RI Seminar
Carnegie Mellon University
Tartan Racing and the Urban Challenge
Abstract The DARPA Urban Grand Challenge was a 60 mile race through an urban roadway where vehicles had to follow the same rules of the road that human drivers are expected to respect. This challenge differed from the 2 previous Grand Challenges in that the robots not only had to navigate the course, but they [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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, [...]
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 [...]
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, [...]