie Mellon University scientists are taking a similar approach to teach robots how to recognize and grasp objects around them. Manipulation remains a major challenge for robots and has become a bottleneck for many applications. But researchers [...]
An independent institute founded by Carnegie Mellon University will receive more than $250 million to launch an advanced robotics manufacturing institute in Pittsburgh, the U.S. Department of Defense announced Jan. 13. The Department of Defense awarded the public-private Manufacturing USA institute to American Robot, a nonprofit venture led by Carnegie Mellon, with more than 220 [...]
Howie Choset, professor of robotics, and Manuela Veloso, head of the Machine Learning Department, are two of eight founding editorial board members of Science Robotics, the latest member of the Science family of journals. The journal’s inaugural issue, published on Dec. 6, included a review article on bio-inspired robots written by Matt Travers, systems scientist [...]
Facebook has agreed to acquire Faciometrics, a spinoff from Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute that develops facial analysis software for mobile applications. “Now, we’re taking a big step forward by joining the team at Facebook, where we’ll be able to advance our work at an incredible scale, reaching people from across the globe,” said Fernando [...]
Takeo Kanade, the U.A. and Helen Whitaker University Professor of Robotics and Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, received the prestigious 2016 Kyoto Prize for Advanced Technology, Nov. 10 in a ceremony in Kyoto, Japan. The international award is presented by the Inamori Foundation to individuals such as Kanade who have contributed significantly to the [...]
Employment by Pittsburgh-area robotics firms has jumped from 700 to 2,200 people in the five years since President Barack Obama announced the National Robotics Initiative (NRI) at the National Robotics Engineering Center, U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle said. Doyle spoke at RoboPGH Day, an Oct. 12 event hosted by NREC spinoff Carnegie Robotics in Lawrenceville and [...]
When CBS's "60 Minutes" decided to do a two-part report on the state of artificial intelligence, they came to Pittsburgh to see the state of the art and talk with SCS Dean Andrew Moore about where AI is taking humankind. That report, by correspondent Charlie Rose, aired on Oct. 9. In addition to Rose's interview [...]
More than a decade ago, Ralph Hollis invented the ballbot, an elegantly simple robot whose tall, thin body glides atop a sphere slightly smaller than a bowling ball. The latest version, called SIMbot, has an equally elegant motor with just one moving part: the ball. The only other active moving part of the robot is [...]
A program to empower students with technology by leveraging Carnegie Mellon University’s robotics and computer science talent with education expertise at partner universities is expanding beyond the Western Pennsylvania/West Virginia region to include satellite labs in Georgia and Utah. With support from a $250,000 grant from the Infosys Foundation USA, CMU’s Community Robotics, Education and [...]
A new computational design tool can turn a flat sheet of plastic or metal into a complex 3-D shape, such as a mask, a sculpture or even a lady’s high-heel shoe. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland (EPFL), say the tool enables designers to fully and [...]
Before a robot arm can reach into a tight space or pick up a delicate object, the robot needs to know precisely where its hand is. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute have shown that a camera attached to the robot’s hand can rapidly create a 3-D model of its environment and also locate [...]
A new feature for the SpeckSensor app enables users to see the number of “dirty days” when air quality has been unhealthy in a locale over the past year and to compare that number with other cities across the nation. The app, developed by the CREATE Lab of Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute and Airviz [...]
The future success of today’s students hinges more than ever on their ability to think critically, and creatively manipulate technology, media and data. Helping them achieve this level of fluency is the goal of a new project led by Carnegie Mellon University and sponsored by The Heinz Endowments. "Our vision is that students will be [...]
Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World, Werner Herzog’s new documentary featuring several Carnegie Mellon researchers and projects, will be screened by Pittsburgh Filmmakers at the Regent Square Theater at 7:30 p.m. July 29. Three of the researchers in the film – NREC’s Mike Vande Weghe, ECE’s Raj Rajkumar, and Psychology’s Marcel Just – [...]
The Inamori Foundation has named Takeo Kanade, the U.A. and Helen Whitaker University Professor of Robotics and Computer Science, as the winner of the prestigious 2016 Kyoto Prize for Advanced Technology, citing his pioneering contributions to computer vision and robotics. The international award is presented to individuals who have contributed significantly to the scientific, cultural [...]
Could a tail have allowed ancient vertebrates to make the transition from water to land? Researchers from Georgia Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University, Clemson University and the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis report in the journal Science this week on the results of a groundbreaking study to answer this question using amphibious [...]
The development of an electronic Braille writing tutor at a school for the blind in India has been a labor of love over the past decade for M. Bernardine Dias and her Carnegie Mellon University colleagues, students and staff. And for the past year, it has provided a research window into the role love plays [...]
The Girls of Steel team sponsored by the Field Robotics Center hosted more than 70 middle school girls on campus for the “Aspiring Young Women in Robotics and STEM” symposium, which included a speaker series, workshops, robot demonstrations, and a tour May 22. Participants hailed from 33 different schools from districts in Allegheny, Beaver, Washington, [...]
Clutter is a special challenge for robots, but new Carnegie Mellon University software is helping robots cope, whether they’re beating a path across the Moon or grabbing a milk jug from the back of the refrigerator. The software not only helped a robot deal efficiently with clutter, it surprisingly revealed the robot’s creativity in solving [...]
The RoboTutor project, which is developing educational software for teaching basic literacy and numeracy to children with little access to teachers, has received a ProSEED grant from Carnegie Mellon's Simon Initiative. Jack Mostow, emeritus research professor in the Robotics Institute, and Amy Ogan and John Stamper, both assistant professors in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute, are [...]
A team of Daniel Maturana and Sankalp Arora, both Ph.D. students in the Robotics Institute, was one of just eight nationwide to win a 2016 Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship. Each winning team receives $100,000 and will be mentored by Qualcomm engineers. The research proposal by Arora and Maturana, “Semantic Exploration Through UAVs,” was selected from among [...]
Navy tests sub-hunting drone ship.The U.S. Navy is developing an unmanned drone ship to track enemy submarines. The vessel is scheduled to be christened in April 2016. Source: CNN
The Robotics Institute’s Red Whittaker and the Andy lunar rover were on hand when Google, in partnership with Bad Robot and Epic Digital, premiered the new documentary series, Moon Shot at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, March 14. The series, including episode one featuring Red and Team Astrobotic, is available online for free. The [...]
The CMU Highly Intelligent Mobile Platform, better known as CHIMP, will make a rare appearance outside of the National Robotics Engineering Center at Thursday's Project Olympus Show & Tell.The event will be from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Thursday in McConomy Auditorium and is supported by K&L Gates. A networking reception will follow. The semi-humanoid CHIMP [...]
Carnegie Mellon University's National Robotics Engineering Center is inviting industry engineering, operations and research leaders to tour its Lawrenceville facility and learn more about how its cutting-edge technology can address their companies' needs. NREC Industry Day will be from 1 to 5 p.m. April 9. One-hour tours will include demonstrations of the latest robotics technology [...]
A team from CMU's National Robotics Engineering Center has been named one of four semi-finalists and awarded $10,000 in the Naturipe Blue Challenge, a contest to develop innovative technologies for harvesting blueberries. Dimi Apostolopoulos, senior systems scientist, is principal investigator and Gabriel Goldman, senior robotics engineer, was instrumental in developing the technical concept for the [...]
The Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Environmental Management has selected Carnegie Mellon University to provide specialized training for graduate students in robotics to support environmental remediation of nuclear sites. Deputy DOE Secretary Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall announced the selection during an appearance at Carnegie Mellon today (March 16). The five-year agreement for the Robotics Traineeship program [...]
Pavement riddled with cracks, graffiti on stop signs, icy surfaces that need rock salt: Municipalities must respond to road infrastructure problems that are changing constantly. Christoph Mertz, Robotics Institute principal project scientist, is researching how a smartphone could be a solution for all these issues, and more. "It is essential to get eyes on every [...]
Learning about the quality of the air you breathe should be as easy and inexpensive as borrowing a book from a library, and that’s why Carnegie Mellon University researchers plan to provide free Speck air quality monitors to 100 public libraries nationwide. The Speck sensors, which detect particulate air pollution in the home, already have [...]
Carnegie Mellon University's National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC) has been selected as a prime contractor or subcontractor on four major new federal research projects totaling more than $11 million over the next three years. The projects range from research on a wheel that can transform into a track to automated stress testing for critical software. [...]
As part of a Rising Cities report on Pittsburgh, Katie Couric's crew visited the Personal Robotics Lab to learn about HERB, the home exploring robot butler. Watch the online video. Watch the entire report on Pittsburgh's revitalization, including the observations of the Robotics Institute's Red Whittaker and the National Robotics Engineering Center's Jeff Legault, here. [...]
Abhinav Gupta, an assistant professor of robotics who specializes in computer vision and large-scale visual learning, is among 126 outstanding U.S. and Canadian researchers chosen as recipients of the 2016 Sloan Research Fellowships. A second Carnegie Mellon faculty member, Wesley Pegden, assistant professor of mathematical sciences, also was so honored. Awarded annually since 1955, the [...]
Carnegie Mellon's Tartan Rescue Team and its CHIMP robot are featured in "Rise of the Robots," the Feb. 24 episode of PBS's NOVA. The episode of the long-running science series looks at the current state of robots with human-like capabilities and considers the enormous challenges that remain before humanoid robots and semi-humanoids such as CHIMP [...]
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and Sikorsky, A Lockheed Martin Company, using a UH-60MU Black Hawk helicopter enabled with Sikorsky's MATRIX™ Technology and CMU's Land Tamer® autonomous Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV), recently participated in a joint autonomy demonstration that proved the capability of new, ground-air cooperative missions. Such missions could prevent warfighters' exposure to hazardous conditions, [...]
A six-legged walking robot built at Carnegie Mellon University in the early 1980s under the leadership of noted alumnus Ivan Sutherland is the subject of an exhibit opening Jan. 15 at the university's Posner Center. The exhibit, "Ivan Sutherland's Trojan Cockroach," was developed by Daniel Pillis, a master's degree student in the College of Arts, [...]
Carnegie Mellon University’s Human Sensing Laboratory will celebrate the new year by making available to fellow researchers its advanced software for tracking facial features and recognizing emotions, filling a gap that has slowed development for real-time facial image analysis applications. Automated facial analysis is at the heart of a host of potential applications, from monitoring [...]
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University are building a computer system called Gabriel that, like the angel that is its namesake, will seemingly look over a person’s shoulder and whisper instructions for tasks as varied as repairing industrial equipment, resuscitating a patient or assembling IKEA furniture.
Scientists from IBM Research and Carnegie Mellon University have announced the first open source platform designed to support the creation of smartphone apps that enable the blind to better navigate their surroundings. The IBM and CMU researchers used the platform to create a pilot app, called NavCog, that draws on existing sensors and cognitive technologies [...]
Optical sensors may be uniquely suited for use in robotic hands, according to Carnegie Mellon University researchers who have developed a three-fingered soft robotic hand with multiple embedded fiber optic sensors. They also have created a new type of stretchable optical sensor. By using fiber optics, the researchers were able to embed 14 strain sensors [...]
Carnegie Mellon University’s TechBridgeWorld research group today announced the release of open source software that can help educators of children with hearing disabilities create video dictionaries of sign languages and use games that encourage vocalization by children learning to speak. The software, produced in collaboration with the Mathru Educational Trust for the Blind in Bangalore, [...]
Carnegie Mellon University’s robot soccer team took home its fifth world championship without allowing a single goal at the 2015 RoboCup on July 22 in Heifi, China. The CMDragons won the final round of the Small Size League (SSL) 5-0 over MRL, a team from Qazvin Islamic Azad University in Iran. “An accomplishment of this [...]
Carnegie Mellon University's latest robot is called Snake Monster, however, with six legs, it looks more like an insect than a snake. But it really doesn't matter what you call it, says its inventor, Howie Choset— the whole point of the project is to make modular robots that can easily be reconfigured to meet a [...]
Like many husbands, Henry Kang often found himself pressed into service as his wife's fashion adviser. "What can I wear with this?" his wife, Shawna, would ask each morning. Though his Ph.D. training in the School of Computer Science left him perhaps better prepared to provide coding advice, he nevertheless managed to help her. Then [...]
AquaLux 3D, a new projection technology developed at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute, can target light onto and between individual water droplets, enabling text, video and other moving or still images to be displayed on multiple layers of falling water.
The Associated Press has posted a YouTube video regarding the Google Lunar X Prize and the efforts of William "Red" Whittaker, professor of robotics, and Astrobotic Technology Inc. to win the $20 million race to the moon. You can view the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnTN3DYJeiw
