Team Chiron, a collaboration between researchers from CMU and the University of Pittsburgh, will compete in the second round of DARPA's Triage Challenge. Team Chiron, a collaboration between researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh, will compete in the second round of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) Triage Challenge. [...]

On Wednesday, Sept. 18, Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai traveled to Carnegie Mellon University to tour research labs, talk with faculty and students about emerging technologies and officially kick off the first President’s Lecture Series event of the new academic year. Pichai’s whirlwind visit concluded in the newly constructed Highmark Center for Health and Wellness, [...]

Robotics Institute Raj Reddy Assistant Professor Deepak Pathak was named to MIT Technology Review’s list of 35 Innovators Under 35 for his work in self-supervised and adaptive robot learning. MIT’s list highlights emerging leaders who are using technology to tackle crucial problems we face as a society and exploring open scientific questions. Pathak works in [...]

Neural Motion Planning helps improve how robots react in new environments and perform tasks like removing a book from a shelf cluttered with other items. Humans can grab a book from a shelf with little obvious thought. But it's a complex process for the brain that involves planning and navigating around obstacles, like [...]

Twenty high school students gathered in huddles across a classroom, each hunched over a computer or fiddling with a small tri-legged robot. In one corner, students attempted to make the robot walk forward, laughing as it fell down after the first few steps. The students were eagerly preparing for the Feiyue Robotics Program showcase, held [...]

Motor impairments currently affect about 5 million people in the United States. Physically assistive robots not only have the potential to help these individuals with daily tasks, they can significantly increase independence, well-being, and quality of life.  Large Language Models (LLMs) that can both comprehend and generate human language and code have been crucial to [...]

For a few hours on a Friday afternoon, a shrine stood in a lab at the end of a first-floor corridor in Wean Hall. Inside a nearly 9-foot tent, people solved four different puzzles to reveal words that they presented as offerings to automation and craft. One of those puzzles — and arguably the most [...]

The robot arm autonomously identifies an optimal stalk and follows a motion sequence to position the stalk inside the gripper. Corn is one of the most essential ingredients in global industry and agriculture. From tortillas, to ethanol, to starch, to alcohol, the plant remains a pillar in several production processes. Measuring the vitality [...]

Every second matters to emergency medical teams as they approach a mass casualty event and identify who needs immediate treatment. Breakthroughs in medical triage using robotics, artificial intelligence, drones and advanced sensing could save lives by directing medical personnel to people most in need of treatment. Team Chiron, made up of researchers from Carnegie Mellon [...]

From the hallways of hospitals to the farthest reaches of outer space, robots are transforming the way we interact with our world. In her new book “Robots,” Henny Admoni, associate professor at the Robotics Institute, takes young readers on a literary journey through the multiple ways robots can assist humans and shape our future.  Neon [...]

Yuichi Hirose has a dream — a dream that someday everyone will have access to a machine capable of knitting furniture. This machine wouldn't just knit the furniture's exterior fabric, but would use knitting to fashion solid three-dimensional chairs, tables and other objects. Tired of that love seat? Just unravel it and reuse the yarn [...]

Robotics Institute researchers have developed a new method for autonomous aerial robot exploration and multirobot coordination inside abandoned buildings that could help first responders gather information and make better-informed decisions after a disaster. An estimated 100 earthquakes worldwide cause damage each year. This damage includes collapsed buildings, downed electrical lines and more. For first responders, [...]

Carnegie Mellon systems scientist Ji Zhang has received the prestigious Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS) 2024 Test of Time Award for his work on LOAM: Lidar Odometry and Mapping in Real-Time. RSS introduced the Test of Time Award to acknowledge papers published at least ten years ago that had the greatest impact on robotics design [...]

Computer science PhD student Bailey Miller and co-authors Hanyu Chen, Alice Lai, and Ioannis Gkioulekas have received an honorable mention for best student paper at the 2024 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, held in Seattle, Washington. Their paper, titled, “Objects as volumes: A stochastic geometry view of opaque solids,” develops a theory [...]

A research group at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute will soon host the CMU Vision-Language-Autonomy Challenge, bringing researchers together at the intersection of computer vision, natural language understanding, and navigation autonomy. The challenge aims to progress computer vision and AI-research in real-world systems. The team has created an award-winning navigation autonomy system over the last [...]

It's spring on the Carnegie Mellon University campus, and students divided into teams focused on communications, guidance navigation and control (GNC), and vision have their heads together trying to simulate how a satellite collects and transmits usable images. Across the room, their peers on the avionics team have laid out rows of circuit boards and [...]

SCS Founders University Professor Takeo Kanade will receive the BBVA (Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria) Foundation's Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Information and Communication Technologies for developing the mathematical foundations for computer vision and robot perception. Learn more and watch the livestream of the presentation ceremony from Bilbao, Spain via the BBVA Foundation's website on Thursday, [...]

Researchers at the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute have introduced a learning-based control framework called Agile But Safe (ABS). The framework– developed and programmed by Tairan He, Chong Zhang, Wenli Xiao, Guanqi He, Changliu Liu, Guanya Shi– enables quadrupedal robots to move in a collision-free manner in confined indoor and outdoor environments. When programmed with ABS, [...]

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute (RI) have developed a robotic system that interactively co-paints with people. Collaborative FRIDA (CoFRIDA) can work with users of any artistic ability, inviting collaboration to create art in the real world. "It's like the drawing equivalent of a writing prompt," said Jim McCann, an associate RI professor who [...]

Carnegie Mellon University researchers from its Robotics Institute (RI) and College of Engineering are packing up fossil-inspired paleobionics, robotic hands and autonomous aerial vehicles to demonstrate to members of Congress and their staff at “Robotics for a Better Tomorrow: Robotics Showcase and Demo Day,” in Washington, D.C. on April 30. Over 30 researchers from federal agencies, industry [...]

The brown haze that settled over Pittsburgh and other U.S. cities last summer was merely an irritant to most residents, but for researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute (RI), it was a reminder of why they are developing drones to help fight wildfires. The smoke was generated by record-breaking wildfires in Canada. Over the [...]

Kshitij Goel, a Ph.D. student in the Robotics Institute, was awarded the 2024 Alan J. Perlis Graduate Teaching Award by Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science (SCS) for outstanding work in redesigning and teaching Mobile Robot Algorithms Laboratory (MRAL), general excellence in teaching and student interaction, and dedication towards improving all courses in which [...]

David Held, an associate professor in Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute, is one of two CMU faculty members selected to lead teams receiving Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) funding from the Department of Defense (DoD). Created in 1985, the highly competitive MURI program provides important funding to teams pursuing basic research spanning multiple scientific disciplines with the goal of [...]

Carnegie Mellon University researchers teamed up with scientists at NASA to develop a robot capable of searching underwater oceans on distant planets for signs of life. NASA's Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor (EELS) is a self-propelled, autonomous, snake-like robot inspired by a desire to one day look for signs of life in the vast ocean beneath [...]

The CMU team is monitoring four small satellites as they communicate with each other, determining where they are relative to one another and autonomously maneuvering to stay within communication range. The satellites have no propulsion systems but can change their orbital positions by adjusting their orientation in flight to increase or decrease drag. These maneuvers [...]

Researchers in Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute are developing a modular robot that can creep inside natural gas pipelines to map where pipes are, detect decrepit or leaking pipes, and, when necessary, repair the pipe by applying a resin coating along its inner wall. "We don't even know where all the old pipes are," said [...]

Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida A bright dome of light pierced the night. As the light grew brighter and larger, it rose into the sky, taking the shape of a rocket dashing into space, a trail of exhaust left to mark its path. "Liftoff," shouted Zach Muraskin, a senior studying physics at Carnegie Mellon [...]

Congratulations to Changliu Liu for receiving the 2023 ARM Champion Award! The ARM Champion Award Program is an effort to recognize members of the Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing Institute who go above and beyond. Changliu has made a substantial impact to ARM through her work in robot safety. The ultimate goal of my research is [...]

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 [...]

Can AI match humans for artistic creativity? Rad Yeo explores the 'creep' of generative AI, from performing a ChatGPT written comedy routine to portrait painting robots. If it can, what does it mean for humanity? That is the question posed in the new documentary from ABC Australia featuring the work of Peter Schaldenbrand, Jim McCann [...]

Akhil Padmanabha knows about itching. His chronic itching caused by severe eczema was so debilitating that he was hospitalized twice and had to be home-schooled during most of his high school years. Itch so impacted his life that, as an undergraduate, he contemplated becoming a psychologist so he could help chronically ill teens facing similar [...]

Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science (SCS) has launched a new undergraduate degree to educate and train the next generation of roboticists needed for the growing field. The Bachelor of Science in Robotics will fuse the school's rigorous computer science curriculum with the university's world-renowned work in robots, computer vision and artificial intelligence through [...]

Most people take getting dressed for granted. But data from the National Center for Health Statistics reveals that 92% of nursing facility residents and at-home care patients require assistance with dressing. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute (RI) see a future where robots can help with this need and are working to make it [...]

Update: Congratulations to Zakia on winning in the AI in Research - AI Researcher of the Year category! Zakia Hammal, a systems scientist in Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute and an assistant research professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, has been selected as a finalist for the prestigious Women in AI Awards North America [...]

CMU, Meta AI Researchers Develop Robotic Learning Agent That Can Master Multiple Skills RoboAgent can complete 12 manipulation skills across differing scenes. This research points toward a robotic learning platform adaptable to changing environments. Humans are social creatures and learn from each other, even from a young age. Infants keenly observe their parents, siblings or [...]

CMU's Autonomous Exploration Research Team has developed a suite of robotic systems and planners enabling robots to explore more quickly, probe the darkest corners of unknown environments, and create more accurate and detailed maps — all without human help. A research group in Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute is creating the next generation [...]

Researchers at CMU and the Israel Institute of Technology’s Technion have created 3D sensors that capture micron-scale depth detail, like the raised height of Washington’s head on a U.S. quarter. Ever wonder what the raised height of Washington's head is on a U.S. quarter? Or the thickness of different inks on a chocolate bar wrapper? [...]

Dynamic Light Field Network (DyLiN) accommodates dynamic scene deformations, such as in avatar animation, where facial expressions can be used as controllable input attributes. Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and Fujitsu have developed a new method to convert 2D images to a 3D structure. The work, led by Laszlo A. Jeni’s CUBE Lab in the [...]

Congratulations to members of Changliu Liu's Intelligent Control Lab Alvin Shek, Bo Ying Su and Rui Chen for winning the 2023 ICRA Outstanding Interaction Paper Award! The paper "Learning from Physical Human Feedback: An Object-Centric One-Shot Adaptation Method" received the 2023 ICRA Outstanding Interaction Paper award. For robots to be effectively deployed in novel environments [...]

Congratulations to Wennie Tabib, Kshitij Goel, John Yao, Curtis Boirum, and Nathan Michael for receiving an honorable mention for the IEEE T-RO King-Sun Fu Memorial Best Paper Award at the 2023 RAS Award Ceremony in London, UK! This award is for their work "Autonomous Cave Surveying with an Aerial Robot", which presents an exploration method [...]

The qualities that make a knitted sweater comfortable and easy to wear are the same things that might allow robots to better interact with humans. RobotSweater, developed by a research team from Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute, is a machine-knitted textile "skin" that can sense contact and pressure. "We can use that to make the [...]

Congratulations to this year's National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) Recipients from the Robotics Institute! Rohan Choudhury Siva Kailas Seth Karten Winnie Kuang Gabrielle Ohlson Jinhyung Park Neehar Peri Fausto Vega From NSF: The purpose of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) is to ensure the quality, vitality, and diversity of the [...]

Howie Choset has been named the 2023 Inventor of the Year by the Pittsburgh Intellectual Property Law Association (PIPLA). The award is given to a scientist whose patented developments have been economically significant and/or made positive contributions to society. PIPLA is one of the nation’s oldest organizations dedicated to fostering collegial exchanges regarding the nuances [...]

Artificial intelligence tools have increasingly aided emergency managers, public health officials and other professionals tasked with making critical and timely decisions that directly impact society. During disasters, AI can help efficiently direct and allocate resources. Likewise, AI tools help public health officials, community workers and clinics better target interventions to improve health outcomes.  The advancement [...]

One day recently, on a table in Jean Oh’s lab in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, a robot arm was busy at a canvas. Slowly, as if the air were viscous, it dipped a brush into a pool of light gray paint on a palette, swung around and stroked the canvas, leaving an inch-long [...]

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — One day after NASA announced the crew that'll return to the moon on an orbital flight comes a big announcement from Carnegie Mellon University. CMU says it has finalized plans to put a rover on the moon. When it comes to lunar rovers, America's been there and done that. The Apollo missions [...]

  Service Award Recipient A. Nico Habermann Educational Service Award: Greg Armstrong - Senior Research Technician/AI Maker Space Manager, RI Staff Recognition Award Recipient Sustained Excellence: Brian Staszel, RI "...always does an extraordinary job...actions help RI achieve excellence every single day...creator and keeper of...excellence...the George Lucas of robotics video...so fortunate to have him."

Alan Guisewite, an operations assistant in the Robotics Institute for 40 years, died earlier this month. He was 74.   His official title was operations assistant. But between his technical capabilities, institutional memory and seemingly comprehensive knowledge of building materials, Alan Guisewite was a veritable Swiss Army knife in the Robotics Institute for 40 years. [...]

Robots in Carnegie Mellon University's Newell-Simon Hall can explore the moon, slither across the ground, crawl down pipes, and drive autonomously through deserts and cities. With the building's latest inhabitant, CMU researchers are putting autonomy to work on ice. A student team from Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute (RI), dubbed AI on Ice, has partnered with [...]

Exciting new work from the R-Pad Lab's Wenxuan Zhou and David Held features a simple gripper that can solve more complex manipulation tasks if it can utilize the external environment such as pushing the object against the table or a vertical wall, known as "Extrinsic Dexterity." From the researchers: A simple gripper can solve more [...]

Congratulations to the authors Kshitij Goel, Yves Georgy Daoud, Nathan Michael, and Wennie Tabib for their Best Paper Award at the IEEE International Symposium on Safety, Security, and Rescue Robotics (SSRR) 2022. Their paper "Hierarchical Collision Avoidance for Adaptive-Speed Multirotor Tele-Operation" was selected out of 56 accepted papers.

This little robot can go almost anywhere. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science and the University of California, Berkeley, have designed a robotic system that enables a low-cost and relatively small legged robot to climb and descend stairs nearly its height; traverse rocky, slippery, uneven, steep and varied terrain; walk across gaps; [...]

It's not Beethoven, Bruno Mars or even the Beatles, but students from across Carnegie Mellon University assembled quite a band this summer. The students came from the School of Computer Science's Robotics Institute; the Entertainment Technology Center; the School of Music; and the Integrative Design, Arts and Technology Network (IDeATe). Their instruments were made of [...]

Research from Carnegie Mellon University took home top honors at the 2022 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) last month.   The ICRA is among the largest and most prestigious robotics conferences. More than 3,000 papers were submitted to the conference and about 1,500 were presented. Students, faculty and staff from the School [...]

TartanDrive Dataset Likely Largest for Off-Road Environments Byron Spice   CMU researchers took an ATV on wild rides to gather data that could be used to train self-driving vehicles to drive off road in the future. Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University took an all-terrain vehicle on wild rides through tall grass, loose gravel [...]

Aaron Aupperlee Robotics Institute researchers have developed an algorithmic planner that helps delegate tasks to humans and robots. As robots increasingly join people on the factory floor, in warehouses and elsewhere on the job, dividing up who will do which tasks grows in complexity and importance. People are better suited for some tasks, [...]

Howie Choset is a Professor of Robotics where he serves as the co-director, along with Matt Travers, of the Biorobotics Lab. Choset's research program has made contributions to strategically significant problems in surgery, manufacturing, on-orbit maintenance, recycling and search and rescue. His work is most famous for its snake robots and other biologically inspired systems [...]

As their rovers explore unknown terrain on the moon's surface, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University will watch from the familiar confines of campus, nearly 240,000 miles away. CMU’s Moonshot Mission Control, a new command center in the School of Computer Science's Gates Center for Computer Science, will provide state-of-the-art equipment to the crews of the [...]

Megan Harris Tuesday, March 8, 2022Print this page. Congressman Mike Doyle toured the Girls of Steel's practice field at CMU's Bakery Square facility on Saturday, March 5. He paused to pose with the team in a Rosie the Riveter salute. It's two weeks until the competition, and 17-year-old Ella Maier is ecstatic her robot can [...]

Aaron AupperleeTuesday, March 8, 2022  Changliu Liu, Eunsuk Kang, George Chen and Yuanzhi Li have received Faculty Early Career Development Program awards from the National Science Foundation. Four Carnegie Mellon University researchers in the School of Computer Science recently received Faculty Early Career Development Program awards from the National Science Foundation. The nearly $2.5 million [...]

  Four SCS students were named as Finalists for the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) Collegiate Award, tying for the most students awarded from one university. Congratulations to Ye Won Byun (RI), Tabitha Lee (RI), Gayatri Rajan (CS), and Michelle Zhao (RI).

By Aaron Aupperlee The Association for Computing Machinery has named Anupam Gupta and Matthew T. Mason 2021 ACM fellows. The ACM recognized Gupta, a professor in the Computer Science Department, for his contributions to approximation algorithms, online algorithms, stochastic algorithms and metric embeddings. Mason, a professor emeritus in the Robotics Institute, was honored for his [...]

Ground Truth Autonomy By Andrew Lewis  |  January 18, 2022 |  7 min. read “Ironically, I don’t really drive,” admits the man who has spent his entire career working on self-driving vehicles. “I ride my bike everywhere.” Matt Johnson-Roberson’s little secret may at first seem counterintuitive. But allow him to explain: “I often look at [...]

By Aaron Aupperlee Photo courtesy of Northrop Grumman.SCS researchers will head a consortium to develop ways to robotically inspect, maintain and manufacture satellites and other structures in orbit, much like Northrop Grumman’s Mission Robotic Vehicle is using its robotic arm to attach a service a satellite in this rendering. There are 6,500 satellites [...]

As part of The Robotics Project, the Looking Back to Move Forward | A Re:collection of Robotics at Carnegie Mellon exhibition is open on the first floor of Hunt Library. Through more than 40 robots and artifacts, the exhibition explores past projects from a variety of research areas CMU is known for: field robotics, artificial [...]

Keenan Crane, Jodi Forlizzi, Jian Ma and Lining Yao have all recently earned endowed professorships in SCS. Four School of Computer Science professors recently received endowed faculty chairs in recognition of their work and to support further research. Keenan Crane received the inaugural Michael B. Donohue Career Development Chair. Crane's work focuses on [...]

Girls of Steel, a FIRST Robotics Competition team at CMU, recently received a $10,000 Lemelson-MIT InvenTeam grant to create BuzzBand, a wearable fitness device designed for youth with autism who are facing sensory, physical and emotional challenges associated with exercise. Girls of Steel is one of only eight high school organizations nationwide to be selected [...]

Carnegie Mellon University's Iris rover is bolted in and ready for its journey to the moon. The tiny rover passed a huge milestone on Wednesday, Dec. 1, when it was secured to one of the payload decks of Astrobotic's Peregrine Lunar Lander, which will deliver it to the moon next year. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdwWIVZgC0k   "It is [...]

The event is organized as part of AI for Good - the United Nations' leading action-oriented, global, and inclusive platform on ethical AI. The webinar will be held Tuesday, November 30 at 16:00 CET. More information https://aiforgood.itu.int/.../robots-saving-lives-in.../

CMU Alum Matthew Johnson-Roberson To Head Institute in January   Much has changed since Matthew Johnson-Roberson last walked the halls of Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute. In the 15-plus years since Johnson-Roberson graduated, robots have proven they work. They can navigate city streets and sidewalks. They can fly autonomously to inspect bridges, buildings and tunnels. [...]

Aaron Aupperlee Red Whittaker received keys to the City of Pittsburgh from Mayor Bill Peduto on Friday, Nov. 5. Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto presented keys to the city to Carnegie Mellon University's Red Whittaker and Andrew Moore on Friday, calling the two “leaders of the fourth industrial revolution.” Peduto, who will leave office [...]

Congratulations to the authors! Best paper on Agri-Robotics: A Robust Illumination-Invariant Camera System for Agricultural Applications Abhisesh Silwal, Tanvir Parhar, Francisco Yandun, Harjatin Baweja, and George Kantor Finalist for best conference and best student paper: Ground Encoding: Learned Factor Graph-Based Models for Localizing Ground Penetrating Radar Alexander Baikovitz, Paloma Sodhi, Michael Dille, Michael Kaess https://www.iros2021.org/awards

The DARPA Subterranean or “SubT” Challenge seeks novel approaches to rapidly map, navigate, and search underground environments during time-sensitive combat operations or disaster response scenarios. Team Explorer will be updating their blog over the next few critical days of the final event. Coverage will also be streamed from the Darpa SubT TV Site . [...]

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 [...]

Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, the University of California, Berkeley, and Facebook AI didn't just teach a robot to walk — they taught it how to learn to walk. The distinction is key. A major hurdle to deploying legged robots, whether with two, four or even more legs, is figuring out how the robot will [...]

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 [...]

Manuela Veloso, a renowned artificial intelligence researcher, computer scientist and roboticist at Carnegie Mellon University, is among the most influential women in engineering, according to a new list compiled by Academic Influence. The list of women includes astronauts, founders and CEOs of well-known technology and Fortune 500 companies, a Nobel laureate, and researchers from around [...]

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 [...]

By Yana Ilieva Email A Carnegie Mellon University spinoff company, Marinus Analytics, won third place and $500,000 in the IBM Watson AI XPRIZE competition, announced Wednesday, June 23, 2021. This XPRIZE is a global competition incentivizing the use of artificial intelligence (AI) for radical breakthroughs in problems facing humanity. Marinus Analytics was recognized for its [...]

Research From Robotics Ph.D. Maps Emotions to Robotic Behavior The pros make it look easy, but making a movie with a drone can be anything but. First, it takes skill to fly the often expensive pieces of equipment smoothly and without crashing. And once you've mastered flying, there are camera angles, panning speeds, trajectories and [...]

Foundation Announce Historic Partnership to Accelerate CMU’s Science and Technology Leadership and the Transformation of Hazelwood Green Foundation approves record $150M grant to support cutting-edge science building on campus, and new robotics center and advanced manufacturing institute at Hazelwood Green Carnegie Mellon University and the Richard King Mellon Foundation today announced that the two long-time [...]

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 [...]

The Carnegie Mellon University team sending a tiny rover to the moon in 2021 has invited more people along for the ride. The Iris lunar rover team launched a crowdfunding campaign this week to raise $50,000 to help with the final costs of their lunar mission. Anyone who donates to the project will have their [...]

Carnegie Mellon University's CREATE Lab and the grassroots advocacy group Allegheny County Clean Air Now (ACCAN) are winners of an inaugural Constellation Prize for their collaboration on the Shenango Channel, an effort to highlight pollutants from a now-defunct coke works near Pittsburgh. The Constellation Prize was created by a group of engineers and social scientists [...]

"LVS Valid" The message would sound cryptic to most people, but for Andrew Johnson, a principal robotics system engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, receiving it from Mars on Thursday will mean everything. It will mean that the lander vision system developed by his team worked properly and that NASA's Perseverance rover is one step [...]

Artur Dubrawski will receive the Alumni Research Professorship of Computer Science and Carleton Kingsford will receive the Herbert A. Simon Professorship of Computer Science in a virtual ceremony at 5:30 p.m. Thursday. The usual ceremonies for these and other new professorships were delayed last year by the pandemic and have now been modified as virtual [...]

Machine Learning Identifies Precursors of Engine Failure   A MH-60 helicopter from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment transports role players from the battlefield during Invincible Sentry 2019 near Abdullah bin Khalifa Stadium in Doha, Qatar, March 22. Invincible Sentry is an annual training exercise used by United States Central Command to validate subordinate [...]

A NASA mission slated for launch on Friday will place three tiny satellites into low-Earth orbit, where they will demonstrate how satellites might track and communicate with each other, setting the stage for swarms of thousands of small satellites that can work cooperatively and autonomously. Zac Manchester, an assistant professor in Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics [...]

Takeo Kanade, U.A. and Helen Whitaker University Professor in the Robotics Institute and Computer Science Department, was elected last month as a member of the Japan Academy, an organization that recognizes researchers with the most distinguished records of academic and scientific achievement. Earlier last year, Kanade was named a Person of Cultural Merit in Japan [...]

Abhinav Gupta, associate professor in the Robotics Institute, is the winner of the 2020 J.K. Aggarwal Prize, which is presented every two years by the International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR) to a scientist under age 40 who has had a major impact on computer vision, pattern recognition and image processing. The IAPR is honoring [...]

Framework Helps Entrepreneurs Stay Competitive, Avoid Pitfalls PITTSBURGH—Founders of new ventures may spend most of their time creating business plans, perfecting new technology and contracting with suppliers, but it behooves them to also think about how to treat employees fairly, design and market their products ethically, and be transparent with investors. To help founders establish [...]

The Siebel Scholars Foundation announced that five School of Computer Science graduate students – Brandon Bohrer, Rogerio Bonatti, Megan Hofmann, Hsiao-Yu Fish Tung and Lijun Yu – are among the 2021 recipients of the Siebel Scholars award. Now in its 20th year, the program recognizes almost 100 students annually from the world’s leading graduate schools of computer [...]

Small, Speedy Rover Completes Preliminary Design Review   PITTSBURGH — MoonRanger, a small robotic rover being developed by Carnegie Mellon University and its spinoff Astrobotic, has completed its preliminary design review in preparation for a 2022 mission to search for signs of water at the moon's south pole. Whether buried ice exists in useful amounts [...]

Both Elements Are Critical for Applications Such As Self-Driving Cars PITTSBURGH—Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have developed a new metric for evaluating how well self-driving cars respond to changing road conditions and traffic, making it possible for the first time to compare perception systems for both accuracy and reaction time. Mengtian Li, a Ph.D. student [...]

The team of Xinshuo Weng and Ye Yuan, both Ph.D. students in the Robotics Institute, is one of 13 nationwide to win a 2020 Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship (QIF). The QIF program is unusual because it requires pairs of students to submit proposals. Qualcomm says this approach reflects its core values of innovation, execution and partnership. [...]

Congratulations to authors: Mengtian Li, Yu-Xiong Wang, and Deva Ramanan from Carnegie Mellon University and Argo AI for receiving the Best Paper Honorable Mention Award at the 16th European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV) for their paper Towards Streaming Image Understanding.

The Robotics Institute's Howie Choset is among four CMU faculty members who will receive new Kavčić-Moura professorships. Howie Choset, the Kavcic-Moura Professor of Computer Science, has joined the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI), an international group founded this year by the United States and 14 other nations to shape a global agenda [...]

New UK Book Provides Perspectives For Navigating Uncertain Times Earthtime refugee flow EarthTime, the innovative data visualization technology developed by Carnegie Mellon University's CREATE Lab, takes center stage in a new book addressing some of the greatest challenges facing mankind. "Terra Incognita: 100 Maps to Survive the Next 100 Years," is being published [...]

Carnegie Mellon Builds Dataset Capturing Interaction of Sound, Action, Vision   PITTSBURGH—People rarely use just one sense to understand the world, but robots usually only rely on vision and, increasingly, touch. Carnegie Mellon University researchers find that robot perception could improve markedly by adding another sense: hearing. In what they say is the first large-scale [...]

Researchers led by Saswati Ray, senior research analyst in School of Computer Science's Auton Lab, have once again received top scores among teams participating in the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency's program for building automated machine learning (AutoML) systems. The Data-Driven Discovery of Models (D3M) program seeks to automate the process of building predictive models [...]

Carnegie Mellon's Winning Strategy Speeds Up Robotic Searches   PITTSBURGH—A robot travelling from point A to point B is more efficient if it understands that point A is the living room couch and point B is a refrigerator, even if it's in an unfamiliar place. That's the common sense idea behind a "semantic" navigation system [...]

Carnegie Mellon Researchers Teach Robots To Infer Shapes From Color Images   PITTSBURGH—Kitchen robots are a popular vision of the future, but if a robot of today tries to grasp a kitchen staple such as a clear measuring cup or a shiny knife, it likely won't be able to. Transparent and reflective objects are the [...]

Rogerio Bonatti, a Ph.D. candidate in the Robotics Institute, is one of 10 recipients across North America who will receive Microsoft Research Dissertation Grants to support research for their Ph.D. thesis. Bonatti, who expects to complete his dissertation next year, has focused his research at the intersection of machine learning theory and motion planning. His [...]

Robotics Institute PhD students, Keene Chin, Victoria Dean and Jason Zhang, are amongst the 2020 National Science Foundation's Graduate Research Fellowship Program Recipients. The NSF GRFP recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported STEM disciplines who are pursuing research-based master's and doctoral degrees. Keene Chin, Victoria Dean and Jason Zhang Keene Chin is [...]

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Carnegie Mellon University Associate Research Professor Michael Kaess poses for a portrait with an autonomous submersible robot in the High Bay of Newell Simon Hall on October 22, 2018. Michael Kaess, associate research professor in the Robotics Institute, and Frank Dellaert, a Ph.D. alumnus of the School of Computer Science and a professor [...]

            NASA's MoonRanger robot will rely on fully autonomous operations during its week-long mission, a level of autonomy that has never been achieved before in such a manner on the moon, says Red Whittaker of the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute - RI.   By Kimberly Underwood The current development of [...]

Monte Carlo Method Dispenses With Troublesome Meshes   Carnegie Mellon University researchers have shown complex shapes need not be divided into intricate meshes, left, to perform geometric analysis. Instead of spending 14 hours creating a mesh, they use Monte Carlo methods to get initial results in less than a minute of the amount of [...]

RoadBotics selected for its contribution to the field of asset management! The World Economic Forum announced its selection of 100 of the most promising Technology Pioneers of 2020, who are shaping industries from agriculture to healthcare while also working on sustainability issues and much more. If you'd like to check out the full list Technology [...]

              Nominated by: Aaron Steinfeld and Students “She’s an organized and knowledgeable powerhouse...absolute pleasure to interact with...is not only appreciated, but adored...I honestly hope that I will be able to work with someone as amazing as her when I graduate from CMU...is the hidden force behind all our research.” Please [...]

Additional Data Boosts Accuracy of Tracking Other Cars, Pedestrians PITTSBURGH—For safety's sake, a self-driving car must accurately track the movement of pedestrians, bicycles and other vehicles around it. Training those tracking systems may now be more effective thanks to a new method developed at Carnegie Mellon University. Generally speaking, the more road and traffic data [...]

What a Perception System Doesn't See Can Help It Understand What It Sees                   PITTSBURGH—It's important that self-driving cars quickly detect other cars or pedestrians sharing the road. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have shown that they can significantly improve detection accuracy by helping the vehicle also [...]

              Nominated by: Jessica Kaminsky“ ...has initiated several study groups focused on building empathy, understanding gender and race, and examining the role of a university in community and system-level change...values justice, compassion, and dreaming...extremely high work ethic and commitment to execute projects with integrity.”   Watch Jessica make the [...]

  Visualizations Poised to Enrich Teaching, Scientific Communication   PITTSBURGH— Some people look at an equation and see a bunch of numbers and symbols; others see beauty. Thanks to a new tool created at Carnegie Mellon University, anyone can now translate the abstractions of mathematics into beautiful and instructive illustrations. The tool enables users to create [...]

By Julia Mericle  – Reporter, Pittsburgh Business Times NASA awarded Pittsburgh-based Near Earth Autonomy a contract to develop drone systems for industrial infrastructure inspection, according to a news release. The company said current methods are resource heavy and dangerous for workers. Neart Earth Autonomy aims to develop a system that provides contact measurements and macro-imagery for [...]

Carnegie Mellon University students who designed and built a small, boxy robot, called Iris, have achieved a major milestone: their robot passed its critical design review by NASA and is on track to land on the moon in the fall of 2021. “We are moving forward... we’re going to the moon,” a triumphant project manager, [...]

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 [...]

What Can Cities, Businesses and Civic Groups Do About Pandemics? Political scientist and urban specialist Robert Muggah has worked with the Robotics Institute’s CREATE Lab to use the lab’s EarthTime platform to examine the threat of pandemics such as COVID-19 and ponder how governments and other groups can respond. The presentation displays time-lapse images of [...]

  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 [...]

The American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) announced that Chieko Asakawa, an IBM Fellow and the IBM Distinguished Service Professor in Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute, is one of three recipients this year of its prestigious Helen Keller Achievement Awards. The AFB recognizes Asakawa for her life’s work in furthering accessibility research and development, from [...]

Robotics Institute Research Professor Katia Sycara DARPA Project Aims To Use Machine Social Intelligence to Improve Teamwork PITTSBURGH—Personal assistants today can figure out what you are saying, but what if they could infer what you were thinking based on your actions? A team of academic and industrial researchers led by Carnegie Mellon University [...]

In the Human and Robot Partners (HARP) Lab at Carnegie Mellon University, a robot mounted to a table must choose between three candy dishes. The robot — a sleek, multi-jointed black arm — has a camera mounted to its two-fingered gripper. The machine analyzes the eye gaze of a graduate student seated across the table [...]

Carnegie Mellon University President Farnam Jahanian led a university delegation to this year's World Economic Forum, an annual gathering that brings political, industrial, artistic and educational leaders together to discuss ideas and policy while shaping global agendas. The forum ran from January 21-24. This year's theme, "Stakeholders for a Cohesive and Sustainable World," recognized that no institution [...]

For the sixth consecutive year, Carnegie Mellon University's EarthTime platform will help leaders at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, visualize data on global challenges such as climate change, poverty and mental health. It's a unique map-based tool that's proven popular at the annual meeting, helping experts from institutions worldwide present data in [...]

Artur Dubrawski Artur Dubrawski is not a critical care physician, but his best friend is. Dubrawski, a research professor in Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute, loves talking about disease symptoms with Michael Pinsky, a professor of critical care medicine, cardiovascular disease, bioengineering and more at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. They also [...]

Putting the Power of a Film Director in an Autonomous Drone The autonomous system plans a smooth drone trajectory with a clear view of the target, avoiding occlusions from obstacles, as shown in this time-lapse image. Commercial drone products can tackle some automated tasks, but one thing those systems don't address is filming [...]

Anita Woolley, Cleotilde Gonzalez and Henny Admoni are leveraging their collective expertise to explore how AI can help humans collaborate better. Three Carnegie Mellon University researchers are leveraging their expertise in organizational science, cognitive science and artificial intelligence (AI) to explore how AI can help humans work together better. The collaboration includes lead [...]

Robotics Institute Post-Doc Named Innovation Fellow Susie Cribbs Monday, September 9, 2019 Joe Bartels, a postdoctoral researcher in the Robotics Institute, was named one of three Innovation Fellows by Carnegie Mellon University's Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship. Founded in 2015, the Swartz Center works with the CMU community to accelerate the process of bringing research innovations [...]

Team Explorer Performs Impressively at Subterranean Challenge’s Tunnel Circuit PITTSBURGH—Team Explorer from Carnegie Mellon University and Oregon State University deployed robots to autonomously map and search underground mines and outscored 10 competing teams at the initial scored event in the DARPA Subterranean Challenge. On four occasions during the eight-day event, each team deployed multiple robots [...]

Professor Srinivasa Narasimhan has agreed to serve as the Interim Director of the Robotics Institute. Srinivasa has established a world-class sensing group in the Robotics Institute and has led the development of numerous award winning imaging technologies with applications in every robotics field. He and his team are currently working on futuristic cameras for non-line-of-sight [...]

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 [...]

Acclaimed computer scientist and AI researcher has led Robotics Institute since 2014 PITTSBURGH—Martial Hebert, a leading researcher in computer vision and robotics, has been named dean of Carnegie Mellon University’s world-renowned School of Computer Science (SCS), effective August 15. Hebert, director of the School’s Robotics Institute since 2014, will lead a school with [...]

NASA Selects Carnegie Mellon, Astrobotic To Build Lunar Robot CMU's Red Whittaker Adds a Third Moon Project to His To-Do List Byron Spice Tuesday, July 2, 2019   NASA has chosen Carnegie Mellon University and Astrobotic to build a rover that will land on the moon as early as 2021. The rover, called MoonRanger, will [...]

New Tool Helps Even Novices Identify Insects Inhabiting Streams, Lakes and Rivers   PITTSBURGH—A new online field guide to aquatic insects in the eastern United States, macroinvertebrates.org, promises to be an important tool for monitoring water quality, enabling even novices to correctly identify freshwater insects inhabiting rivers, lakes and streams. Carnegie Mellon University, working with [...]

PRECOG: PREdiction Conditioned On Goals in Visual Multi-Agent Settings N. Rhinehart, R. McAllister, K. M. Kitani, S. Levine Best Paper, ICML 2019 Workshop on AI for Autonomous Driving arXiv 2019 Workshop home page.

“Neural RGB-> D Sensing: Depth and Uncertainty from a Video Camera,” by Chao Liu; Jinwei Gu; Kihwan Kim; Srinivasa G Narasimhan; Jan Kautz http://openaccess.thecvf.com/…/Liu_Neural_RGBrD_Sensing_Dep… “Shapes and Context; In-the-wild Image Synthesis & Manipulation, “Aayush Bansal; Yaser Sheikh; Deva Ramanan http://openaccess.thecvf.com/…/Bansal_Shapes_and_Context_In… “A Theory of Fermat Paths for Non-Line-of-Sight Shape Reconstruction,” by Shumian Xin; Sotiris Nousias; Kyros Kutulakos; [...]

Congratulations Shumian Xin, Ioannis Gkioulekas, Aswin Sankaranarayanan and Srinivasa Narasimhan and their U. Toronto colleagues for their CVPR Best Paper Award “A theory of Fermat Paths for Non-Line-of-Sight Shape Reconstruction” (out of ~5000 submitted papers). An amazing paper on non line of sight sensing. Read it: Here          

Non-Line-of-Sight Technique Can Spot Washington’s Profile on a Quarter PITTSBURGH—Computer vision researchers have demonstrated they can use special light sources and sensors to see around corners or through gauzy filters, enabling them to reconstruct the shapes of unseen objects. The researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Toronto and University College London said this [...]

New Funding Will Advance Technology for Eventual Moon Mission PITTSBURGH—NASA has approved a $2 million research initiative for Carnegie Mellon University roboticists to develop technologies necessary for robots to explore pits on the moon — the lunar equivalent of sinkholes — which might provide access to shelter and resources that could sustain future lunar missions. [...]

CMU Becomes Space-Faring University With Payloads Aboard Astrobotic Lander PITTSBURGH—Carnegie Mellon University is going to the moon, sending a robotic rover and an intricately designed arts package that will land in July 2021. The four-wheeled robot is being developed by a CMU team led by William “Red” Whittaker, professor in the Robotics Institute. Equipped with [...]

By Michael Henninge As the house lights rise in the O'Reilly Theater, actress Jill Tanner begins her performance as the titular character in the show "Marjorie Prime." She's dressed casually, and speaking to a much younger man in a full suit — a holographic representation of her late husband. He's a youthful, AI version of [...]

PITTSBURGH—The University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Carnegie Mellon University each have been awarded four-year contracts totaling more than $7.2 million from the U.S. Department of Defense to create an autonomous trauma care system that fits in a backpack and can treat and stabilize soldiers injured in remote locations. The goal of TRAuma Care [...]

Martial Hebert, Director, Robotics Institute Tom M. Mitchell, Founders University Professor, Interim Dean, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University announced today that Martial Hebert has agreed to serve an additional five year term as Director of the Robotics Institute.

This week at the Web4All Conference in San Francisco, Dragan Ahmetovic and Saki Asakawa presented the following papers: “Impact of Expertise on Interaction Preferences for Navigation Assistance of Visually Impaired Individuals” Dragan Ahmetovic, João Guerreiro, Eshed Ohn-Bar, Kris Kitani, Chieko Asakawa “An Independent and Interactive Museum Experience for Blind People” Saki Asakawa, João Guerreiro, Daisuke [...]

Finalist in Global Learning XPRIZE Lets Kids Teach Themselves Reading, Writing, Math     PITTSBURGH—RoboTutor LLC, a team based at Carnegie Mellon University that was a finalist in the $15 million Global Learning XPRIZE, has announced that its educational apps will be used to teach 10,000 children basic reading, writing and mathematical skills in the [...]

Researchers at multiple universities are developing and researchering potential uses for robots in industries such as inspection, medical, and automotive. By Tanya M. Anandan Robotic Industries Association (RIA) and Robotics Online April 26, 2019 Courtesy: Carnegie Mellon University/RIA Several universities are driving robotics research and continue to attract and recruit renowned faculty to their robotics [...]

Team brings home two awards from Greater Pittsburgh Regional Girls of Steel 2019 The Girls of Steel, a robotics team sponsored by Carnegie Mellon University’s Field Robotics Center, won two awards at the FIRST Robotics Competition Greater Pittsburgh Regional, qualifying the team and its robot, Laika, for the finals in Detroit. The team [...]

Smell MyCity app leverages data and technology to empower citizens to track air pollution in their communities and become advocates for better air quality BURLINGTON, VT / LOUISVILLE, KY – March 28, 2019 – Seventh Generation, a leading household and personal care products company and pioneer in the environmentally conscious products space, today announced a [...]

Honor Recognizes Excellence in Robotics, Service to Humankind Byron Spice Wednesday, March 6, 2019 Howie Choset, the Kavčić-Moura Professor of Computer Science, will receive the 2019 Engelberger Robotics Award for Education. Howie Choset, the Kavčić-Moura Professor of Computer Science, will receive the prestigious 2019 Engelberger Robotics Award for Education. The award recognizes his [...]

Mission in Chile's Atacama Desert Will Aid Search for Life on Mars Byron Spice Thursday, February 28, 2019 An autonomous rover designed and built by the Robotics Institute drilled into the soil of the Atacama Desert in 2013 and discovered unusual, highly specialized microbes. An autonomous rover named Zoë, designed and built by [...]

By: Byron Spice Illah Nourbakhsh, the K&L Gates Professor of Ethics and Computational Technologies, is one of 18 newly elected Hastings Center Fellows. llah Nourbakhsh, the K&L Gates Professor of Ethics and Computational Technologies, is one of 18 newly elected Hastings Center Fellows, The Hastings Center announced today. The Hastings Center, a nonpartisan, [...]

How can technology help in the supply chain? Peggy and Matt Mason, chief scientist, Berkshire Grey, and professor, Carnegie Mellon University, dive into the topic of robotic manipulation. He says there are a lot of problems and great applications for robotic manipulation and details how robotic manipulation works in conjunction with the sensory input. He [...]

By automating assessments of road conditions, RoadBotics could help cities save time and money By Prachi Patel, IEEE Spectrum Image: RoadBoticsRoadbotics’ software gives each road segment an aggregate score from Level 1 to Level 5 based on the quantity, extent, and severity of problems it spots. ’Tis the season for potholes. When temperatures drop, the [...]

Automated system will fashion concrete mats to protect Mississippi River levees Carnegie Mellon University's National Robotics Engineering Center has built a mat-sinking robot at their Lawrenceville facility, as seen here on December 7, 2018. PITTSBURGH—A yellow, steel structure built this fall in front of Carnegie Mellon University’s National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC) will [...]

Her Home Page Reader gives internet access to blind and visually impaired computer users   Chieko Asakawa, the IBM Distinguished Service Professor in the Robotics Institute and an IBM Fellow at IBM Research, is among 19 innovators who will be inducted this year into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.   Asakawa, who came to [...]

By Ben Craw Today there are about 2 million industrial robots being used around the world, and that number is growing exponentially. Robots are doing everything from welding cars and making Adidas sneakers to farming lettuce and exploring Mars. Global sales have doubled over the past five years, according to the International Federation of Robotics. [...]

Tom Vander Ark Contributor Forbes Education I write about the future of learning, work and human development. Dec 12, 2018, 05:00am Amon Millner, Olin CollegeTom Vander Ark Machines that learn are reshaping lives and livelihoods. Artificial intelligence (AI) is the most important change force in modern society, but it remains common for high school [...]

By Patty Tascarella  – Senior Reporter, Pittsburgh Business Times Dec 10, 2018, 8:15am EST Detroit will use a Pittsburgh startup's technology to drive better roads. Detroit will use a Pittsburgh-based startup’s artificial intelligence pavement inspection technology to assess the city’s 2,600 centerline mile road network in 2019. RoadBotics on Monday said that Detroit additionally [...]

December 6, 2018, 6:00 AM EST By Max Chafkin Bloomberg Businessweek Berkshire Grey’s machines can pick, pack, and ship most items of 5 pounds or less. Robots do the job of human pickers at a Berkshire Grey lab. Photographer: Tony Luong for Bloomberg Businessweek In an enormous space at an undisclosed U.S. location, [...]

The Crusher combat robot vehicle rolls over a car on a test range last month at White Sands Missle Range in New Mexico (Defense Armed Research Projects Agency/CMU) Dec 3, 2018 Bill Schackner Pittsburgh Post-Gazettte The Army plans to set up headquarters for its new Artificial Intelligence Task Force on the campus of [...]

A wheel that can transform into a triangular track, developed by Carnegie Mellon University’s National Robotics Engineering Center with funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is a winner of a Popular Science “Best of What’s New” Award for 2018. The reconfigurable wheel-track can transform from one mode to the other in less than [...]

By Ken Hocke WorkBoat.com on November 20, 2018 Bristol Harbor Group rendering The Army Corps of Engineers Marine Design Center (MDC) will soon release a sources sought notice for the construction of a 188’x74’x10′ deck barge for its Mat Sinking Unit (MSU) located on the Mississippi River. The mat boat is to be built to [...]

by Tanya M. Anandan, Contributing Editor Robotic Industries Association Posted 10/30/2018 Tomorrow’s robotics are taking shape in today’s labs. From package delivery robots and self-driving cars, to surgical snakes and search and rescue robots, the innovations have profound implications. A year, 3 years, or maybe 5 to 10 years down the road, they could be [...]

Shape-Shifting Tires, Digital Driving Assistants Could Enable Safe Driving Over All Kinds of Terrain Byron Spice  Monday, October 29, 2018 NREC has developed a vehicle with wheels that transform into tracks on the fly and a digital assistant that helps drivers find the safest, surest route across steep terrain as part of DARPA's Ground X-Vehicle [...]

The David and Lucile Packard Foundation has announced that Keenan Crane, assistant professor of computer science and robotics, is one of 18 recipients of 2018 Packard Fellowships for Science and Engineering. The fellowship recognizes innovative early-career researchers and includes $875,000 to aid in each fellow’s research for five years. Crane’s research explores how the shapes [...]

Modularity will be key to robotic exploration of caves, tunnels, underground structures Team leaders Matt Travers and Sebastian Scherer guide CMU's Subterranean Challenge team as they begin work on August 27, 2018. CMU is one of the teams being funded by DARPA in the challenge, a $2 million contest where autonomous robots are used [...]

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6C-59fX7yXA[/embedyt]  

By Patrick Marshall        Aug 13, 2018 Scientists at the Army Research Laboratory and Carnegie Mellon University's  Robotics Institute are teaching robots how to be better mission partners to soldiers -- starting with how to find their way with minimal human intervention. Given that autonomous vehicles have been navigating streets in many U.S. [...]

Zach Quinto on In Search Of The Friday Aug. 10 episode of the HISTORY series “In Search Of,” hosted by actor and Carnegie Mellon University alum Zachary Quinto, will feature a segment that was shot last year at the CMU Robotics Institute. In the segment, Quinto talked with Nathan Michael, assistant research professor [...]

  The Robotics Institute’s David Kohanbash, principal systems/software engineer, and William “Red” Whittaker, professor of robotics, discuss how a tablet can be used to launch the RadPiper uranium-detection robot with Rodrigo V. Rimando Jr., director of technology development for DOE's Office of Environmental Management, and Charles Allyn, a non-destructive assay technician with Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth. [...]

  Deep reinforcement learning makes basketball video games look more realistic   Basketball players need lots of practice before they master the dribble, and it turns out that’s true for computer-animated players as well. By using deep reinforcement learning, players in video basketball games can glean insights from motion capture data to sharpen their dribbling [...]

In the sixth episode of Schooled in AI, David Held, assistant professor at The Robotics Institute at the Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science, talks about why it's important for robots to operate in a changing environment. In this episode, you'll hear Held talk about: Why uncertainty presents a big challenge to robots operating [...]

              New Mon Valley Breathe Cams Document Sources of Visual Pollution   PITTSBURGH—Carnegie Mellon University’s CREATE Lab is using a new network of cameras to provide 24-hour monitoring of visible air pollution from industrial sources in the Monongahela Valley. The network is being activated today in conjunction with the [...]

Autonomous systems need to predict, monitor, judge their own performance Xiang Zhi Tan, a Ph.D. student in the Robotics Institute, works with a Baxter robot, part of a multi-university research program to enable robots to assess their own performance at tasks. PITTSBURGH—In a parallel to how “The Little Engine That Could” once chanted, [...]

  We Can Be is a podcast with The Heinz Endowments’ Grant Oliphant featuring leaders as they share the often moving, sometimes funny and always inspiring accounts of how they came to believe that together we can be a healthier, smarter, and more creative and just community. Podcast Link

The Robotics Institute’s multi-jointed Snakebot robot, which searched for earthquake survivors in Mexico City last fall, has been named Ground Rescue Robot of the Year by the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue (CRASAR). CRASAR, an independent, not-for-profit research group, presented its first-ever Disaster Robotics Awards on April 14 as part of National Robotics Week. [...]

Illah Nourbakhsh, professor of robotics and director of the CREATE Lab, will be one of two recipients of new Carnegie Mellon University professorships created with funding from the K&L Gates Endowment for Ethics and Computational Technologies. Nourbakhsh will be the first recipient of the K&L Gates Professorship in Ethics and Computational Technologies. Molly Wright Steenson, [...]

ISR’s Tom Pope Cited For Mentoring Team Photo of GoS FIRST Chairman's Award     The Girls of Steel Robotics team and their robot, Clyde, made it to the semi-finals of the FIRST® Robotics Competition Greater Pittsburgh Regional March 22-24 and took home several awards, including the prestigious Chairman’s Award. The team, sponsored [...]

CMU Researchers Foresee Machines Capable of On-Demand Knitting   PITTSBURGH—Carnegie Mellon University computer scientists have developed a system that can translate a wide variety of 3-D shapes into stitch-by-stitch instructions that enable a computer-controlled knitting machine to automatically produce those shapes.   Researchers in the Carnegie Mellon Textiles Lab have used the system to produce [...]

Office of Naval Research Project Wins Howard Hughes Award   The Autonomous Aerial Cargo/Utility System (AACUS) team developed and successfully demonstrated a fully autonomous helicopter flight capability.     AHS International, The Vertical Flight Society, has announced the winner of its 2018 Howard Hughes Award is an Office of Naval Research (ONR) autonomous helicopter [...]

Carnegie Mellon’s radiation-measuring robots go where humans cannot   PITTSBURGH—A pair of autonomous robots developed by Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute will soon be driving through miles of pipes at the U.S. Department of Energy’s former uranium enrichment plant in Piketon, Ohio, to identify uranium deposits on pipe walls.   The CMU robot has demonstrated [...]

Airviz, the Robotics Institute spinoff that markets the Speck indoor air quality monitor, has announced that Speck is now compatible with the first-ever Bluetooth-enabled air filter for home furnaces and air conditioning systems. The Filtrete-brand Smart Air Filter, made by 3M, includes Bluetooth-enabled pressure sensor that, when paired with the Filtrete Smart App, notifies users [...]

AI Will Help Feed A Growing Planet By the year 2040, there will be more people on the planet than food to feed them. Researchers want to change that: a sustainable solution to the emerging world food crisis is sprouting in an artificial intelligence (AI) lab in Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute. Much more than [...]

by Taylor Soper on March 2, 2018 at 4:00 am   GeekWire is putting its own HQ2 in Pittsburgh for the month of February 2018 — reporting on the people, technologies and ideas transforming the industrial city into an innovation powerhouse. The Girls of Steel team after a recent robot scrimmage. (Photo via Girls [...]

NSF Awards $10 Million to Interdisciplinary Researchers at Five Universities By Byron Spice Monday, February 26, 2018 Computational illumination and imaging approaches developed at CMU produce images of different body parts that show features up to two millimeters deep. Researchers expect new techniques will enable images of structures at least 10 times deeper. [...]

BY TODD BISHOP on February 22, 2018 at 5:00 am GeekWire is putting its own HQ2 in Pittsburgh for the month of February 2018 — reporting on the people, technologies and ideas transforming the industrial city into an innovation powerhouse. Red Whittaker, founder and director of Carnegie Mellon University’s Field Robotics Center, with Cave Crawler, a robot developed to [...]

By Byron Spice       Thursday, February 22, 2018   In this Thursday, Nov. 21, 2013 photo, Abhinav Gupta stands near one of the computer clusters used in his research at one of the computer server areas on campus at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. The school is letting hundreds of computers run constantly to [...]

By Abby Simmons         Tuesday, February 20, 2018    The Robotics Institute's Howie Choset is among four CMU faculty members who will receive new Kavčić-Moura professorships. Robotics Institute faculty member Howie Choset is among four Carnegie Mellon University faculty members appointed to new Kavčić-Moura Professorships — designed to provide sustained, long-term support [...]

An autonomous vehicle crosses one of Pittsburgh's iconic bridges. Gene J. Puskar/AP   Richard Florida  Feb 8, 2018 Pittsburgh’s mayor talks about the city becoming the capital of autonomous vehicles and the challenge of including everyone in its renewal. Pittsburgh Mayor William (Bill) Peduto, who just began his second term this year, has [...]

  DALLAS--(Business Wire)--ROBO Global, creator of the first benchmark index tracking the global robotics and automation market, has increased the depth and expertise of its advisory board with the addition of Illah R. Nourbakhsh, Professor of Robotics at The Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. Nourbakhsh, who is Director of the Community Robotics, Education and Technology Empowerment [...]

By Howard Leff  Source Weekly January 24 2018   Bend's Mel Siegel knows more about self-driving cars than perhaps anyone else in town. He's a Professor Emeritus at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute in Pittsburgh—and an authority on the subject. In honor of the transportation issue, Mel answered some questions about the future of ground transportation. [...]

by Christine O’Toole, Pittsburgh Quarterly Higher Education 2018 Winter   In January, Carnegie Mellon University professor Red Whittaker set a goal that had nothing to do with robotics: to best a field of competitors in an indoor rowing race. The ergometer competition, a 2,000-meter battle on stationary machines, marked the first time the 69-​year-​old Whittaker [...]

  Aaron Aupperlee  Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2017, 11:06 a.m.   Argo AI, a Pittsburgh-based startup developing self-driving technology for Ford, will team up with researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and Georgia Tech to work on computer vision and machine learning technology. Deva Ramanan and Simon Lucey from CMU and James Hays from Georgia Tech will join the [...]

November 8, 2017 7:18 PM By David Highfield [embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZHnrC_hojU[/embedyt]   PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – Cell phones and computers have dramatically changed our lives. Today’s reality would have seemed like science fiction when many of us were growing up, so what’s next? You may get a good glimpse by visiting Chris Harrison at Carnegie Mellon’s Future [...]

By Patty Tascarella – Senior Reporter, Pittsburgh Business Times Boeing Co.’s new venture capital arm has invested in Pittsburgh-based Near Earth Autonomy, plus partnering to explore technologies for defense and commercial applications. Near Earth, a spinoff from Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute, develops software and senor technology enabling aircraft to inspect, map and survey terrain [...]

RI PhD student, Nick Rhinehart, and RI faculty, assistant research professor Kris Kitani, received the Marr Prize Honorable Mention award at the International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV) 2017, for their work on "First Person Activity Forecasting with Online Inverse Reinforcement Learning" Project link

Hazelwood Green Will Be Home For Advanced Robotics Manufacturing Institute A view of downtown Pittsburgh is visible through the beams of the Hazelwood Green site. The Advanced Robotics Manufacturing Institute will be one of the anchor tenants of Hazelwood Green, the former Jones & Laughlin Steel site in Hazelwood that is being redeveloped [...]

By Dana Hull - Bloomberg Technology October 19, 2017 Near Earth spun out of Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute Aerospace companies increasing support for new technologies   Boeing Co. is investing in Pittsburgh-based Near Earth Autonomy, a self-guided drone startup, marking its first financial backing for a company specializing in autonomous technology since establishing the HorizonX venture [...]

Assistant Professor of Robotics Helps Robots Help You By Susie Cribbs Wednesday, October 18, 2017 Henny Admoni once thought she'd be a journalist. Instead, she's the latest addition to the Robotics Institute's faculty — poised to change the way we interact with robots forever.       Henny Admoni thought she'd be a [...]

By Evan Ackerman    IEEE SPECTRUM Posted 13 Oct 2017 | 16:50 GMT Photo: CMUDays after a 7.1-magnitude earthquake struck Mexico City, CMU sent its snake robots in to look for survivors. A few days after a 7.1-magnitude earthquake struck Mexico City last month, Carnegie Mellon University roboticists were contacted to see if their [...]

CMU Professor Is Renowned for Work in Robotic Manipulation PITTSBURGH— Matthew T. Mason, a researcher renowned for his work in robotic manipulation, is the winner of the 2018 IEEE Robotics and Automation Award, one of the top awards in the field of robotics. The IEEE awards committee cited Mason, professor of computer science and robotics [...]

NASA has awarded $100,000 to the Robotics Institute and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory through its Strategic University Research Project program to develop new navigation strategies that would enable future planetary rovers to traverse more complex terrains at higher speeds than now possible. Alonzo Kelly, professor of robotics, and robotics Ph.D. student Venkat Rajagopalan will work [...]

October 9, 2017 by Bill Koenig - Senior Editor, ADVANCEDMANUFACTURING.ORG A Caterpillar autonomous vehicle in operation at a mine. (Caterpillar photo)   Autonomous technology well established in mining, agriculture The auto industry’s biggest current focus is self-driving cars. Established automakers as well as technology companies such as Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google are working to develop cars and [...]

50 Years as Carnegie Mellon University › Founder Stories Red Whittaker Pioneer in space, Founder on Earth.

DARPA Urban Challenge Marked Dawn of Self-Driving Vehicles Members and friends of the Tartan Racing Team will gather Oct. 12-14 at Carnegie Mellon University to celebrate UC10, the 10th anniversary of the team's victory in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Urban Challenge self-driving car race. The event, including a keynote address from team leader Red Whittaker, the Fredkin University [...]

By Evan Ackerman IEEE SPECTRUM Posted 27 Sep 2017 CMU’s new gait-generating method means you can teach a dodecapod robot to transition into a nonapod robot that can carry stuff with two arms while using a third to point a camera. Robots that can be physically reconfigured to do lots of different things are, in [...]

Multi-jointed rescue robot gets first experience In live disaster  Carnegie Mellon University researchers last week deployed a snake-like robot to search for trapped survivors in a Mexico City  apartment building that collapsed in the7.1-magnitude earthquake that shook the city Sept. 19. The multi-jointed snakebot provided rescue workers with a video feed from two different passes [...]

  “Roboburgh,” has been used by the Post-Gazette 42 times. Courtney Linder Pittsburgh Post-Gazette clinder@post-gazette.com SEP 26, 2017 So the story goes, Mayor Bill Peduto began using #Roboburgh whenever he cited technology articles on Twitter. It seemed trendy and possibly even hip or, to some, dorky. The goal seemed to be to give Pittsburgh’s tech [...]

  Jessica Hodgins, professor of computer science and robotics, has been elected as president of SIGGRAPH, the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques. SIGGRAPH convenes the premier annual conference on computer graphics, which is attended by tens of thousands of computer professionals. The SIGGRAPH president serves a three-year [...]

System Allows Extra Time For Pedestrians With Disabilities Photos from Downtown Pittsburgh and East Liberty intersections featuring Smart Cities traffic technology for the upcoming Marketing effort. PITTSBURGH— Smart traffic signals that are designed to improve the flow of traffic also could help pedestrians with visual or other disabilities safely cross streets, or even [...]

Stacey Federoff Digital Producer Pittsburgh Business Times Sep 19, 2017, 2:25pm EDT Smart traffic signals could communicate with pedestrians’ smartphones to change lights in real time, thanks to a two-year project underway at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute. A $2 million grant from the Federal Highway Administration will help fund work led by CMU robotics [...]

Critical instant analysis, a new process for improved structural optimization in additive manufacturing, unveils the possibility of designing products that are lighter in weight and cheaper to produce. Credit: Burak Kara and Erva Ulu, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University September 18, 2017 by Nathan Healy, PHYS.ORG It's never long before the [...]

Learning tool will be field-tested in Africa for 15 months By Shilo Rea & Byron Spice RoboTutor LLC, a Carnegie Mellon University spinoff created by Professor Jack Mostow, was named one of five Global Learning XPRIZE finalists for its RoboTutor software, educational technology that teaches children basic math and reading skills. The XPRIZE competition is [...]

Original story with video World Headquarters To Be Built In Strip District September 18, 2017 7:49 PM By Andy Sheehan PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — Move over Uber, there’s a new self-driving kid in town. Ford Motor Company is taking a $1 billion stake in a Pittsburgh start-up called Argo AI, now one of four local companies [...]

Joseph Dussault Staff, The Christian Science Monitor September 11, 2017 — Single-purpose, assistive devices have given way to more accessible – and affordable – apps. Perhaps just as valuable is the glimpse into the capable lives of people with limited vision that apps like BlindWays offer. When asked how technology might improve the lives of [...]

The maturity of automated technology used in manufacturing is all over the map, says Carnegie Mellon Prof. Howie Choset, but there are concrete ways to fix that. By Stephanie Condon for Between the Lines | September 4, 2017 -- 12:00 GMT (05:00 PDT) | Topic: Innovation There's strong demand in the business world for robotics, [...]

Each summer, dozens of talented undergraduates from around the world come to Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute for its Summer Scholars program, an intensive 11-week program introducing them to state-of-the-art robotics research. This summer, CMU RISS is launching a partnership with DJI, the world's leading company in the civilian-drone industry. DJI directors and engineers partnered [...]

Angel Jordan, who played a pivotal role in establishing Carnegie Mellon University as one of the leading engineering, computer science and robotics institutions in the world, died Friday. He was 86. Jordan, University Professor Emeritus and a member of the prestigious National Academy of Engineering, served as CMU’s provost from 1983 to 1991, and was [...]

Congressman Mike Doyle placed each of the Girls of Steel names in a Congressional Record for the 7th consecutive year. It also includes George Kantor's name for winning the FIRST Woodie Flowers Award.

Chen Sun, Abhinav Shrivastava, Saurabh Singh and Abhinav Gupta of Carnegie Mellon and Google We have explored the effect of model complexity and GPU power over time but dataset size has remained the same. Full story

3D Printing Industry The novel concept for these retractible structures has been explored extensively, for the first time, in a study by researchers Christopher Yu, Keenan Crane and Stelian Coros of Carnegie Mellon University, Pennsylvania. Telescoping shapes defined at Carnegie Mellon. Image via Yu, Crane & Coros Full story

Robots in the "kid-size" (really around 16 inches tall) Robocup soccer league face off. These "Rhoban" bots, built by students at the University of Bordeaux, took first place in their division in the 2017 competition. (Courtesy Rhoban) One of the most important changes in 2017 was the addition of a mixed-team challenge, says Joydeep [...]

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. [...]

Mike Wagner, NREC, on panel of Unmanned Systems Caucus roundtable Chaired by Congressman Lipinski (Ranking Member, House Science Subcommittee on Research and Technology). Greg Winfree formerly Asst Sec., now with TAMU TII, is on right.

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 [...]

Minh Vo and Aayush Bansal were among the winners of 2017 Qualcomm fellowships. Congratulations! The QInF program is focused on recognizing, rewarding, and mentoring innovative PhD students across a broad range of technical research areas, based on Qualcomm’s core values of innovation, execution and teamwork. QInF enables graduate students to be mentored by our engineers [...]

Another RI Spinoff, Roadbotics, Earns Runner-up Prize. The Surtrac intelligent traffic signaling system developed by the Robotics Institute and spun off as Rapid Flow Technologies is the winner of the Smart Cities Global Innovation Award for Mobility organized by France’s Le Monde newspaper. The leader of the Surtrac project, Stephen Smith, research professor of robotics, [...]

Zulhasnan Rafique, the Malaysian ambassador to the United States, gets a close look at the CHIMP robot at the National Robotics Engineering Center during a May 23 visit arranged by the U.S. State Department. U.S. State Department Brings Diplomats to Pittsburgh More than 30 ambassadors and their spouses visited the National Robotics Engineering [...]

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 [...]

The smartphone app for navigating the blind, NavCog, developed jointly by CMU and IBM was field tested in Mitsui Fudosan’s COREDO Muromachi shopping park in Tokyo, Japan. NavCog was developed by the Robotic Institute's Cognitive Assistance Lab (CAL) led by Chieko Asakawa (Distinguished Service Professor) and Kris Kitani (Assistant Research Professor). CMU-IBM Smartphone App NavCog [...]

The NavCog project of the Cognitive Assistance Lab) received the best technical paper award at the 14th International Web for All Conference in Perth, Australia with the paper "Achieving Practical and Accurate Indoor Navigation for People with Visual Impairments". Congratulations to the authors, Dragan Ahmetovic, Masayuki Murata, Cole Gleason, Erin Brady, Hironobu Takagi, Kris Kitani [...]

The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) has elected 84 new members and 22 foreign members, announced NAE President C.D. (Dan) Mote Jr. today. This brings the total U.S. membership to 2,281 and the number of foreign members to 249. Election to the National Academy of Engineering is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an [...]

From IFT.org: Artur Dubrawski, director of the Auton Lab, Carnegie Mellon University, said that the lab researches new approaches to statistical data mining, specifically the underlying computer science, mathematics, statistics, and artificial intelligence of detection and exploitation of patterns in data. Government agencies routinely collect different kinds of data reflecting various issues regarding food safety, [...]

Cole Gleason, a Ph.D. student advised by Dr. Kris Kitani (RI) and Jeff Bigham (HCII), received a NSF GFRP fellowship. Cole's research focuses on developing navigation technology for people with visual impairments by combining computer vision and crowdsourcing. Full story here

Personal Object Recognizers for Blind People Receive Honorable Mention at CHI 2017[/caption] Robotics Institute faculty Kris Kitani and Chieko Asakawa in collaboration with Human-Computer Interaction Institute postdoctoral fellow Hernisa Kacorri and faculty Jeffrey Bigham received a Best Paper Honorable Mention for their project helping blind people identify objects at the ACM CHI Conference on Human [...]

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 [...]

WASHINGTON — Seventeen years after LTV Steel closed its Hazelwood operation, its site is being prepared for new life as a catalyst for the region’s — and the nation’s — next big industrial revolution. A new nonprofit offshoot of Carnegie Mellon University is in negotiations with foundations that own the former industrial site known as [...]

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 [...]

A two-part report on artificial intelligence, featuring such Carnegie Mellon robots as CHIMP and an autonomous boat, will aired Oct. 9, on CBS's 60 Minutes.

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 [...]

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 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 [...]

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 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 [...]

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 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 [...]

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 the hand within that 3-D world.

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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.

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 [...]

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. [...]

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 [...]

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. [...]

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.

Carnegie Mellon University’s National Robotics Engineering Center is inviting industry engineering, operations and research leaders to tour its Lawrenceville facility on April 9 and learn more about how its cutting-edge technology can address their companies’ needs.

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, [...]

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 [...]

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 are ready to become part of our everyday lives.

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, [...]

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, and tells the story not only of walking robots, but also computer graphics and the origins of the technology underlying modern advances in robots

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 [...]

The Robotics Institute's CREATE Lab will launch an educational project next year called Nearby Nature that will enable middle school and high school students in Pennsylvania and West Virginia to study scientific phenomena in almost any outdoor space, in both built and natural settings.

Stelian Coros, an assistant professor of robotics, is one of just six recipients of the 2015 Intel Early Career Faculty Award, which honors faculty members who show great promise as future academic leaders in disruptive computing technologies.

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.

Trips and stumbles too often lead to falls for amputees using leg prosthetics, but a robotic leg prosthesis being developed at Carnegie Mellon University promises to help users recover their balance by using techniques based on the way human legs are controlled.

Can children learn to read, write and do basic arithmetic without a teacher or classroom, relying only on tablet computers, each other and some intelligent software? A team of educational researchers from Carnegie Mellon University aims to find out in the $15 million Global Learning XPRIZE competition.

Citizens and government officials are using a new online resource, the Shenango Channel, that uses Carnegie Mellon University computer technology to share, compile and analyze images and air quality data related to a coke plant on Allegheny County’s Neville Island.

Datasets for everything from gene expression to employment demographics are growing so large and complex that automated methods sometimes seem the only way to glean knowledge from them. But a new web-based tool being developed at Carnegie Mellon University provides the option to keep human judgment and intuition in the analytic loop.

Even a novice can design and build a customized walking robot using a 3-D printer and off-the-shelf servo motors with the help of a new design tool developed by Disney Research and Carnegie Mellon University.

The 5th annual Robot Film Festival, after two years each in New York and San Francisco, is coming to Pittsburgh and the Row House Cinema in Lawrenceville on Saturday. The festival was founded by Heather Knight, a Ph.D. student in robotics, and Robotics Institute alumnus Marek Michalowski to celebrate robots, both on the screen and in performance.

A new smartphone app called SpeckSensor allows users to get up-to-date Air Quality Index (AQI) numbers for their current location and for other locales of their choosing, enabling them to quickly see if the air they are breathing is healthy and how it compares to other sites.

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, [...]

Four new faculty members have joined the Robotics Institute over the past year – Stelian Coros, Keenan Crane, Stephen Nuske and Deva Ramanan. Faculty, staff and students are invited to welcome them at the first Post Seminar Reception (PSR) of the semester at 4:45 p.m. Friday Sept. 18 in NSH 1513. Coros, an assistant professor [...]

Carnegie Mellon University is sending the largest delegation of any university to the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting of the New Champions in Dalian, China, next week, along with robots and Big Data visualization demonstrations that will run throughout the three-day event.

Pittsburgh magazine’s annual listing of the 50 Most Powerful People includes Andrew Moore, dean of the School of Computer Science and a professor of robotics and computer science.

HERB, the robot butler, and CHIMP, the semi-humanoid that was one of the top finishers in the DARPA Robotics Challenge in June, share the silver screen with such robots as Honda’s ASIMO, Boston Dynamics’ Atlas and a European consortium’s iCUB humanoid in National Geographic Studio’s latest film, Robots.

A Pittsburgh venture capital fund, Coal Hill Ventures, is launching a new business accelerator, dubbed the Robotics Hub, to identify, build, and guide the most promising startups – regardless of origin - in the burgeoning field of advanced robotics. GE Ventures is its founding sponsor.

Manuela Veloso, the Herbert A. Simon University Professor of Computer Science, will be the keynote speaker at this year’s Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, Oct. 14-16 in Houston.

Depth-sensing cameras, such as Microsoft’s Kinect controller for video games, have become widely used 3-D sensors. Now, a new imaging technology invented by Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Toronto addresses a major shortcoming of these cameras: the inability to work in bright light, especially sunlight.

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 [...]

A self-driving car made headlines this year when it drove cross country by itself. Carnegie Mellon's NavLab 5 also made headlines for a similar feat -- 20 years ago.

A newly released video from Time magazine, Pittsburgh: The Comeback, highlights the role of technology, and particularly the contributions of Carnegie Mellon University, in the revitalization of Pittsburgh. SCS Dean Andrew Moore and Robotics Institute Director Marital Hebert are among the community leaders interviewed on camera.

A new campaign, “Make for Humanity,” begins this week, seeking to harness the excitement and creativity surrounding the growing Maker Movement to improve the world, one community at a time. Carnegie Mellon University’s Illah Nourbakhsh will launch “M4H” in a keynote address Friday sponsored by Infosys at the White House’s “Week of Making.”

CHIMP, a four-limbed robot designed and built by Carnegie Mellon University’s Tartan Rescue Team, finished third and won $500,000 June 6 at the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC), a two-day event that pitted 24 of the world’s most advanced robots against each other in a test of their ability to respond to disasters.

“Faster” is the byword for the Tartan Rescue Team from Carnegie Mellon University’s National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC) as it makes final preparations for the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) Finals June 5-6.

A member of the high school robotics team Girls of Steel will join with the Field Robotics Center to run “Programming Your Future With Robotics,” a week-long camp for teaching computing concepts to middle school girls.

Students from three local high schools will screen documentary videos they produced through the CREATE Lab's Hear Me 101 Project at Pittsburgh Filmmakers Melwood Screening Room on Thursday evening, May 14, after which they will be available for online viewing at http://www.hear-me.net/hearme_101.

NASA’s Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Program has awarded $375,000 in contracts to Astrobotic Technology and Carnegie Mellon University to develop sensing and navigation technologies for finding minerals and other resources on the Moon, Mars, and other planetary bodies.

Ex Machina, a new sci-fi thriller that explores themes regarding artificial intelligence, robotics and the essence of humanity, will screen at 6 p.m. April 23 in McConomy Auditorium.

The Girls of Steel, a team of teen-aged girls sponsored by the Field Robotics Center, won the Chairman’s Award at the Buckeye Regional FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) in Cleveland March 28, qualifying the team for its fifth consecutive trip to the FRC Championship, April 22-25, in St. Louis, Mo.

Carnegie Mellon University’s Steve Collins and his collaborator Greg Sawicki at North Carolina State University have discovered a way to make humans more efficient at walking. In a new report in the journal Nature, they describe a lightweight, unpowered, wearable exoskeleton they developed to reduce the energy cost of human walking.

Carnegie Mellon University's Integrative Design, Arts and Technology Network (IDeATe) and Autodesk Inc., a world leader in 3-D design software, are launching a Reality Computing studio course for advanced undergraduate and graduate students that will be taught by the Robotics Institute's Pyry Matikainen.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have developed a way to use a smartphone’s sensors to build 3-D models of faces or other objects and — literally, with the wave of a hand — provide accurate measurements of those objects.

An innovative device developed by Carnegie Mellon University’s TechBridgeWorld research group to help visually impaired students learn how to write Braille using a slate and stylus is the winner of the 2014 Louis Braille Touch of Genius Prize for Innovation.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University who develop snake-like robots have picked up a few tricks from real sidewinder rattlesnakes on how to make rapid and even sharp turns with their undulating, modular device. Working with colleagues at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Zoo Atlanta, they have analyzed the motions of sidewinders and tested their observations on CMU’s snake robots.

Speck, a personal air pollution monitor introduced today at the SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas, will enable people to monitor the level of fine particulate matter suspended in the air inside their homes, helping them assess if their health is at risk. Developed at the Robotics Institute and now being marketed by a CMU spinoff company, Speck provides individuals with an unprecedented depth of knowledge about their personal exposure to particulates.

Illah Nourbakhsh says robots and artificial intelligence will increasingly displace people from many conventional jobs. It’s enough to make parents despair over their children’s career prospects, he acknowledged, and that’s why he’s publishing a pair of books, “Parenting for Technology Futures.”

A team of Carnegie Mellon University undergraduates is heading to California’s Mojave Desert this spring to flight test a sensor package they developed for analyzing large pits in the surface of the moon or Mars.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has qualified 14 additional teams, including competitors from Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, China and South Korea, to join teams from Carnegie Mellon University and elsewhere in the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) Finals, June 5-6 in Pomona, Calif.

The IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, or ICRA, is the world’s largest robotics conference and, like members of the robotics field, its organizers predominantly have been men. This year, however, the conference committee is composed entirely of women, with Carnegie Mellon University providing one of the largest contingents.

Astrobotic Technology, which is pursuing the Google Lunar XPrize together with Carnegie Mellon University, will not only deliver its own robot to the moon, but also a pair of rovers for Hakuto, the only Japanese team in the competition.

In a demonstration aboard a former U.S. Navy ship, a small quadrotor developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute and spin-off company Sensible Machines flew autonomously through dark, smoke-filled compartments to map fires and locate victims.

Uber and Carnegie Mellon University have announced a strategic partnership that includes the creation of the Uber Advanced Technologies Center in Pittsburgh, near the CMU campus. The center will focus on the development of key long-term technologies that advance Uber’s mission of bringing safe, reliable transportation to everyone, everywhere.

The Google Lunar XPrize has awarded a $1 million Milestone Prize to Astrobotic Technology for achieving technical goals set for its lunar landing system. It is the third Milestone Prize awarded to the Astrobotic and Carnegie Mellon University team that is preparing to land its robot on the moon.

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 [...]

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 user’s needs.

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 [...]

Robotics Institute alumnus Henry Kang used the subject of his Ph.D. research, image-based object recognition, to help create an iPhone app, StyleIt, that gives users advice on how to create stylish outfits.

The Google Lunar XPRIZE announced today that Andy, a four-wheeled lunar rover designed and built by Carnegie Mellon University, is the winner of a Milestone Prize for mobility after judges concluded it is thus far the only robot among the competing teams to meet development benchmarks for flight readiness.

Yong-Lae Park, an assistant professor in the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute and the founder of the Soft Robotics and Bionics Lab, is among the latest recipients of the Okawa Research Grant, which is awarded by the Okawa Foundation for Information and Telecommunications.

A system of four cameras, called Breathe Cam, now keeps a constant watch on air quality over Pittsburgh, providing citizens with a new interactive tool for monitoring and documenting visual pollution in the air they breathe and even tracing it back to its sources. Funded by The Heinz Endowments as part of its Breathe Project, the camera system was developed and deployed by the CREATE Lab in Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute.

For three years, a group of robots, known as CoBots, has been navigating the corridors of Carnegie Mellon University’s Gates and Hillman centers and Newell-Simon Hall, running errands and guiding visitors without human supervision. On Nov. 18, their collective odometer reached 1,000 kilometers — more than 620 miles — a first-ever accomplishment for indoor autonomous robots.

Carnegie Mellon University today unveiled Andy, a four-wheeled robot designed to scramble up steep slopes and survive the temperature swings and high radiation encountered while exploring the moon’s pits, caves and polar ice.

Carnegie Mellon University will unveil its latest robot and present lunar exploration technologies at a technology fair, “Meet Andy: Technology for the New Moon,” from 10 to 11 a.m. Monday, Nov. 24, in the Planetary Robotics Laboratory, located on the first floor of the Gates and Hillman centers.

Stephen Smith has found a twist to a sticky situation. A systems engineer who is studying in the Master of Science Robotics Systems Development program, he already has started one company and hopes to revolutionize the food industry by making it easier to clean out peanut butter jars and other food containers.

Four inventions that trace their origins to the School of Computer Science and, particularly, the Robotics Institute, have been honored by Popular Science's annual Best of What’s New Awards. This year’s winners, published in the magazine’s December issue now on sale, include the Flex System, a neck surgery tool based on snake robot research; 360fly, a panoramic video camera; and 3D Object Manipulation Software, a photo editing tool.

Martial Hebert, a leading researcher in computer vision and robotics at Carnegie Mellon University since 1984, will become director of the university’s Robotics Institute, effective as of Nov. 15, School of Computer Science Dean Andrew W. Moore announced.

BBC PopUp, an experimental mobile news bureau, will spend November in Pittsburgh, shooting video stories that will be posted online and broadcast on BBC World. The Robotics Institute’s CREATE Lab is working with BBC PopUp to host a community meeting to gather story ideas at 7 p.m. Monday in Newell-Simon Hall 3305.

The pivotal character in Disney's new animated feature, "Big Hero 6," is a balloon-like robot called Baymax that was inspired by an inflatable robotic arm developed at the Robotics Institute. Soft robotics is a growing field of research at Carnegie Mellon University and beyond.

The amazing ability of sidewinder snakes to quickly climb sandy slopes was once something biologists only vaguely understood and roboticists only dreamed of replicating. By studying the snakes in a unique bed of inclined sand and using a snake-like robot to test ideas spawned by observing the real animals, both biologists and roboticists have now gained long-sought insights.

A smart headlight developed at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute enables drivers to take full advantage of their high beams without fear of blinding oncoming drivers or suffering from the glare that can occur when driving in snow or rain at night.

Editors of photos routinely resize objects, or move them up, down or sideways, but Carnegie Mellon University researchers are adding an extra dimension to photo editing by enabling editors to turn or flip objects any way they want, even exposing surfaces not visible in the original photograph.

Robotics Institute researchers have developed techniques for combining the views of 480 video cameras mounted in a two-story geodesic dome to perform large-scale 3D motion reconstruction, including volleyball games, the swirl of air currents and even a cascade of confetti.

Abhinav Gupta, assistant research professor in the Robotics Institute, is the recipient of a Bosch Young Faculty Fellowship to support his research on computer vision and large-scale visual learning.

Abhinav Shrivastava, a PhD student in robotics, is one of a dozen computer science, electrical engineering and mathematics students who are 2014 recipients of the Microsoft Research PhD Fellowship.

Robotics Institute spinoff Astrobotic Technology and Masten Space Systems say a computer vision and navigation system developed by Astrobotic successfully landed Masten’s Xombie vertical-takeoff vertical-landing suborbital rocket at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California.

Drew Bagnell, associate professor of robotics, is among the latest recipients of the Okawa Research Grant, which is awarded by the Okawa Foundation for Information and Telecommunications.

Carnegie Mellon University has brought its autonomous vehicle to Washington, D.C., to enable Congress to experience the technology up close and personal. CMU will provide up to 40 members of Congress the opportunity to ride the vehicle around Washington.

One lesson to be drawn from the stage debut of HERB, an acronym for Home Exploring Robot Butler, might be summarized by paraphrasing a legendary theatrical quote: “A system crash is easy. Comedy is hard.” The May 1 performance of David Ives’ “Sure Thing” by HERB and his human co-star, drama major Olivia Brown (A’15), was well-received by the audience. If not flawless, it at least generated laughs in all of the right places. But creating those 12 minutes of thespian magic in the Helen Wayne Rauh Studio Theatre required months of preparation by an ad hoc team of researchers and students from the Robotics Institute and the School of Drama.

LaunchCMU's latest cycle shone a bright light on how robotics technology originating at Carnegie Mellon University is making a successful impact in the marketplace. The Silicon Valley showcase of cutting-edge technology, research and innovation brought together venture capitalists, investment experts, CMU startups, faculty and alumni.

“Robogenesis,” the latest novel from Robotics Institute Ph.D. alumnus Daniel H. Wilson, the latest novel from Robotics Institute Ph.D. alumnus Daniel H. Wilson, has debuted to positive reviews, with Boing Boing describing it as “a terrifying and technologically rigorous sequel” to his earlier bestseller, “Robopocalypse.”

Carnegie Mellon University’s National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC) and Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. are working with the U.S. Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) to show that an autonomous helicopter and a driverless ground vehicle can work together to autonomously survey a contaminated site.

Small, autonomous airboats, disguised to look like crocodiles, helped scientists measure water quality this spring in Kenya’s Mara River. An estimated 4,000 hippos use the river as a toilet with potentially deadly effects for fish living downriver. The airboats, developed by the Robotics Institute and operated by a CMU spinoff, Platypus LLC, skimmed over the surface of several hippopotamus pools in the river, where they scanned the river bottom for deposits of hippo dung and made various measurements of water quality.

Robotics Institute spin-off Astrobotic Technology will develop the capability to perform autonomous, controlled landings on the Moon, Mars, and asteroids under the terms of a new Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Five hundred Finch robots, developed by the Robotics Institute's CREATE Lab and marketed by BirdBrain Technologies, are now available for lending from the Chicago Public Library, thanks to a donation by Google Chicago in support of computer programming education.

Seegrid Corporation, the leader in vision-guided automated guided vehicles (AGVs), recently expanded its staff to meet product demand, hiring two Carnegie Mellon interns as full-time employees.

Students from five local high schools focused their cameras on classmates, teachers and communities to produce documentary videos addressing such topics as bullying, the role of technology in education and school rankings. The videos, produced through the Hear Me 101 project and three other community organizations, will be screened for the public at 6 p.m., May 22 at Pittsburgh Filmmakers Melwood Screening Room.

Readers of the provocative bestseller “Capital in the 21st Century,” who want to take a closer look at the income database analyzed by economist and author Thomas Piketty can take advantage of a new online tool, Explorable Inequality, created by the Robotics Institute's CREATE Lab.

Astrobotic Technology, a spinoff from Carnegie Mellon, has been selected as one of three companies that will partner with NASA to develop reliable and cost-effective lunar landing capabilities as part of the Lunar Cargo Transportation and Landing by Soft Touchdown (CATALYST) initiative.

Timelapse, the project from Time magazine that uses Carnegie Mellon's GigaPan Time Machine technology to explore 30 years of Landsat imagery of Earth, has won the People's Choice Award for Best Use of Video or Moving Image in the 2014 Webby Award Competition. The Webbys are international awards for excellence on the Internet.

The robot-development skills of the Girls of Steel, a team of high-school-age girls from the Pittsburgh area, are being tested at the FIRST Robotics Competition Championship, April 23-26 in St. Louis, Mo. Several team members, however, already have put those skills to practical use in helping to build a robot for Autodesk, a leader in 3D design software.

Astrobotic Technology successfully tested the landing guidance system it will use to place a robot on the moon during a February test in the Mojave Desert aboard the Masten Aerospace Xombie, a vertical-takeoff, vertical-landing suborbital rocket.

Like other scientists, astrophysicists first used computers as glorified calculators, but in the emerging era of Big Data, computers are poised to become true scientific partners. Automated tools being developed at Carnegie Mellon University in a new federally sponsored project could hasten that reality.

A high-power wall connector for Tesla electric cars has been installed for public use at Carnegie Mellon University’s Electric Garage in Oakland, joining eight existing vehicle recharging stations. The garage at 4621 Forbes Ave. will host an open house to celebrate the addition from 4 to 7 p.m., April 4.

Medrobotics Corp. has announced it will begin limited marketing in Europe of a robot-assisted surgical device that is based on the snake robot research of Howie Choset, Carnegie Mellon University professor of robotics. The Flex System is a flexible endoscopic system that enables surgeons to access and visualize hard-to-reach anatomical locations.

TIME magazine has employed the GigaPan technology developed by Carnegie Mellon University’s CREATE Lab and NASA to produce a breathtaking panorama from atop the country’s newest and tallest skyscraper, One World Trade Center.

Carlow University has received a $205,000 grant commitment from the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation to establish a satellite on its campus of Carnegie Mellon University’s CREATE Lab. The satellite will join three previously established CREATE Lab satellites at Marshall University, West Virginia University and West Liberty University in West Virginia.

Carnegie Mellon University researchers have developed a SCRABBLE-playing robot to explore what will cause people to engage with robots for extended periods and to enjoy it. The project anticipates the day when humans and robots will interact routinely at work and at home.

Victor the Gamebot, who plays SCRABBLE and trashtalks with humans on the third floor of the Gates and Hillman centers, is the subject of a feature in the Wall Street Journal. Victor is the latest social robot developed under the leadership of Reid Simmons, research professor in the Robotics Institute.

HERB, the Home Exploring Robot Butler, is no thespian. He's a mobile, two-armed robot that serves as a testbed for software and technologies that will someday enable robots to assist people in their homes. Nevertheless, HERB will appear this spring in "All in the Timing," a collection of plays by David Ives, and ETC student Katie Correll is part of a team preparing the robot for his stage debut.

Research by scientists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Robotics Institute shows that high-resolution, time-lapse photography, such as GigaPan Time Machine, can help scientists study plant behavior over vast scales outside of the laboratory.

Astrobotic Technology, which is attempting to win the Google Lunar XPRIZE in partnership with Carnegie Mellon University, has qualified for Milestone Prizes offered by the XPRIZE organization, which could net the team up to $1.75 million for reaching its objectives in three categories – Landing, Mobility, and Imaging. CMU will lead the effort in the Mobility category, which will demonstrate that the rover can survive the vacuum and extreme cold of the Moon, as well as show that it can complete and document a 500-meter traverse on the lunar surface.

The Buhl Planetarium at Carnegie Science Center will celebrate Back to the Moon Day this Saturday with three showings of “Back to the Moon for Good,” a 25-minute film about the Google Lunar X Prize competition. Members of Astrobotic Technology, the Carnegie Mellon spinoff that aims to win the prize, will make remarks and be on hand with information about the team.

"The Robots That Saved Pittsburgh," an article in the latest issue of Politico magazine, highlights the role of the Robotics Institute in the rebirth of Pittsburgh following the collapse of the steel industry.

An enthusiastic group of non-experts, working through an online interface and receiving feedback from lab experiments, has produced designs for RNA molecules that are consistently more successful than those generated by the best computerized design algorithms, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Stanford University report. The research will be published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Online Early Edition.

Henry Ford Innovations – a venture development business unit of the Henry Ford Health System – today announced it will partner with the Quality of Life Technology (QoLT) Center to develop new digital health solutions that aim to improve patient outcomes and the art of transitional care post-discharge.

A soft, wearable device that mimics the muscles, tendons and ligaments of the lower leg could aid in the rehabilitation of patients with ankle-foot disorders such as drop foot, said Yong-Lae Park, an assistant professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University.

The Tartan Rescue Team from Carnegie Mellon University’s National Robotics Engineering Center ranked third among teams competing in the DARPA Robotics Challenge Trials this weekend in Homestead, Fla., and was selected by the agency as one of eight teams eligible for DARPA funding to prepare for next December’s Finals.

The Tartan Rescue Team and its CHIMP robot will be Carnegie Mellon University’s most visible presence at the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) Trials in Homestead, Fla., Dec. 20-21, but CMU also will play an important role on a second participant, Team WRECS, based at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). Chris Atkeson, professor of robotics, and 10 current or recent CMU grad students and postdocs, are part of WPI’s Robotics Engineering C Squad (WRECS).

Collaborative robots, or CoBots, developed by Manuela Veloso and her Carnegie Mellon research team, have been running errands for occupants of the Gates and Hillman centers for more than two years. Now, they are the subject of a “Science Nation” video and special report by the National Science Foundation.

It’s only been a few weeks since Carnegie Mellon University’s National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC) completed assembly of its four-limbed CHIMP robot, but the Tartan Rescue Team has high hopes for the robot’s performance at the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) Trials Dec. 20-21. “We’ve been on a fast track for the past year, doing detailed design and development of CHIMP at the same time as we were writing and testing its software on surrogate hardware,” said Tony Stentz, NREC director and leader of the Tartan Rescue Team.

BirdBrain Technologies, a Carnegie Mellon University startup, has released a flock of its Finch robots for Computer Science Education Week, Dec. 9–15. Developed at the Robotics Institute, the low-cost, tabletop robots are on loan to educators across the U.S. who are using them to help get kids excited about computer programming.

A computer program called the Never Ending Image Learner (NEIL) is running 24 hours a day at Carnegie Mellon University, searching the Web for images, doing its best to understand them on its own and, as it builds a growing visual database, gathering common sense on a massive scale.

Anca Dragan, a Ph.D student in the Robotics Institute since 2009, is one of 15 U.S. students chosen for the 2013-2014 Intel PhD Fellowship Program. She is a member of the Personal Robotics Laboratory led by Sidd Srinivasa, associate professor of robotics.

Using autonomous navigation software first developed at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute, NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity this week completed its first two-day autonomous drive, a new technique that enables the mobile laboratory to cover ground faster.

Manuela Veloso, professor of computer science, talked with the New York Times' John Markoff about her CoBots and how they are part of a new breed of robots built to interact with people. Markoff included her views in his article, "Marking Robots More Like Us."

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, are collaborating on a five-year, $4.6 million federally funded project to advance physical access and public transportation for people with disabilities by bringing together computer science technology and the principles of universal design.

Story Collider, a national storytelling project, has posted a podcast featuring Victor Hwang, a masters student in the Robotics Institute, talking about his experience preparing computer code for a NASA spacecraft. He was one of five Carnegie Mellon students to share their stories about science at an Oct. 21 show at the Rex Theater sponsored by Story Collider and Public Communication for Researchers.

Robotic rotorcraft for inspecting bridges and other infrastructure, tools for minimally invasive surgery that guide surgeons by creating 3D maps of internal organs and assistive robots for blind travelers are among seven new Carnegie Mellon University research projects sponsored through the National Robotics Initiative.

The website The Verge recently visited Pittsburgh to find out why it has become the Robot City. The site has now posted an article and a video Robot City: How the Machines Are Driving Pittsburgh's Future, which includes interviews with Sidd Srinivasa, Red Whittaker, Howie Choset and other members of the Robotics Institute.

Nathan Michael, assistant research professor of robotics, was part of a team at Penn cited by Popular Mechanics as one of “Ten Innovators Who Changed The World in 2013.” The Penn team, led by Vijay Kumar, is developing tiny quadrotors that can autonomously fly in squadrons to map and assess dangerously compromised buildings.

An innovative program that introduces robotic technology into non-technical middle school classes will be used by suburban Pittsburgh and rural West Virginia schools in a federally funded research project to identify and nurture students with an affinity for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

Force sensing is an essential requirement for dexterous robot manipulation, e.g., for extravehicular robots making vehicle repairs. Although strain gauges have been widely used, a new sensing approach is desirable for applications that require greater robustness, design flexibility including a high degree of multiplexibility, and immunity to electromagnetic noise. This invention is a force and [...]

This article describes the design, fabrication, and calibration of a highly compliant artificial skin sensor. The sensor consists of multilayered mircochannels in an elastomer matrix filled with a conductive liquid, capable of detecting multiaxis strains and contact pressure. A novel manufacturing method comprised of layered molding and casting processes is demonstrated to fabricate the multilayered [...]

BirdBrain Technologies, a Pittsburgh startup that commercializes projects developed by Carnegie Mellon University’s CREATE Lab, will loan 1,000 of its Finch robots to school districts or educational groups during Computer Science Education Week (CSEdWeek), Dec. 8-14.

Former Robotics Institute faculty member Doug L. James and Stanford University's Pat Hanrahan, computer scientists whose innovations in computer graphics have enhanced such movies as “Avatar,” “Hugo,” “The Dark Knight,” “Finding Nemo” and “Star Trek,” are each recipients this year of Katayanagi Prizes in Computer Science.

The CREATE Lab’s Hear Me 101 project this summer helped Wilkinsburg students produce a short documentary, “Wilkinsburg: The Way We See It,” which the students will screen at 6 p.m. Monday at Hosanna House, 807 Wallace Ave., Wilkinsburg.

“Do Robots Dream of Cookies?” a video starring the Robotics Institute’s HERB, the Home Exploring Robot Butler, won top honors at the Robot Film Festival July 20-21 in San Francisco. The video features HERB’s newly acquired ability to separate Oreo cookies and was created as an online component of this year’s “Cookie vs. Creme” advertising campaign for the popular brand.

It would be impossible to compute all of the ways a piece of cloth might shift, fold and drape over a moving human figure. But after six months of computation, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of California, Berkeley, are pretty sure they’ve simulated almost every important configuration of that cloth. This presents a new paradigm for computer graphics, in which it will be possible to provide real-time simulation for virtually any complex phenomenon, whether it’s a naturally flowing robe or a team of galloping horses.

The fingers of thousands of people who created sketches of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie on their iPhones can collectively guide and correct the drawing strokes of subsequent touchscreen users in an application created by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Microsoft Research. The app compensates for the “fat finger” problem associated with touchscreens, automatically correcting a person’s drawing strokes while preserving the user’s artistic style.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) today announced that a team from Carnegie Mellon University’s National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC) is one of six Track A teams chosen to compete this December in trials for the DARPA Robotics Challenge. DARPA announced the trials will be Dec. 20-21 at the Homestead-Miami Speedway in Florida and will be open to the public.

Tests of a modular snake robot in an Austrian nuclear power plant proved the multi-jointed robot with a camera on its head can crawl through a variety of steam pipes and connecting vessels, suggesting it could be a valuable inspection tool, report researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute. The snake robot was able to maneuver through multiple bends, slip through open valves and negotiate vessels with multiple openings. With a video camera and LED light on its head, the snake was able to peer into holes and get multiple views of items inside the pipes.

The CMDragons, Carnegie Mellon University’s team in the RoboCup small-size league, performed impressively in the finals of the RoboCup 2013 world championship on June 30 in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, before finally falling to the ZJUNlict team from China’s Zhejiang University by the narrowest of margins in a shoot out.

Blue Belt Technologies, a Carnegie Mellon spinoff that includes a number of School of Computer Science alumni and faculty members, has received FDA clearance to market its NavioPFS™ orthopedic surgical system. It is the first spinoff of the Center for Technology Transfer and Enterprise Creations (CTTEC) to receive such clearance.

Anki, a robotics startup founded by a trio of Robotics Institute alumni, emerged from stealth mode to announce its first product during one of the highest profile events in the tech world: the keynote of Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference June 10 in San Francisco.

The autonomous, solar-powered Zoë, which became the first robot to map microbial life during a 2005 field expedition in Chile’s Atacama Desert, is heading back to the world’s driest desert this month on a NASA astrobiology mission led by Carnegie Mellon University and the SETI Institute. This time, Zoë is equipped with a one-meter drill to search for subsurface life.

Scott L. Delp, professor of bioengineering, mechanical engineering and orthopaedic surgery at Stanford University, will present the plenary lecture for Dynamic Walking 2013. The June 10-13 conference focuses on the fundamental principles of legged locomotion and related dynamic behavior and is hosted by Carnegie Mellon University. About 175 people are expected to attend the week’s sessions.

Daniel P. Siewiorek has been named director of the Quality of Life Technology (QoLT) Center, a National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center. Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh are partners in the center, which focuses on creating intelligent systems that improve the quality of life for everyone while enabling older adults and people with disabilities.

Carnegie Mellon University has joined Clemson University and five other university partners to launch the Institute for African-American Mentoring in Computing Science (iAAMCS), a U.S. resource for increasing African-American participation in computing. It includes a robotics competition that will be run by David Touretzky, research professor of computer science.

The Allegheny Conference's Sunday morning television program, "Our Region's Business" on WPXI featured the Quality of Life Technology Center in its May 5 episode. Host Bill Flanigan visited the University of Pittsburgh lab in Bakery Square and interviewed Dan Siewiorek, QoLT Center director and professor of electrical and computer engineering and computer science, and Pitt's Rory Cooper, the center's co-director. The episode is available on YouTube.

Members of the public can now easily explore almost 30 years of Earth imagery from NASA’s Landsat through TIME Magazine’s new Timelapse project. The project is a collaborative effort between TIME, Google, NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), with the assistance of Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute.

A robot can struggle to discover objects in its surroundings when it relies on computer vision alone. But by taking advantage of all of the information available to it — an object’s location, size, shape and even whether it can be lifted — a robot can continually discover and refine its understanding of objects, say researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute.

A robotic paint-stripping system being developed by Carnegie Mellon University's National Robotics Engineering Center and Concurrent Technologies Corporation of Johnstown, Pa., was named a Gold winner in the materials science category of the 2013 Edison Awards, announced April 25 at an awards ceremony in Chicago.

Naoka Gunawardena, a junior at The Ellis School and a member of the Girls of Steel, a robotics team sponsored by the Field Robotics Center, was one of 10 national winners of Dean’s List honors at the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition Championship April 27 in St. Louis.

Robots that interpret poetry, the electronic innards of toys and low-cost sensors that count the pollution particles in the air are among the artifacts that will be on display when the Robotics Institute's CREATE Lab takes over the Assemble gallery May 3-31.

Eric Whitman, a fifth-year Ph.D. student in the Robotics Institute, was one of 10 people who compete in the new Discovery Channel series, "Big Brain Theory: Pure Genius" hosted by Kal Penn. The show, which seeks to identify talented young innovators, will premiere at 10 p.m. May 1.

The Hear Me Project of the Robotics Institute’s CREATE Lab will launch a new four-month campaign focused on the theme of School Climate with an open house from 6 to 8 p.m. Friday at Big Dog Coffee, 2717 Sarah St., on the South Side.

Illah Nourbakhsh, professor of robotics, is one of five agents in the Carnegie Museum of Art's new Hillman Photography Initiative. The initiative aims to be a living laboratory for exploring the rapidly changing field of photography and its impact on the world.

William “Red” Whittaker, professor of robotics, talked with the Big Picture Science radio show about driverless cars. Listen to his interview about the technology and where it is taking us. Whittaker is a pioneer of autonomous navigation and led Carnegie Mellon's victorious Tartan Racing Team in the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge robot race.

Carnegie Mellon University will celebrate National Robotics Week with a lecture by author and Robotics Institute alumnus Daniel H. Wilson, the annual Mobot mobile robot races and robot demonstrations by Robotics Institute researchers. These public events will be April 18-19, coinciding with the university’s annual Spring Carnival. National Robotics Week this year is geared toward [...]

Robots already vacuum our floors, help dispose of bombs and are exploring Mars. But in his new book, “Robot Futures,” Illah Nourbakhsh, professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, argues that robots are not just wondrous machines, but a new species that bridges the material and digital worlds. The ramifications for society are both good and bad, he says, and people need to start thinking about that.

The Girls of Steel, a robotics team composed of high-school-age girls, and the team’s robot, E.V.E., competed at the Pittsburgh Regional FIRST® Robotics Competition, March 14-16, at the University of Pittsburgh’s Petersen Events Center. The team qualified to advance to the FIRST Championship, April 24-27 in St. Louis.

A team from Carnegie Mellon University’s National Robotics Engineering Center is building a new class of robot to compete in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Robotics Challenge — a human-size robot that moves, not by walking, but on rubberized tracks on the extremities of each of its four limbs. Though the appearance of the CMU Highly Intelligent Mobile Platform, or CHIMP, is vaguely simian, its normal mode of locomotion will be much like that of a tank, with the tracks of all four limbs on the ground.

The Robotics Institute’s Home Exploring Robot Butler, better known as HERB, is featured in a YouTube video that is part of Oreo’s ongoing “Cookie vs. Creme” campaign. The video, shot Feb. 12 in the Personal Robotics Lab in Newell-Simon Hall, debuted March 8.

A robotic paint-stripping system being developed by the National Robotics Engineering Center and Concurrent Technologies Corporation has been named a 2013 finalist in the internationally renowned Edison Awards.

Here's another extremely cool offshoot of the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute. Platypus LLC build autonomous robotic airboats that can be deployed for a wide range of usages including environmental data and monitoring hard-to-reach spots after natural disasters like flooding.

Football fans have become accustomed to viewing televised games from a dozen or more camera angles, but researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Electro-Communications (UEC) in Tokyo suggest another possible camera position: inside the ball itself. They have shown that a camera embedded in the side of a rubber-sheathed plastic foam football can record video while the ball is in flight that could give spectators a unique, ball’s-eye view of the playing field.

Takeo Kanade, one of the world’s foremost researchers in computer vision, spoke to students, faculty and the community as part of the A. Nico Habermann Distinguished Lecture Series in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar.

HERB, the Home Exploring Robot Butler, was among the first campus celebrities to shake hands with CMU President-elect Subra Suresh and his family at a Feb. 21 welcome reception in Rangos Hall. The Robotics Institute’s Personal Robotics Lab uses the two-armed HERB as a testbed for algorithms, software and other technology that will enable robots to perform challenging manipulation tasks in places where people live and work.

Heather Knight is accustomed to working with a 2-foot-tall, plastic-bodied humanoid robot named Data, a robot comedian that is part of her research on social robotics. As a contestant on a new Syfy series, however, she controls a much different beast: an 8-foot-tall fighting robot called Medieval. Made of steel and chain mail and brandishing a shield, Medieval is one of 12 robots built especially for Robot Combat League, which premieres at 10 p.m. ET on Feb. 26.

William “Red” Whittaker, director of Carnegie Mellon’s Field Robotics Center and CEO of Astrobotic Technology Inc., will lead a NASA-funded study to figure out how robots such as the Mars rover Curiosity can avoid getting stuck in sinking sand or similarly hazardous terrain.

Carnegie Mellon University has signed a five-year master agreement with one of the world’s largest mining companies, London-based Anglo American PLC, to develop robotic technologies for mining.

Bloomberg Businessweek ran a profile on Howie Choset, professor of robotics, and about his pioneering work in building snake-like robots. “He is pushing his robots to operate in environments robots traditionally couldn’t work in — sand, debris, rubble,” says Daniel Goldman, a physics and biology researcher at Georgia Institute of Technology and research collaborator with Choset.

The Robotics Institute's National Robotics Engineering Center is part of a team assembled by prime contractor Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) to design, build and test an unmanned autonomous surface vessel that can track a diesel-electric submarine for months and over thousands of kilometers with minimal supervision. The SAIC has released a YouTube video showing how this new type of craft could be deployed.

A research team led by Andrew Schwartz, a professor of neurobiology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and an adjunct faculty member in the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute, has enabled a woman with longstanding quadriplegia to control a human-like robot arm using two electrodes implanted in her brain. Watch CBS's 60 Minutes report.

What is everyone looking at? It’s a common question in social settings because the answer identifies something of interest, or helps delineate social groupings. Those insights someday will be essential for robots designed to interact with humans, so researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute have developed a method for detecting where people’s gazes intersect. The researchers tested the method using groups of people with head-mounted video cameras. By noting where their gazes converged in three-dimensional space, the researchers could determine if they were listening to a single speaker, interacting as a group, or even following the bouncing ball in a ping-pong game.

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has named Raj Reddy, the Mozah Bint Nasser University Professor of Computer Science and Robotics and the founding director of the Robotics Institute, among its latest class of ACM Fellows.

The Carnegie Mellon research team that created Tiramisu, a smartphone app that enables transit riders to create realtime information about bus schedules and seating, has won this year’s Federal Communications Commission Chairman’s Award for Advancement in Accessibility in the Geo-Location Services category.

Car and Driver magazine named Srinivasa Narasimhan's smart headlight system as one of the ten most promising technologies for 2013. The system can improve visibility in rain and snowstorms by constantly redirecting light to shine between particles of precipitation.

RobotRadar.org, a web site co-founded by Illah Nourbakhsh, professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, will share the insights of leading thinkers and experts in robotics regarding the popular news media’s coverage of robotics.

Daniel Wilson, the author of the best-selling "Robopocalypse" and a Ph.D. alumnus of the Robotics Institute, is among the 25 most powerful authors in Hollywood, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Carnegie Mellon University’s National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC) and Concurrent Technologies Corporation (CTC) of Johnstown, Pa., are working with the Air Force Research Laboratory and Ogden Air Logistics Center 309 AMXG to develop and demonstrate a robotic system that uses high-powered lasers to remove coatings from fighter and cargo aircraft.

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The BBC recently reported on the science of geckos and the secret behind their uncanny climbing ability. Metin Sitti, professor of robotics and mechanical engineering, said creating synthetic materials that provide the same sort of adhesion as a gecko's footpad could lead to new kinds of closure technologies.

The Nov. 14 episode of NOVA ScienceNOW, “What Will the Future Look Like?” featured a profile of Adrien Treuille, assistant professor of computer science and robotics, and EteRNA, his unique research project that taps online game play to explore RNA design.

Guy Zinman, a project scientist in the Lane Center for Computational Biology, accepts a treat from CoBot as the pumpkin-garbed robot reverse-trick-or-treated in the halls of the Gates and Hillman centers and in Newell-Simon Hall on Halloween. The autonomous robot is a project of Manuela Veloso, professor of computer science, and her research group.

The Robot Hall of Fame® inducted four robots chosen for the first time by a popular vote — Aldebaran Robotics’ NAO humanoid, iRobot’s PackBot bomb disposal robot, Boston Dynamics’ four-legged BigDog and WALL-E, the fictional robot of the namesake Pixar movie — during a ceremony Oct. 23 at Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh. See a slideshow of the event.

Roboticists at Carnegie Mellon University will field two teams in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Robotics Challenge, a competition in which robots will perform complex, physically challenging tasks as they respond to disaster scenarios in human-engineered environments, such as nuclear power plants.

Bossa Nova Robotics, a company founded by Robotics Institute PhD alumnus Sarjoun Skaff, announced Oct. 23 at the RoboBusiness Leadership Summit that it is producing mObi, the first commercially available robot that uses a unique locomotion technology pioneered by the Robotics Institute’s Ralph Hollis in his Ballbot robot.

The work of the Robotics Institute is so expansive that it defies easy description. But a new brochure is designed to tell prospective students, potential sponsors and the public at large the essentials of the institute’s history and of its future direction.

Carnegie Mellon's Entertainment Technology Center presents the fifth Robot Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony at the Carnegie Science Center,6:30-9:00 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 23. Cocktails, hors d'oeuvres, and lots of entertainment included. Purchase tickets: http://www.robothalloffame.org/register.html.

Students pursuing computer science, engineering or other undergraduate degrees at Carnegie Mellon University will have the option this fall to include an additional major in robotics. The Robotics Institute already offers more undergraduate robotics courses than any other university in the world and for the past 12 years has offered an undergraduate minor in robotics. The additional major in robotics, however, responds to the growing interest of students in this multidisciplinary field and to demands by employers for more graduates with a deep understanding of this critical technology.

Astrobotic Technology Inc. has completed assembly of a full-size prototype of Polaris, a solar-powered robot that will search for potentially rich deposits of water ice at the moon’s poles. The first of its kind, Polaris can accommodate a drill to bore one meter into the lunar surface and can operate in a lunar regions characterized by dark, long shadows and a sun that hugs the horizon. Astrobotic, a Robotics Institute spinoff that develops robotics technology for planetary missions, is developing Polaris for an expedition to the moon’s northern pole.

Kevin J. Dowling (S’83, CS’94, ’97), the Robotics Institute's first employee, was among 15 Carnegie Mellon University alumni, students and faculty honored for their achievements and service to the university by the CMU Alumni Association as part of Cèilidh Weekend.

Adaptive traffic signals deployed as a pilot project by the Robotics Institute’s Stephen Smith have demonstrated they can reduce both harmful vehicle emissions and frustratingly long travel times in Pittsburgh’s busy East Liberty neighborhood. The pilot project was sponsored by three Pittsburgh foundations and deployed in cooperation with the City of Pittsburgh and East Liberty Development Inc.

Two graduate students in the Robotics Institute – Sanjiban Choudhury and Ruta Desai – are among five Carnegie Mellon University graduate students named 2013 Seibel Scholars by the Seibel Scholars Foundation.

On a recent, hot Friday afternoon members of the Platypus team were gathered around a pond in Schenley Park below the Carnegie Mellon University testing their technology.

Hear Me, a youth project based in the Robotics Institute’s CREATE Lab, will provide personal stories of bullying for a community forum on bullying organized by WYEP and WESA. More information on the free event at 6:30 p.m. Sept. 14 in Point Park University’s George Rowland White Theater is available online.

For the first time members of the general public will help select four robots for induction into the Robot Hall of Fame® from a slate of a dozen nominees. The new robots will be inducted in a ceremony Oct. 23, when they will take their place alongside such notables as NASA’s Mars Sojourner, Honda’s ASIMO and Star Wars’ R2-D2 and C-3PO.

Now that NASA has successfully landed its Curiosity rover on Mars, a version of Carnegie Mellon University navigation software will help guide the robot during its mission to determine if Mars ever could have supported life. The software is a version of Field D*, which was first developed at the Robotics Institute in 2000 by Tony Stentz, now director of the National Robotics Engineering Center. Stentz will discuss CMU's contributions to the mission on KDKA-TV's "Sunday Business Page" at 6:30 a.m. Aug. 12.

Paris is one of those cities that has a look all its own, something that goes beyond landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower or Notre Dame. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and INRIA/Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris have developed visual data mining software that can automatically detect these sometimes subtle features, such as street signs, streetlamps and balcony railings, that give Paris and other cities a distinctive look.

Computer graphic artists who produce computer-animated movies and games spend much time creating subtle movements such as expressions on faces, gesticulations on bodies and the draping of clothes. A new way of modeling these dynamic objects, developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, Disney Research, Pittsburgh, and the LUMS School of Science and Engineering in Pakistan, could greatly simplify this editing process.

Simon Engler has spent this summer at the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute working on robotic technology that might search for life on Mars. And next year, he’ll be working on food preparation skills that may one day support life – human life – on that planet. Engler, a Robotics Institute Summer Scholar (RISS), is one of six people selected from more than 700 applicants to participate early next year in a NASA-sponsored experiment called Hi-SEAS, or the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation. They will be testing new forms of food and food preparation strategies designed for sustaining astronauts on Mars and other deep-space missions.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute, working with colleagues at Google and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), have adapted their technology for interactively exploring time-lapse imagery to create a tool that enables anyone to easily access 13 years of NASA Landsat images of the Earth’s surface.

M. Bernardine Dias, associate research professor in Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute and the founder and director of the TechBridgeWorld program, will receive the 2012 Borg Early Career Award from the Computer Research Association's Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research (CRA-W).

Five Ford plug-in hybrid vehicles and a team of engineers performing evaluation testing in the Pittsburgh area will be the focus of an informal gathering hosted by the Robotics Institute's Charge Car project from 6 to 7 p.m. Thursday at the Electric Garage, 4621 Forbes Ave. Anyone is welcome to come by to talk with Chris Lear, senior development engineer in Ford’s plug-in hybrid vehicle group, and to see four Ford C-Max Energi PHEVs and a Fusion Energi PHEV.

Almost anything that can be made with paper, paint and cardboard can be animated with an educational robotics kit developed at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute. No technical experience is necessary to use the kit, but classroom teachers say it fosters interest in technology among students ages 11 and up. The kit, called Hummingbird, is now available for sale ($199) through a CMU spinoff company, BirdBrain Technologies.

Students from four Mon Valley high schools focused cameras on their friends, teachers and communities over the past year to produce documentary videos addressing such topics as race, crime and the search for role models. The videos, produced through the Hear Me 101 project, will be screened for the public from 6 to 8 p.m., July 15 at the B Building Auditorium on the Community College of Allegheny County South Campus.

Drivers can struggle to see when driving at night in a rainstorm or snowstorm, but a smart headlight system invented by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute can improve visibility by constantly redirecting light to shine between particles of precipitation.

William “Red” Whittaker, who has repeatedly developed robots to work in such inhospitable places as contaminated nuclear plants, abandoned mines, active volcanoes, Antarctic glaciers and the moon, has been awarded the 2012 Simon Ramo Medal by IEEE, the world’s largest technical professional organization.

Tiramisu Transit LLC, a Carnegie Mellon University spinoff, has received $102,000 in Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I funding from the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) to commercialize Tiramisu, the smartphone application that enables transit riders to create real-time information about bus schedules and seating.

A high-resolution image of a palm tree in Brazil, which under close examination shows bees, wasps and flies feasting on nectars and pollens, was the top jury selection among the images captured during last December’s Nearby Nature GigaBlitz. It’s also an example of what the Robotics Institute's CREATE Lab and other organizers hope participants will produce for the next GigaBlitz, June 20-26.

IEEE Spectrum’s Automaton blog has written about G. Ayorkor Korsah (Phd, Robotics 2011), an assistant professor of computer science at Ashesi University in Ghana, and her key role in a new initiative to enhance robotics education, research, and industry in Africa. Korsah is an adviser to TechBridgeWorld and the main faculty contact for this summer’s iSTEP internship in Ghana.

Curt Stone, a Carnegie Mellon University executive-in-residence and the founder and former director of the QoLT Foundry, died suddenly April 26. A memorial service was on April 30 at Fox Chapel Presbyterian Church.

NavPal, an Android smartphone app, was developed through the Robotics Institute's TechBridgeWorld program to provide audio and tactile cues to help guide the visually impaired. The technology and Project Scientist Balajee Kannan were featured in a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article.

Humans and robots will share the stage of the North Side’s New Hazlett Theater at 8 p.m., Friday, April 27 for the Cyborg Cabaret, a variety show designed to make the audience laugh hard and think harder about how technology is changing society.

Men’s Health magazine is sending a team of drivers across the country in an all-electric Ford Focus and will be stopping at Carnegie Mellon’s Electric Garage Thursday afternoon to recharge. The 2012 Electric Car Challenge began April 11 at the New York International Auto Show and, if they arrive as planned in Los Angeles n April 22, will establish a record for the fastest coast-to-coast drive in an electric car.

Carnegie Mellon University will celebrate the third annual National Robotics Week on April 20 with project demonstrations, lab tours of the Robotics Institute, the annual Mobot (mobile robot) Races and a special lecture by Robotics Professor Howie Choset.

The Robotics Institute’s snake robots and orchard automation projects will be on display in Washington, D.C., April 17 as part of AUVSI Day on Capitol Hill, a National Robotics Week event that will highlight robotic and unmanned systems technology.

Robotics Institute spin-off Astrobotic Technology has unveiled a new design and name – Polaris – for its lunar rover, which will prospect for potentially rich deposits of water ice, methane and other resources at the moon's north pole.

NPR’s Marketplace, which airs on 90.5 FM, WESA, at 6:30 p.m., is featuring a week-long series called Robots Ate My Job. Anca Dragan, a PhD student in robotics, is in Wednesday’s report and David Bourne, principal systems scientist in the Robotics Institute, is included in Friday’s installment.

Engineers and managers responsible for research and new product development can learn how and where robotic technology can be applied successfully in the Robotics Professional Education Course, May 22-24 at Carnegie Mellon University’s National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC).

The Girls of Steel, a robotics team composed of high-school-age girls, and the team's robot, Watson, participated in the 10th Pittsburgh Regional FIRST Robotics Competition, March 8-10, at the University of Pittsburgh’s Petersen Events Center, winning two awards, for Website and for Engineering Inspiration. The latter award qualified the team to compete at the FIRST Championship, April 25-28 in St. Louis.

Inside Science Television, produced by the American Institute of Physics, features GigaPan and GigaPan Time Machine in a new video. The GigaPan system, developed by the Robotics Institute's CREATE Lab and NASA, enables ordinary digital cameras to produce panoramic images and videos that can be interactively explored on a computer monitor.

NASA's Glenn Research Center used the Scarab robot developed by the Robotics Institute to demonstrate a new fuel cell for the first time outside of a laboratory setting. The new type of fuel cell will extend the range of surface operations for rovers that will explore new worlds as part of future NASA missions.

The Robotics Institute’s Howie Choset, Joydeep Biswas, Heather Knight and Marek Michalowski are featured in CNN’s Geek Out blog, where they talk about what compels people to build robots.

NASA has awarded Astrobotic Technology Inc. an additional task in its $10 million Innovative Lunar Demonstrations Data (ILDD) contract under which NASA buys information about the company's commercial robotic expeditions to the Moon. The $100,000 task order brings total funding under the ILDD contract thus far to $610,000.

C-SPAN’s “Communicators” visited the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and talked with Curt Stone of the Quality of Life Technology Foundry about commercial spin-offs from the QoLT Center. Watch the video; Stone’s interview begins at about the 13-minute mark.

Two members of the Fine Outreach for Science Fellows program used the photomosaic techniques promoted by the Carnegie Mellon University program to study the long trackway of a herd of prehistoric elephants, resulting in new insights into the social behavior of these creatures. The findings were published Feb. 22 in the journal Biology Letters.

Thomas J. Murrin, who as a top Westinghouse Electric Corp. executive played a key role in launching Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute, died Jan. 30. Mr. Murrin served as president of Westinghouse’s energy and advanced technology group and later as a deputy secretary in the U.S. Department of Commerce and as dean of Duquesne University’s business school. Mr. Murrin joined with University Professors Raj Reddy and Angel Jordan to found the Robotics Institute in 1979, arranging a $3 million industrial research grant from Westinghouse. For more details on Mr. Murrin’s life and accomplishments, see his obituary in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Students at Clairton High School who are working with the Robotics Institute's Hear Me project interact with the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Hines Ward in “NFL Characters Unite,” a documentary that premieres at 7 p.m. Friday on the USA Network.

The Carnegie Science Center has named Illah Nourbakhsh, professor of robotics, as the winner of the Catalyst Award in this year’s Carnegie Science Awards. The Catalyst Award recognizes excellence in promoting public awareness of scientific issues, and advancing science in society to bring about measurable, beneficial change.

PennEnvironment, a statewide environmental advocacy group, will be at the Electric Garage at 12:30 p.m. Thursday to release an analysis of the benefits of fuel-efficient cars written by the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Natural Resources Defense Council. Ben Brown, project scientist on the ChargeCar project housed in the former gas station on Forbes Avenue, and Aftyn Giles, City of Pittsburgh sustainability coordinator, will participate.

Five startup companies from Carnegie Mellon University’s Quality of Life Technology Foundry (QoLT) will be exhibiting their products at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, the world’s largest and best-known technology trade show, from Jan. 10-13.

Robotics Institute PhD student Heather Knight was listed by Forbes magazine in its "30 Under 30" special report on tomorrow's brightest stars. Former student Stuart Anderson was included in the Technology list. The magazine identified 30 top disrupters under age 30 in 12 different fields. Knight was among those chosen in the Science category. Former student Stuart Anderson was included in the Technology list.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences has named Manuela Veloso, the Herbert A. Simon Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, as an Einstein Chair Professor for 2012. She is one of 20 prominent international scientists so honored. As an Einstein Chair Professor, Veloso will present a lecture at the University of Science and Technology of China, a national research university in Hefei, China, and at another Chinese university.

Toy robots and other gadgets operated with infrared (IR) remote controls can gain new capabilities — and perhaps some intelligence — by use of a device called Brainlink that enables a Bluetooth link with an Android-based smartphone or a laptop computer. The device, developed by Carnegie Mellon University spin-off BirdBrain Technologies, with assistance from the Robotics Institute's CREATE Lab, makes it possible to control a robot, such as WowWee’s popular Robosapien toy, using a computer or Android smartphone.

With the help of GigaPan Time Machine, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s Bruce and Astrid McWilliams Center for Cosmology have discovered what caused the rapid growth of early supermassive black holes. GigaPan Time Machine, developed by the Robotics Institute’s CREATE Lab, aided astrophysicists Tiziana Di Matteo and Rupert Croft in analyzing MassiveBlack, a recreation of the first billion years after the Big Bang and the largest cosmological simulation to date.

Computers can mimic the human ability to find visually similar images, such as photographs of a fountain in summer and in winter, or a photograph and a painting of the same cathedral, by using a technique that analyzes the uniqueness of images, say researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science. The research team found that its surprisingly simple technique performed well on a number of visual tasks that normally stump computers, including matching sketches of automobiles with photographs of cars.

Carnegie Mellon University has released an Android version of Tiramisu, the smartphone application that enables transit riders in Allegheny County to share real-time information about bus schedules and seating. It is available for download at the Android Market. The original iPhone version of Tiramisu was released this summer. Thus far, users have recorded more than 10,000 trips on the Port Authority of Allegheny County transit system.

The Robotics Institute’s GigaPan Time Machine project has released eight new data sets, including a 24-hour observation of the sun by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft. Like previous Time Machines, the dynamic imagery can be explored interactively across both time and space. Read Scientific American’s story.

Astrobotic Technology's Red Rover made Popular Science's annual list of the Best of What's New, announced in the magazine's December issue. The magazine noted that the team, headed by the Robotics Institute's William "Red" Whittaker, took the lead this year over 26 competitors in the race to win the $20 million Google Lunar X Prize.

Don Wildman, host of the Travel Channel series “Off Limits,” interacted with Manuela Veloso, professor of computer science, and the CoBot robot on the series’ recent Pittsburgh episode.

From a bike path in Montana to a backwater underneath a highway overpass in Austria, citizen scientists fanned out last June to capture high-resolution images for the first Nearby Nature GigaBlitz. Organizers are hoping for even broader participation in their efforts to document global biodiversity as they prepare for the second GigaBlitz, scheduled for the solstice week of Dec. 19-26. The GigaBlitz is organized by a trio of biologists and their partners at Carnegie Mellon University’s CREATE Lab.

For Halloween, the CORAL Lab’s CoBot2 robot donned a pumpkin costume to deliver candy bars to 300 delighted denizens of floors 6-8 of the Gates and Hillman centers, stopping at open doors and saying “Knock knock” outside closed doors.

Interbots, a Pittsburgh company that was spun off from Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center, took first place and won $25,000 at the first RoboBowl competition on Oct. 13. TactSense Technologies of Pittsburgh finished in second place and won $10,000. The venture competition was sponsored by the Robotics Technology Consortium, Carnegie Mellon and the Innovation Accelerator.

Tiramisu Transit, an iPhone app developed by Carnegie Mellon that uses crowdsourcing to help transit riders know when their bus will arrive, won second place in the Best New Innovative Products, Services, or Applications category of the 2011 Best of ITS Awards. The awards are sponsored by the Intelligent Transportation Society of America. They were announced at the 18th World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems & Annual Meeting in Orlando, FL.

The Robotics Technology Consortium, Carnegie Mellon University and the Innovation Accelerator today announced the five teams from across the United States that are finalists in the inaugural RoboBowl venture competition. The entrepreneurial teams will compete before a blue-ribbon panel of judges at Carnegie Mellon on Oct. 13. RoboBowl Pittsburgh is the first in a series of national “next-generation robotics” venture competitions intended to find and foster startup and early-stage companies seeking to develop products and services that address unmet and underserved market needs in targeted industrial sectors.

Three commercially promising technologies being developed at the Quality of Life Technology Center will be discussed by seasoned business and investment professionals, faculty and students at the QoLT Foundry Opportunity Meeting from 11 a.m to 1 p.m. Oct. 5 in room 4405 of the Gates and Hillman centers.

The Siebel Scholars Foundation has announced that Andrew Chambers, a master’s student in the Robotics Institute, and four other Carnegie Mellon graduate students are among the 85 members of the 2012 class of Siebel Scholars. Each will receive a $35,000 award for their final year of studies.

Howie Choset, professor in the Robotics Institute, will be among four Carnegie Mellon University faculty members who will make presentations and be part of a mini-documentary being filmed at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting of New Champions, Sept. 14-16 in Dalian, China. The meeting, often referred to as “Summer Davos,” brings together global business leaders and is expected to draw 1,500 participants this year.

Images of flattened buildings, muddy tent camps and desperate, homeless people have dominated the world’s view of Haiti since an earthquake shook Port-au-Prince in January 2010. But the September issue of the Robotics Institute's online GigaPan Magazine features interactive panoramas of the central Artibonite Valley, its villages and its hospital that provide an alternative view of Haitian life.

Robotics PhD student Heather Knight and her robot comedian Data were featured on the Sept. 4 edition of Fareed Zakaria GPS on CNN. Watch the video.

The Robotics Technology Consortium, Carnegie Mellon University, and the Innovation Accelerator today announced that the first RoboBowl competition will take place during the “Innovation Accelerator @ Carnegie Mellon” event at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA on October 13, 2011. The competition is the first of what is expected to be a series of new venture competitions intended to find and foster start-up and early-stage companies seeking to develop “big idea” products and services in healthcare, manufacturing, national defense, education, and other domains based on next-generation robotics technology.

The Girls of Steel, a team of young women that contends in the annual FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition, will host an information session for any high school girl in the Pittsburgh area who is interested in joining the team for the 2011-12 season. The open house, which also welcomes family members, friends and potential sponsors, will be from 1 to 3 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 10 in room 2109 of the Gates and Hillman centers.

National Geographic magazine's August 2011 issue considers how robots and humans will increasingly interact in the not-so-distant future. The article by Chris Carroll discusses Robotics Institute projects, including the Home Exploring Robotic Butler (HERB) and Snackbot, and the Entertainment Technology Center's efforts to make a Japanese android more human-like.

Flashing a wink and a smirk might be second nature for some people, but computer animators can be hard-pressed to depict such an expression realistically. Now scientists at Disney Research, Pittsburgh, and Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute have created computerized models derived from actors’ faces that reflect a full range of natural expressions while also giving animators the ability to manipulate facial poses.

Traditional motion capture techniques use cameras to meticulously record the movements of actors inside studios, enabling those movements to be translated into digital models. But by turning the cameras around — mounting almost two dozen, outward-facing cameras on the actors themselves — scientists at Disney Research, Pittsburgh (DRP), and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) have shown that motion capture can occur almost anywhere — in natural environments, over large areas and outdoors.

A new tactile technology developed at Disney Research, Pittsburgh (DRP), called Surround Haptics, makes it possible for video game players and film viewers to feel a wide variety of sensations, from the smoothness of a finger being drawn against skin to the jolt of a collision. The technology is based on rigorous psychophysical experiments and new models of tactile perception. In a SIGGRAPH 2011 demonstration developed in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University and others, the technology enhances a high-intensity driving simulator game in collaboration with Disney’s Black Rock Studio.

Uruguay's leading television channel, Canal 10, recently featured students from the innovative Student Technology Experience (iSTEP), organized by the Robotics Institute's TechBridgeWorld. They worked with government education officials in Montevideo, Uruguay, this summer to develop new technological tools for teaching English in Uruguay high schools.

PopTech, the global social innovation incubator and thought leadership network, has announced that Adrien Treuille, assistant professor of computer science and robotics, is one of its ten Science and Public Leadership Fellows for 2011.

Everybody who waits at a bus stop wants to know one thing: Where’s the bus? Thanks to Tiramisu, a new iPhone application developed at Carnegie Mellon University, transit riders in Pittsburgh will soon be able to get the answer by using crowdsourcing to share arrival times with each other. Tiramisu — literally, Italian for “pick me up” — makes it easy for riders to use their iPhones to signal the location and occupancy level of the Port Authority of Allegheny County bus they are riding, in real-time. The new app was developed by researchers in the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Accessible Public Transportation (RERC-APT), supported in part by CMU’s Traffic21 initiative. It is available free through the iTunes AppStore.

Seven students from Carnegie Mellon University’s campuses in Pittsburgh, Pa., and Doha, Qatar, are working with government education officials in Montevideo, Uruguay, this summer to develop new technological tools for teaching English in Uruguay high schools. In cooperation with Uruguay’s National Administration of Public Education (ANEP), the students are developing applications for the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) XO laptop computer and for Facebook.

Billboards typically help motorists find a place to eat, a car to buy or a politician to support. But a new billboard campaign in the Pittsburgh area, part of Carnegie Mellon University’s “Hear Me” project, is giving young people a new way to communicate about bullies, school and other topics important to them.

Armchair historians can interactively explore nine panoramas of Civil War sites in Gettysburg and other Pennsylvania locales featured in the July issue of GigaPan Magazine, an online publication of the CREATE Lab at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute.

The Robot Film Festival in New York City July 16-17, directed by Robotics Institute PhD student Heather Knight, boasts a strong CMU presence with 10 films by students, faculty and staff.

The newly released 2010 Journal Citation Reports ranks the Journal of Field Robotics second among 17 robotics journals, based on the frequency with which an average article is cited. That frequency – the Impact Factor – was 3.580, compared to 4.095 for the top-ranked International Journal of Robotic Research. The Journal of Field Robotics was founded at the Robotics Institute in 2006 and is edited by Sanjiv Singh, research professor of robotics.

President Barack Obama came to the Robotics Institute’s National Robotics Engineering Center in Lawrenceville on Friday to launch a major manufacturing initiative, the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership. Part of the plan is a new National Robotics Initiative, in which the National Science Foundation, NASA, National Institutes of Health and the Department of Agriculture will make $70 million available to support research in next-generation robots. He also taped his weekly video address during his visit to NREC, including a mention of RedZone Robotics.

President Barack Obama will address the U.S. from Carnegie Mellon University's National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC) in Pittsburgh's Lawrenceville neighborhood on Friday, June 24. His speech will address the key roles that universities — in collaboration with government and industry — play in enhancing the global competitiveness of U.S. manufacturing, jumpstarting job creation and the process of bringing ideas to market.

Astrobotic Technology Inc. and Carnegie Mellon University researchers have completed structural assembly of the lunar landing craft that will deliver the Red Rover robot to the moon in 2014. The half-ton aluminum structure will now undergo shake testing to confirm its soundness and its compatibility with the SpaceX Falcon 9 launch vehicle.

Howie Choset, associate professor of robotics, and his snake robots were featured on a recent episode of the National Science Foundation's "Innovation Nation" video series.

Lee Gutkind, author of the 2007 book about the Robotics Institute, "Almost Human: Making Robots Think," discusses robotics and what he learned by watching and talking with Carnegie Mellon roboticists, in a videotaped lecture available on the AT&T Tech Channel.

William “Red” Whittaker’s contributions to the field of artificial intelligence through innovation and achievement in autonomous vehicle research, as signified by his team’s victory in the 2007 Urban Challenge robot race, have won him a share of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence’s (AAAI) inaugural Feigenbaum Prize.

During the week of this year’s summer solstice, June 18-24, people worldwide are being urged to create gigapixel imagery of natural areas near where they live or work as part of the first Nearby Nature GigaBlitz. As envisioned by a trio of biologists and their partners at the Robotics Institute's CREATE Lab, the project would reveal the extraordinary biodiversity of the ordinary settings where people live, learn and work.

Carnegie Mellon faculty and students will help Toyota turn five ideas for repurposing Toyota automotive technologies into reality during a rapid prototyping session in Newell-Simon Hall and the Electric Garage June 3-5. Improved bike helmets, a solar-powered device for clearing smoke from huts, a system for converting the energy of gym rats into electricity, technology to help firefighters position their ladders and a device that combines a computer mouse, keyboard and numerical pad are the five winning ideas submitted for Toyota’s “Ideas for Good” campaign.

The Robotics Institute’s CREATE Lab, which recently unveiled its GigaPan Time Machine for exploring high-resolution videos, is the winner in the media category of the 2011 Data Hero Awards. The awards, announced May 9, were created this year by EMC Corp. to honor innovative uses of Big Data to profoundly impact individuals, organizations, industries and the world.

Learning how to program a computer to display the words “Hello World” once may have excited students, but that hoary chestnut of a lesson doesn’t cut it in a world of videogames, smartphones and Twitter. One option to take its place and engage a new generation of students in computer programming is a Carnegie Mellon University-developed robot called Finch. A product of the Robotics Institute, Finch was designed specifically to make introductory computer science classes an engaging experience once again.

Revolutionary technology from researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's Quality of Life Technology Center is helping the blind to see. With the BrainPort Vision Device, users can perceive the approximate shape, size, location and motion of objects in their environment.

The Girls of Steel, a first-year, all-girl robotics team from the Pittsburgh area will compete in the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Championship in St. Louis, April 27-30, after winning All-Star Rookie awards in regional competitions in Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C. The 24-member team includes girls from 11 Pittsburgh area high schools, one from a home school and three from schools outside the Pittsburgh area. Systems Scientist George Kantor and other members of Carnegie Mellon University’s Field Robotics Center have hosted and mentored the team.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute have leveraged the latest browser technology to create GigaPan Time Machine, a system that enables viewers to explore gigapixel-scale, high-resolution videos and image sequences by panning or zooming in and out of the images while simultaneously moving back and forth through time.“With GigaPan Time Machine, you can simultaneously explore space and time at extremely high resolutions,” said Illah Nourbakhsh, associate professor of robotics and head of the CREATE Lab. “Science has always been about narrowing your point of view — selecting a particular experiment or observation that you think might provide insight. But this system enables what we call exhaustive science, capturing huge amounts of data that can then be explored in amazing ways.”

“Hear Me,” an initiative of the Robotics Institute’s CREATE Lab, has been listening to children of all ages talk about issues important to them. Bullying. Education. Healthy choices. Environmental Issues. Aspirations. Transitions. With more than 2,500 of these stories and thoughts now recorded, Hear Me, http://www.hear-me.net/, is giving people throughout southwestern Pennsylvania a chance to listen as well. Some of the audio recordings are included in “Hear Me: Month of the Young Child Exhibition,” on the first floor of the Carlyle Building at Fourth and Wood Street, Downtown.

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has named Takeo Kanade, the U.A. and Helen Whitaker University Professor of Computer Science and Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, the 2010 winner of the ACM/AAAI Allen Newell Award for contributions to research in computer vision and robotics.

The Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute will host 150 researchers for the third annual International Conference on Computational Photography (ICCP) April 8-10, a “one-stop shop” for the diverse set of disciplines involved in computational imaging techniques.

Carnegie Mellon University will celebrate the second annual National Robotics Week with research project demonstrations at the Robotics Institute, the annual Mobot (mobile robot) races and the Teruko Yata Memorial Lecture, featuring William Swartout of the University of Southern California. National Robotics Week, is observed on the second week of April to recognize robotics technology as a pillar of 21st century American innovation.

An all-girl robotics team sponsored by Carnegie Mellon's Field Robotics Center (FRC) and the PghTech Women Network won the All-Star Rookie Award at the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Pittsburgh regional March 11-12 and also at the Washington, D.C., regional March 24-25. The wins qualified the team to participate in the FIRST national championship April 27-30 in St. Louis, MO. Also at the Pittsburgh regional, Ryan Cahoon, a junior who majors in computer science and computer and electrical engineering, was named the Outstanding Volunteer of the Year for his work with the Steel City Robotics Alliance, an organization that helps area FIRST teams share information and resources.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University unveiled an all-electric 2002 Honda Civic, the production prototype for their ChargeCar Electric Vehicle Conversion Project, and began taking names of people who want their own converted vehicle at an open house Friday, March 25 at the Electric Garage, 4621 Forbes Ave., in Oakland. U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle and Pittsburgh City Council member Bill Peduto were among those on hand. Watch the video.

The Quality of Life Technology Center will celebrate its fifth year of research and development activities with an open house on Wed. March 30th from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. in the Perlis Atrium of Newell-Simon Hall. This event features a comprehensive student poster session designed to prepare our students for an upcoming site visit with National Science Foundation (NSF) representatives, as well as prizes and giveaways, and lots of free food and beverages.

An all-girl robotics team sponsored by Carnegie Mellon's Field Robotics Center (FRC) and the PghTech Women Network will compete in a FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) regional event March 11-12 at the Petersen Events Center in Oakland.

Potholes are the scourge of drivers during each spring thaw, often resulting in complaints to local government street departments and sometimes a trip to the repair shop. Now a Carnegie Mellon University project allows anyone with a GPS-linked cell phone camera and a Facebook account to take an active role in monitoring the constantly changing pothole environment. The Road Damage Assessment System (RODAS) Project, www.rodasproject.org, enables anyone to click a photo of a pothole and upload it via Facebook.

Intel reports on work with Carnegie Mellon University to apply robotic technology to vineyard operations.

PBS's NOVA science series has posted a video summarizing some of the challenges facing computer vision researchers on its website. Alexei Efros, associate professor of robotics and computer science, is interviewed.

Astrobotic Technology Inc., the Carnegie Mellon University spin-off headed by William “Red” Whittaker, has signed a contract with SpaceX to launch Astrobotic’s exploration robot to the Moon atop one of the company’s Falcon 9 boosters. The mission could launch as soon as December 2013.

Professor Manuela Veloso and her work regarding robot soccer are featured in a video available on the website of NOVA, PBS's top science documentary series. The Feb. 9 episode of NOVA, airing at 10 p.m. on WQED in Pittsburgh, is "Smartest Machine on Earth" and includes interviews regading artificial intelligence with several Carnegie Mellon faculty members.

Many video games boast life-like graphics and realistic game play, but have no connection with reality. A new online game developed by Carnegie Mellon University and Stanford University researchers, however, finally shatters the virtual wall. The game, called EteRNA (http://eterna.cmu.edu), harnesses game play to uncover principles for designing molecules of RNA, which biologists believe may be the key regulator of everything that happens in living cells. But the game doesn’t end with the highest computer score. Rather, players are scored and ranked based on how well their virtual designs can be rendered as real, physical molecules.

The Carnegie Museum of Natural History has extended through July its display of the juried gallery show from last fall’s Fine International Conference on Gigapixel Imaging for Science.

Plum TV’s “Masters of Innovation” series and host Jim Brasher visited Carnegie Mellon and the Robotics Institute to see the future of robotics, including snake robots, robot soccer and HERB, the robotic butler. Watch the video here.

Carnegie Mellon University spin-out Astrobotic Technology has received the first $500,000 task order from the $10 million contract that NASA awarded the company in October. The order will help the company design, build and test the primary structure for its lunar lander.

The two-story Open Oceans tank at the Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium contains 100,000 gallons of salt water, 30 species of sea life – and one submersible robot, or Reefbot, named CLEO. Visitors can remotely pilot CLEO and view the tank's occupants through the robot's video camera.

Manuela M. Veloso, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, has been named a fellow of the Institute for Electronic and Electrical Engineers (IEEE) for her contributions to the development of cognition, perception and action in autonomous robot teams.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has extended its support for an alliance of nine major research universities, including Carnegie Mellon University, and 19 historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) that encourages African American students to pursue graduate training and research careers in robotics and computer science.

A 60-second feature on Boss, the self-driving SUV developed at the Robotics Institute, will debut Tuesday, Dec. 7, during one of the commercial breaks of Mantracker, a Science Channel series that airs at 10 p.m. Tuesdays. The feature is part of a series on scientific research called Innovation Nation that was produced for the National Science Foundation.

Carnegie Mellon University’s Field Robotics Center (FRC) and the PghTech Women Network™ have launched an all-girl robotics team, girlsFIRST, which will compete in a FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) regional event in spring 2011.

Carnegie Mellon spin-off re2 Inc., a Lawrenceville company that specializes in intelligent modular manipulation systems, will host the second meeting of the Southwestern Pennsylvania Robotics Cluster, a forum for academic and entrepreneurial roboticists, from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 16.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded a 17-month, $988,000 contract to Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute to develop an autonomous flight system for the Transformer (TX) Program, which is exploring the feasibility of a military ground vehicle that could transform into a vertical-take-off-and-landing (VTOL) air vehicle.

The Pittsburgh Business Times reports on work at Carnegie Mellon University to apply ro robotics to the specialty agriculture community, including the grape industry.

Two hundred scientists, educators and students will come together at the Fine Conference on Gigapixel Imaging for Science Nov. 11-13 at Carnegie Mellon University to explore how science research and education can best use new technologies for creating and analyzing large digital images containing billions of pixels.

DreamWorks has announced that Steven Spielberg will direct “Robopocalypse,” a movie about a robot uprising based on an upcoming novel by Daniel H. Wilson, who earned his PhD from the Robotics Institute in 2005.

Google Inc.'s autonomous vehicle project has achieved a milestone for self-driving vehicles, with eight cars logging more than 140,000 miles on public roads with minimal human input. Current and former Carnegie Mellon students, faculty and staff have made large contributions as part of the Google team.

Major League Baseball has created a web site, TagOramic, that features GigaPan images of crowds at baseball post-season games that link to Facebook, where fans can tag themselves, their friends and celebrities in the images. The images are created with GigaPan Systems' EPIC Pro camera system. GigaPan technology was developed by NASA and the Robotics Institute's CREATE Lab.

Carnegie Mellon University spin-off Astrobotic Technology was awarded a $10 million contract through NASA’s Innovative Lunar Demonstrations Data (ILDD) program for data to be gathered before and during the company’s April 2013 robotic expedition to the Moon. Read the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's coverage of the Astrobotic team.

Mark Palatucci, a PhD student in the Robotics Institute, and Olatunji Ruwase, a PhD student in the Computer Science Department, are among 27 winners of prestigious 2010 Intel PhD Fellowships.

Carnegie Mellon University’s TechBridgeWorld program has publicly released the hardware specifications and software for its Braille Writing Tutor, an innovative device that helps visually impaired students learn the tricky task of writing Braille letters with a traditional slate and stylus. The specifications and software for the second generation of the device have been released under an MIT open source license and are available for download at http://sourceforge.net/projects/tbwbrailletutor/.

Comedian Stephen Colbert turned his satiric eye on robots, including Howie Choset's Snakebot, on the Sept. 30 edition of Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report." See the clip.

A “bait ball” of salema fish swirling off the Galapagos Islands, one of the world’s largest Adelie penguin colonies basking on an Antarctic beach and ancient petroglyphs in northern Saudi Arabia depicting hunters and their prey are three of the arresting scientific panoramas selected for a juried gallery show in conjunction with the Fine International Conference on Gigapixel Imagery for Science, Nov. 11-13.

The Pittsburgh Gigapanorama Project, which produced a humungous 360-degree portrait of Pittsburgh last fall from atop the U.S. Steel Tower, is doing it again between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 23. People are invited to study last year’s Gigapanorama and find a spot where they would like to pose for this year’s image wearing whatever colorful clothing or outlandish costume they think might help them stand out.

Computer vision systems can struggle to make sense of a single image, but a new method devised by computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University enables computers to gain a deeper understanding of an image by reasoning about the physical constraints of the scene.

Scientists who are pioneering the use of gigapixel imagery will discuss how they are leveraging this new technology Nov. 11-13 at the first Fine International Conference on Gigapixel Imaging for Science, hosted by Carnegie Mellon University. The deadline for early conference registration is Sept. 13. To register online and to view the latest program schedule, visit the conference website>.

Data gathering for the U.S. 2010 Census may be finished, but it has just begun for the Robot Census 2010. Heather Knight, a first-year PhD student in the Robotics Institute, has launched the unprecedented effort to count every robot residing in Carnegie Mellon University’s laboratories.

Carnegie Mellon University announces the launch of a new firm, Carnegie Robotics LLC, which will develop, manufacture and service robotic components and systems in partnership with the university’s highly successful National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC).

Astrobotic Technology, a Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) spin-off company, has announced that Caterpillar Inc. will be a sponsor of its first robotic expedition to the lunar surface. The initial Astrobotic mission, Tranquility Trek, will revisit the Apollo 11 site in April 2013 with a five-foot tall, 160-lb. robot broadcasting 3D high-definition video. The mission will carry payloads to the Moon and convey the experience to the world via Internet video access.

Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute is offering a new master’s degree program in robotic systems development that will provide beginning and early-entry practicing professionals with the multidisciplinary skills and know-how needed to succeed in industry. Graduates of this program will be capable of operating at a higher technical/managerial level within a company, making them extremely desirable job candidates.

Researchers in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University will join a five-year, $10 million initiative funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to create novel tools for evaluating social interactions and other behaviors that can be used in diagnosing or treating behavioral disorders such as autism.

Anton Chechetka, a Ph.D. student in the Robotics Institute, received the Best Student Paper Award at the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics 2010 for his paper, “Focused Belief Propagation for Query-Specific Inference.”

Five students and recent alumni from Carnegie Mellon University worked with partners in Chittagong, Bangladesh, for 10 weeks this summer to develop an educational tool for enhancing English literacy among pre-college students and to determine features for a standalone Braille writing tutor for visually impaired students.

Astrobotic Technology, a Carnegie Mellon University spin-off company devoted to robotic exploration of the Moon, announced that it will pursue NASA’s offer to buy up to $10 million in data from a commercial lunar lander mission. The space agency's Innovative Lunar Demonstrations Data (ILDD) program has a total budget of $30 million.

Researchers in Carnegie Mellon University’s electric car conversion project, ChargeCar, have announced a contest to find the most efficient methods for managing power in their electric vehicles. The grand prize of the ChargeCarPrize contest is an electric car.

Three robots associated with the Robotics Institute and the Quality of Life Technology Center are included in Popular Science's August feature on "Rise of the Helpful Machines."

The Robotics Institute's National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC) and Shell Development Kashagan B.V., (SDK) are developing a human-sized, wheeled robot to perform simple inspection tasks of offshore oil and gas production facilities in the giant Kashagan field of the Caspian Sea.

A new four-year, $7 million educational initiative by Carnegie Mellon University will leverage students’ innate interest in robots and other forms of “hard fun” to increase U.S. enrollments in computer science and steer more young people into scientific and technological careers.

Yaser Sheikh, assistant research professor in the Robotics Institute, and Alan Black, associate professor in the Language Technologies Institute, are among five winners nationwide of 2010 Honda Initiation Grants.

A magnetic levitation haptic interface invented by Ralph Hollis, a professor in Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute, is the recipient of a 2010 R&D 100 Award, presented by R&D Magazine to recognize the 100 most technologically significant products of the past year. Hollis and other winners, listed on the R&D Awards website, www.rdmag.com, will be recognized at an awards banquet Nov. 11 in Orlando, Fla.

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.

Piasecki Aircraft Corp. and Carnegie Mellon University have developed and flight demonstrated a navigation/sensor system that enables full-size, autonomous helicopters to fly at low altitude while avoiding obstacles; evaluate and select suitable landing sites in unmapped terrain; and land safely using a self-generated approach path. Autonomous flight at low altitude and landing zone evaluation/selection is an unprecedented feat with a full-size helicopter.

ChargeCar, the gas-to-electric car conversion project at Carnegie Mellon University, is sponsoring a series of Friday night community events this month at its new Electric Garage, 4621 Forbes Ave., for anyone interested in electric cars and environmentally friendly commuting.

The Robotics Institute's Dom Jonak and David Kohanbash took Scarab to Washington, D.C., June 23 to participate in NASA Day on the Hill. The NASA-sponsored robot is designed to test robot designs and components that might be used to prospect for ice and other resources on the moon.

CMDragons, Carnegie Mellon's small-size league robot soccer team, finished second to a team from Thailand at RoboCup 2010 in Singapore. CMurfs, the CMU team of Nao humanoid robots competing in the standard platform league, finished fourth.

Adrien Treuille, assistant professor of computer science and robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, will join a panel of top scientists in a live webcast to discuss how the U.S. government can tap the full potential of three “Golden Triangle” technologies: information technology, biotechnology and nanotechnology. The webcast will be from 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., Tuesday, June 22 and can be viewed via the website of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).

R. Craig Coulter says his 10 years as a student at Carnegie Mellon inspired him to found a socially conscious robotics venture called Disruptive Robotics. Its first start-up is BluPanda, which seeks to reduce the time patients spend waiting for healthcare.

Ryan Cahoon, a computer science major, volunteers with the McKeesport Area High School and Technology Center robotics team, which competes in FIRST® (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology). Patricia DePra, the regional director for FIRST, says college students are very valuable to the program, not only for their technical knowledge, but for the insights about college that they can pass on to high school students who might not have considered college as a possibility.

Robot soccer players from Carnegie Mellon University competing in this month’s RoboCup 2010 world championship in Singapore should be able to out-dribble their opponents, thanks to a new algorithm that helps them to predict the ball’s behavior based on physics principles.

The story of Carnegie Mellon's first robotic exchange student is told in a film created by students in the Art, Animation and Technology class taught by the Robotics Institute's Jessica Hodgins and the School of Art's James Duesing.

Takeo Kanade, the U.A. and Helen Whitaker University Professor of Computer Science and Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, has been chosen by the Tateisi Science and Technology Foundation of Japan as the inaugural recipient of its Tateisi Grand Award and Prize.

Hala, a bilingual robot receptionist that is patterned after the roboceptionist at the Robotics Institute, has begun greeting and helping visitors to Carnegie Mellon Qatar.

The Robotics Student Organization 2010 Cool Person Award has been presented to Illah Nourbakhsh in appreciation of his devotion to the Robotics Graduate Programs and its Students.

Marek Michalowski, a Ph.D. student in robotics, and Keepon, an ingratiating robot that looks like a tiny yellow snowman, are the winners of this year’s Smiley Award, presented annually to a Carnegie Mellon University student for innovation in technology-assisted person-to-person communication.

Daniel H. Wilson (CS'03,'04,'05) puts a humorous spin on sibling savagery in “BRO-JITSU: The Martial Art of Sibling Smackdown,” a new book from Bloomsbury USA. See Daniel's Web site

To celebrate National Robotics Week, 10 Apr 2010 - 18 Apr 2010, we are featuring some female professors and graduate students in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon. See the full story at http://women.cs.cmu.edu/robotics/.

Carnegie Mellon University will celebrate the 30th anniversary of its pioneering Robotics Institute and commemorate the first National Robotics Week with special exhibits, lectures and demonstrations April 15-16 in conjunction with the university’s annual Spring Carnival.

Steam evaporating. A shirt creasing. Hair mussed up. Recreating these small, deceivingly complex details of everyday reality is important for constructing virtual worlds that are faithful to perceptions of the real world. A lot of math, physics, and computer theory are inherent in this challenge, but so is poetry, says Adrien Treuille, assistant professor of computer science and robotics. Maybe even some magic is involved, too. Treuille is profiled in the latest issue of Carnegie Mellon Today.Read more here.

Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Academy announces the release of ROBOTC2.0®, a programming language for robots and an accompanying suite of training tools that are easy enough for elementary students to use, but powerful enough for college-level engineering courses.

In January, DISCOVER and the National Science Foundation continued their Grand Challenges event series with a panel discussion at Carnegie Mellon University exploring the dynamic world of robotics. Videos are now available online.

People can now explore Pennsylvania’s Civil War Trails online with the help of Carnegie Mellon’s GigaPan technology and Google Earth. The Robotics Institute’s CREATE Lab produced gigapixel panoramas, or GigaPans, of Civil War battlegrounds, cemeteries, museum exhibits, monuments and other sites of interest to Civil War enthusiasts that can now be accessed by anyone via a Pennsylvania Tourism Office Web site, www.pacivilwartrails.com.

David Thompson, who earned his PhD in Robotics in 2008, was part of a team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory that developed software enabling the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity to make some decisions about which rocks to study.

Jonathan Muller, a first-year master's degree student in the School of Information Systems and Management at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College, has been selected as the Yahoo! iSTEP 2010 Fellow. Yahoo! is a corporate sponsor for this summer's iSTEP (innovative Student Technology ExPerience) internship, which is a program organized by the TechBridgeWorld research group in Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute.

Mechanics, students and anyone interested in converting vehicles from gas to electric power are invited to look under the hood of the ChargeCar Project’s electric test bed vehicle during an open house from 4 to 6 p.m., Friday March 26 at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute.

Replaying recent events in the area of the brain called the hippocampus may have less to do with creating long-term memories, as scientists have suspected, than with an active decision-making process, suggests a new study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Minnesota Medical School. Insights from these neural mechanisms may be useful for improving autonomous navigation systems

Dragon Runner, the 20-pound “throwable” reconnaissance robot developed at the Robotics Institute, is the world’s most durable military robot, according to the editors of the 2010 edition of Guinness World Records.

Alexei Efros, associate professor of robotics and computer science, has been awarded a three-year Finmeccanica Career Development Chair.

An already promising initiative to assist start-up firms that commercialize technologies associated with the Quality of Life Technology (QoLT) Center is now expanding thanks to a three-year, $1.5 million Innovation Award from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Division of Engineering Education and Centers.

Carnegie Mellon University researchers in the Quality of Life Technology Center (QoLTC) will embed wireless sensors in the residences of about 50 older adults who live alone to see if they can detect subtle changes in everyday activities that indicate the onset of dementia or physical infirmities.

The Engineer’s Society of Western Pennsylvania has named William “Red” Whittaker, University professor of robotics, as the winner of this year’s William Metcalf Award

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC) have developed a plant-sorting machine that uses computer vision and machine learning to inspect and grade harvested strawberry plants and then mechanically sort them by quality — tasks that until now could only be done manually.

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

Robotics Institute project scientist Ben Brown and his BowGo extreme pogo stick were recently featured on Discovery Channel Canada’s “Daily Planet” program. The clip, which shows an extreme pogo athlete using a BowGo to jump over a car, can be seen here. The segment on BowGo begins about 7 minutes into the video clip.

More than 1,000 area middle school students will demonstrate their problem-solving skills, creative thinking and teamwork as they pit their customized robots against each other in the “Smart Move” Challenge on Saturday at the National Robotics Engineering Center in Lawrenceville.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute have converted a 2001 Scion xB into an electric commuter vehicle that will serve as a test bed for a new community-based approach to electric vehicle design, conversion and operations.

Automated methods for discovering astrophysical phenomena by sifting through massive amounts of cosmological data are being developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, Johns Hopkins University and the University of Washington under a new three-year, $1.6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

Dmitry Berenson, a PhD candidate in the Robotics Institute, is the winner of a prestigious Intel PhD Fellowship, one of just 26 winners nationwide in the highly competitive program.

Daniel Munoz, a first-year Ph.D. student in robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, is the first recipient of the QinetiQ North America Robotics Fellowship, which will provide him with three years of educational support. The fellowship also includes an internship with QinetiQ North America.

Twenty Lakota high school students from the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota will learn how Carnegie Mellon University’s GigaPan robotic camera can help them document their community during National Geographic’s Pine Ridge Photo Camp.

The GigaPan School Exchange, a 21st century “pen pal” program, established by Carnegie Mellon University’s Global Connection Program in partnership with the UNESCO International Bureau of Education (IBE), will expand this fall.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) recently announced Distinguished Service Professor of Robotics Kaigham (Ken) Gabriel as the new deputy director.

Six Carnegie Mellon students and recent alumni spent the summer working on a unique internship that took many of them all the way to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Adrien Treuille, an assistant professor of computer science and robotics at Carnegie Mellon University who specializes in real-time computer simulation techniques, has been recognized by Technology Review magazine as one of the world’s top 35 innovators under the age of 35.

"BowGo," a high-flying pogo stick developed by the Robotics Institute's Ben Brown, will be used by extreme pogo enthusiasts at their annual gathering, Pogopalooza, which will be in Pittsburgh Aug. 19-22.

RI graduate student Tom Stepleton was interviewed on the July 14 edition of NPR's All Things Considered regarding the spelling problem he detected in the Grant Building's Morse code beacon.

MIT Technology Review reports on work at Carnegie Mellon University to use advanced vision systems to help unmanned aerial vehicles detect airborne obstacles and help achiever greater autonomy.

Bossa Nova Robotics, a 2005 spinoff from the Robotics Institute, came to campus to unveil to the news media its first commercial products – a pair of toy robots called Prime-8 and Penbo.

Astrobotic Technology Inc. has begun testing a robot, developed in collaboration with the Robotics Institute, that will compete in a NASA contest for excavating simulated Moon dirt.

The Quality of Life Technology Center is hosting the First International Symposium on Quality of Life Technology June 30-July 1.

In what is becoming a Carnegie Mellon tradition, Jeff Baker, a research programmer in the Robotics Institute’s CREATE Lab, captured a GigaPan image of the university’s commencement ceremony. View it here, http://tinyurl.com/pn3m69, and be sure to create snapshots of any SCS students or faculty.

Matthew T. Mason, director of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, was presented the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society’s Pioneer Award at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation on May 16 in Kobe, Japan.

Carnegie Science Center and Carnegie Mellon University announced today the 2010 class of inductees into the Robot Hall of Fame® at a press preview of roboworld™, the Science Center’s new robotics exhibition opening June 13 and the permanent home for the Hall of Fame.

Red Rover, a prototype moon robot built at Carnegie Mellon University, will be available for public control April 18 from 11 to 1 on campus. Astrobotic Technology Inc., a university spinoff, plans to evolve this design into the winning entry in the $20 million Google Lunar X Prize for the first independent robot expedition to the moon.

Fifty computer kiosks in Chicago's O'Hare International Airport now enable travelers to experience Windy City places by exploring images created with GigaPan, a technology developed by the Robotics Institute and NASA.

Manuela M. Veloso, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University who studies how robots can learn, plan and work together to accomplish tasks, is the winner of the 2009 Autonomous Agents Research Award from the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Artificial Intelligence (ACM/SIGART).

Small robots the size of riding mowers could prepare a safe landing site for NASA’s Moon outpost, according to a NASA-sponsored study prepared by Astrobotic Technology Inc. with technical assistance from Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute.

More than two dozen industry partners have joined with Carnegie Mellon University and other Pittsburgh-area universities and community colleges to create an associate degree program that will train technicians to build and maintain robots and other embedded computer systems, which have become ubiquitous in today’s world.

William L. “Red” Whittaker, Carnegie Mellon University’s Fredkin Research Professor of Robotics and chairman and chief technical officer of Astrobotic Technology, Inc., has been elected to the prestigious National Academy of Engineering (NAE).

More than 1,000 area middle-school students will demonstrate their problem-solving skills, creative thinking and teamwork as they pit their customized robots against each other in the “Climate Connection” Challenge, hosted by the Robotics Academy.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the University at Buffalo (UB), State University of New York, are collaborating on a five-year, $4.7 million effort to advance public transportation for people with disabilities by bringing together computer science technology and the principles of universal design.

Two groups of researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute have received a total of $10 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to build automated farming systems.

Popular Science has named Tartan Racing’s self-driving SUV, Boss, to its 21st annual “Best of What’s New” list.

Students from Pittsburgh, South Africa and Trinidad and Tobago are learning about each others lives and cultures by exchanging giant GigaPan panoramas--www.gigapan.org--that can be explored in detail on the computer. A show of their work will be on display from Nov. 5-16 at Artists Image Resource on Pittsburgh's North Side.

Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute is celebrating the 25 anniversary of Field Robotics and William L. "Red" Whittaker's 60th birthday.

The cool, rocky slopes of Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano that is Hawaii’s highest mountain, will serve as a stand-in for the moon as researchers from Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute, NASA and other organizations test a robot designed for lunar prospecting.

Researchers at the NREC are working with Caterpillar, Inc., to develop autonomous large haul trucks.

Disney has established a major research and development initiative at Carnegie Mellon University and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich.

Carnegie Mellon University researchers have launched Robot250, a program in which students, families, artists and the general public can gather and build their own customized robots using cutting-edge technology and educational materials developed at the Robotics Institute.

The paper is titled "Does help help? Introducing the Bayesian Evaluation and Assessment methodology".

General Motors Corp. and Carnegie Mellon University are establishing a new Collaborative Research Lab (CRL) to develop technologies that will accelerate the emerging field of autonomous driving — a family of electronics and software technologies that could influence the way drivers and their vehicles interact in the future.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have devised the first computerized method that can analyze a single photograph and determine where in the world the image likely was taken.

Takeo Kanade is the 2008 recipient of the Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Science from the historic Franklin Institute.

Carnegie Mellon University inducts four robots into the Robot Hall of Fame at a ceremony at Carnegie Science Center and announces the Science Center as the new home of the Hall of Fame beginning in spring 2009.

A self-driving SUV called Boss made history by driving swiftly and safely while sharing the road with human drivers and other robots. The feat earned Carnegie Mellon University's Tartan Racing first place in the DARPA Urban Challenge and a $2 million cash award.

New literacy software delivers “amazing” results among Vancouver grade schoolers who speak English as a second language.

A team of researchers from Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh has received a $6 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to enhance an intelligent, automated Reading Tutor that listens to children read and verbally assists them when it hears them stumble.