RI Seminar

Abstract: In this talk, Herman Herman will offer various lessons learned from developing various robots for the last 2 decades at the National Robotics Engineering Center. He will also offer his perspective on the future of autonomous robots in various industries, including self-driving cars, material handling and consumer robotics. Bio: Dr. Herman Herman is the [...]

Abstract: Factor graphs have become a popular tool for modeling robot perception problems. Not only can they model the bipartite relationship between sensor measurements and variables of interest for inference, but they have also been instrumental in devising novel inference algorithms that exploit the spatial and temporal structure inherent in these problems. I will overview [...]

Abstract: Nobel prize winner M. G. Lippmann described his dream of an ideal display as a “window into the world.”  “While the current most perfect photographic print only shows one aspect of reality, reduced to a single image fixed in a plane, the direct view of reality offers, as we know, infinitely more variety.” Changing [...]

Abstract: A long-standing question in HRI is what effects a robot’s human-like appearance has on various psychological responses.  A substantial literature has demonstrated such effects on liking, trust, ascribed intelligence, and so on.  Much of this work has relied on a construct of uni-dimensional low to high human-likeness. I introduce evidence for an alternative view according to which [...]

Abstract: A great deal of research in recent years has focused on robot learning.  In many applications, guarantees that specifications are satisfied throughout the learning process are paramount. For the safety specification, we present a controller synthesis technique based on the computation of reachable sets, using optimal control and game theory.  In the first part [...]

Abstract: The Arctic, Antarctic and Greenland remain some of the least explored parts of the planet. This talk looks at efforts over the last decade to explore areas under-ice which have traditionally been difficult to access. The focus of the talk will be on the robots, the role of communications over low bandwidth acoustic links, [...]

Abstract: In the future, robots could be used to take care of the elderly, perform household chores, and assist in hazardous situations. However, such applications require robots to manipulate objects in unstructured and everyday environments. Hence, in order to perform a wide range of tasks, robots will need to learn manipulation skills that generalize between [...]