RI Seminar
Robotics Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University

Motion Planning for the Urban Grand Challenge

Abstract We present the motion planning framework for Boss, Carnegie Mellon's winning entry in the Urban Grand Challenge. Urban environments present a number of motion planning challenges, including high-speed operation, complex inter-vehicle interaction, parking in large unstructured lots, and highly constrained maneuvers. Our approach combines a local planner that utilizes a model-based trajectory generation algorithm [...]

RI Seminar
George A Kantor
Systems Scientist
Robotics Institute

Sensor Networks for Specialty Agriculture

Event Location: NSH 1109Abstract: The control of dynamical systems becomes increasingly important as the era of robotics research dominated by quasi-static machines rapidly comes to a close. Similarly, the importance of state estimation grows as robotic applications require robots to function in larger, more complex environments. My research addresses both of these issues by focusing [...]

RI Seminar
William Red L. Whittaker
University Professor
Robotics Institute

Robots at Work

Event Location: WEH 7500Bio: Dr. William L. "Red" Whittaker is the Fredkin Professor of Robotics, Director of the Field Robotics Center, and founder of the National Robotics Engineering Consortium, all at Carnegie Mellon University. He is also the Chief Scientist of RedZone Robotics. He has an extensive record of successful developments of robots for craft, [...]

RI Seminar
Charlie Kemp
Georgia Tech

Autonomous Mobile Manipulation for the Motor Impair

Event Location: Mauldin Auditorium (NSH 1305)Abstract: For millions of people on a daily basis, motor impairments diminish quality of life, reduce independence, and increase healthcare costs. Assistive robots that autonomously manipulate objects within everyday settings offer the potential to improve the lives of the elderly, injured, and disabled by augmenting their abilities with those of [...]

RI Seminar
Dennis Hong
Assistant Professor
Virginia Tech

Roll, Crawl, Walk, Climb, and Jump: Robot Locomotion Inspired by Nature and Beyond

Event Location: NSH 1305 Abstract: Most mobile robots we see today utilize wheels or treads to move around. But why don't we see such locomotion mechanisms in nature? Or a better question we should ask is: why don't we use locomotion mechanisms used in nature for creating robots? Animals move in various ways; crawling, walking, [...]

RI Seminar
Katsu Yamane
Disney Research Pittsburgh

Towards Robots that Move and Interact Like Humans

Event Location: NSH 1305Bio: Katsu Yamane joined Disney Research, Pittsburgh as a Senior Research Scientist in October 2008. His research interests are in humanoid robot control, human motion analysis and simulation, and character animation synthesis. He received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from University of Tokyo in 1997, 1999 and 2002 respectively. Before moving [...]