Robots could perform some of the “dull, dirty and dangerous” jobs associated with combating the COVID-19 pandemic, but that would require many new capabilities not currently being funded or developed, an editorial in the journal Science Robotics argues. The editorial, published today and signed by leading academic researchers including Carnegie Mellon University’s Howie Choset, said [...]
Artificial intelligence is the creation of human beings, including a number from Carnegie Mellon University. Now, AI is changing humans. It's a subject that Illah Nourbakhsh of the Robotics Institute and Jennifer Keating of the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Science explore in an interdisciplinary CMU course, "AI and Humanity." Nourbakhsh and Keating [...]
Our own Chris Atkeson sat down with the Wired crew for an in-depth discussion of robotics technologies in movies and television: I, Robot, Blade Runner, Terminator, Westworld (2016), Making Mr. Right, Austin Powers, Minority Report, Westworld (1973), Battlestar Galactica, Rising Sun, Bicentennial Man, Transformers, Black Mirror and Chernobyl. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aH480zit0Tg Wired Technique Critique : Season 1 [...]
Maneuvering wheeled robots up and down stairwells and flying drones slim enough to slip through narrow doorways and tough enough to survive collisions are among the new capabilities Team Explorer has added for the latest competition in the DARPA Subterranean Challenge. Explorer, which includes researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and Oregon State University, is one [...]
Ziko Kolter and Ioannis Gkioulekas Ziko Kolter, an associate professor in the Computer Science Department (CSD), and Ioannis Gkioulekas, an assistant professor in the Robotics Institute, are among 126 early career researchers to receive 2020 Sloan Research Fellowships. The prestigious fellowships honor outstanding scholars in the U.S. and Canada in eight scientific and [...]
Sharp-eyed attendees of the Threads of Truth fiber arts based exhibition in the Zhou B. Art Center might notice that Vivian Lin's new soft sculpture "Thy Eve" is made of samples and scraps from the research performed in the CMU Textiles Lab [autoknit, visualknit]. Vivian gathered these scraps during an informal residence at the textiles [...]
Carnegie Mellon, Oregon State Robotics Team Prepares for Subterranean Challenge PITTSBURGH—A pair of wheeled robots and a pair of drones, assembled by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Oregon State University, will work together to autonomously map and search an underground mine as competition begins this week in the $2 million DARPA Subterranean Challenge. The [...]
Recently published work, "Autonomous Aerial Cinematography In Unstructured Environments With Artistic Decision-Making", outlines a flying robotic system for filmmaking with creativity firmly in the driver's seat. From the paper: Aerial cinematography is revolutionizing industries that require live and dynamic camera viewpoints such as entertainment, sports, and security. However, safely piloting a drone while filming a [...]
Vidya Narayanan (CSD) and collaborator Kui Wu (University of Utah) will present the CMU Textiles Lab paper "Visual Knitting Machine Programming" at SIGGRAPH in Los Angeles. The paper will be part of the "Textiles and Fabrication" session on Tuesday July 30th from 2pm-3:30pm The paper demonstrates a new data structure, the augmented stitch mesh, and [...]
James McCann is running a SIGGRAPH Frontiers workshop titled "Textiles: Virtual to Actual" at SIGGRAPH in Los Angeles. The workshop will be from 9am to 5pm on Sunday, July 28th [https://s2019.siggraph.org/conference/programs-events/organization-events/frontiers-workshops/textiles-virtual-to-actual/?sess=sess301]. It features talks from folks in the textiles industry about what problems graphics may help them solve, and talks from folks in graphics who [...]