PhD Thesis Defense
Alexander Schepelmann
Carnegie Mellon University

Evaluation of Decentralized Reactive Swing-Leg Controllers on Powered Robotic Legs

Event Location: NSH 3305Abstract: We present work to transfer decentralized neuromuscular control strategies of human locomotion to powered segmented robotic legs. State-of-the-art robotic locomotion control approaches, like centralized planning and tracking in fully robotic systems and predefined motion pattern replay in prosthetic systems, do not enable the dynamism and reactiveness of able-bodied humans. Animals largely [...]

RI Seminar
Michael Boninger, MD
Professor & Chair, Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation
University of Pittsburgh

Brain Computer Interfaces – Success from the University of Pittsburgh

Event Location: NSH 1305Bio: Dr. Michael Boninger is a Professor and UPMC Endowed Chair in the Department of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation at the University of Pittsburgh, School of Medicine. He has joint appointment in the Departments of Bioengineering, and the McGowan Institute of Regenerative Medicine. He is Director of the UPMC Rehabilitation Institute and [...]

VASC Seminar
Michael Ryoo
Assistant Professor
Indiana University Bloomington

Human Activity Recognition from a Robot’s Viewpoint

Event Location: NSH 1507Bio: Michael S. Ryoo is an Assistant Professor of the School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University. His research interest is within the areas of Computer Vision and Human-Robot Interaction, with a particular emphasis on human activity recognition, first-person vision, and wearable/ubiquitous cameras. Before joining IU, Dr. Ryoo was a staff [...]

PhD Thesis Proposal
Nathan Otten
Carnegie Mellon University

Rover Traverse Planning for Prolonged Solar-Powered Polar Exploration

Event Location: GHC 4405Abstract: Future in-situ resource utilization promises to enable affordable exploration of space and extend human presence in the Solar System by minimizing the materials that must be carried from Earth. This is predicated on the existence of economic quantities of native materials that can be converted into consumable resources, such as water, [...]

RI Seminar
Matthew Johnson-Roberson
Assistant Professor
University of Michigan

Underwater mapping: new robotic approaches to an old problem

Event Location: NSH 1305Bio: Matthew Johnson-Roberson is Assistant Professor of Engineering in the Department of Naval Architecture & Marine Engineering and the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan. He received a PhD from the University of Sydney in 2010. There he worked on Autonomous Underwater Vehicles for long-term environment [...]

RI Seminar
Sabine Hauert
Lecturer in Robotics
University of Bristol, UK

Swarming nanobots for cancer applications

Event Location: NSH 1507Bio: I am a swarm engineer interested in designing large collective systems that self-organize. Swarm strategies are either inspired from nature (ant colonies and bird flocks) or are automatically designed in simulation using machine learning and crowdsourcing. Demonstrated applications include designing swarming nanoparticles for cancer treatment and deploying large aerial swarms for [...]

VASC Seminar
Olga Russakovsky
Postdoctoral Fellow, RI
Carnegie Mellon

The human side of computer vision

Event Location: NSH 1507Bio: Olga Russakovsky (http://cs.cmu.edu/~orussako) is a postdoctoral research fellow at Carnegie Mellon University. She recently completed a PhD in computer science at Stanford advised by Prof. Fei-Fei Li. Her research is in computer vision, closely integrated with machine learning and human-computer interaction. She led the ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge effort [...]

PhD Thesis Defense
Siyuan Feng
Carnegie Mellon University

Online Hierarchical Optimization for Humanoid Control

Event Location: NSH 3305Abstract: This thesis presents an online approach for controlling humanoid robots using hierarchical optimization. While our primary focus is to develop a fast and robust walking controller that is able to follow desired foot steps, full body manipulation capability is also achieved. The proposed hierarchical system consists of three levels: a high [...]

RI Seminar
Adam Bry
CEO
Skydio

Algorithms and challenges in scaling up autonomous flight

Event Location: NSH 1305Bio: Adam Bry is co-founder and CEO of Skydio, a venture backed drone startup based in the bay area. Prior to Skydio he helped start Project Wing at Google[x] where he worked on the flight algorithms and software. He holds a SM in Aero/Astro from MIT and a BS in Mechanical Engineering [...]

VASC Seminar
Robert Pless
Professor
Washington University

Brighter, Faster, Cheaper: Finding or Creating Light Fields for Visual Computing

Event Location: NSH 1507Bio: Robert Pless is a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, where he founded and directs the Media and Machines Lab. His research focus are big-data and geometric approaches to Visual Computing, with applications to social justice and environmental measurement. Dr. Pless has a Bachelors Degree [...]