Event Location: NSH3305
Bio: Raffaello D’Andrea is professor of Dynamic Systems and Control at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. He also is technical co-founder and chief technical advisor for Kiva Systems, a company that develops adaptive and self-configuring warehouse automation systems using hundreds of networked, mobile robots. He was the faculty advisor and system architect of the Cornell Robot Soccer Team, four-time world champions at the international RoboCup competition in Sweden, Australia, Italy, and Japan. In addition, he has exhibited his work at various international venues, including the Venice Biennale, Ars Electronica, the Smithsonian, the Spoleto Festival, and the FRAC Centre; two of his collaborative projects – The Robotic Chair and The Table – are in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Canada. D’Andrea is a recipient of the Invention and Entrepreneurship in Robotics and Automation Award, the United States Presidential Early Career Award for Science and Engineering, the National Science Foundation Career Award, and best paper awards from the American Automatic Control Council, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the International Federation of Automatic Control.

Abstract: A key bottleneck preventing the widespread deployment of robotic and autonomous systems is robustness. Unfortunately, the university research environment does little to address this problem. In this talk I discuss several ways in which we have been able to naturally incorporate robustness in our research: by putting ourselves in positions where the cost of failure is high.