Event Location: NSH 1305
Bio: Matei Ciocarlie is an assistant professor of Mechanical Engineering and affiliate assistant professor of Computer Science at Columbia University. His main interest is in reliable robotic manipulation in unstructured, human environments, focusing on areas such as novel hand designs and control, autonomous and Human-in-the-Loop mobile manipulation, shared autonomy, teleoperation, and assistive robotics. Matei completed his Ph.D. at Columbia University; his doctoral dissertation, focused on reducing the computational complexity associated with dexterous robotic grasping, was the winner of the 2010 Robotdalen Scientific Award. Before joining the faculty at Columbia, Matei was a Research Scientist and then Group Manager at Willow Garage, Inc., a privately funded Silicon Valley robotics research lab, and then a Senior Research Scientist at Google, Inc. In recognition of his work, Matei was awarded the 2013 IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Early Career Award and was named a 2015 Young Investigator by the Office of Naval Research.

Abstract: In this talk, I will present a number of methods for increasing the versatility of mobile manipulators, from novel hand designs and grasp planning algorithms to Human-in-the-Loop manipulation and its applications in assistive robotics. I will introduce the concept of eigengrasps as the bases of a linear hand posture subspace, and use it to show that, from a grasp planning perspective, a hand does not have to be complex in order to be versatile. I will then present the Velo Gripper, a novel underactuated design that uses passive adaptation to the object and the environment to complement the traditional sense-plan-and-act loop. Beyond the end-effector, I will present sensing and planning methods for manipulation under uncertainty and through clutter. Finally, I will present our results in Human-in-the-Loop manipulation, enabling non-experts to operate robots performing complex tasks in difficult environments. Among other applications, this approach can enable mobile robots to assist people with motor impairments. I will present results where our robot, operated by a motor impaired person through a head-tracker single-button mouse, performed varied and unscripted manipulation tasks in a real home, and acted as a medium for social interaction.