IRIM Spring Seminar | Making Large Dimensional Problems Small Again

PLEASE NOTE LOCATION CHANGE | Klaus Advanced Computing Building 1116

Abstract: Motion is all around us. Motion is particularly interesting when it has many degrees of freedom. This talk covers the design, sensing, and planning for snake, multi-agent and modular robot high DOF systems. Thus far, each system requires different fundamentals – geometric mechanics for snake robot locomotion, deferred planning and ergodic search for multi-agent systems, and novel generator and discriminator networks for modular robots – which will be covered in this talk. While no grand unifying theory combines these approaches, they all share one aspect in common: reduce complex high dimensional problems into low dimensional ones. In pursuit of this investigation in reduction, my group has created several embedded systems - actuators and edge sensors - to build and deploy robots that stress-tests the core assumptions in the theory and demonstrates efficacy for applications of national importance. These applications include minimally invasive surgery, urban search and rescue, manufacturing, assembly in low-Earth orbit, maintenance of municipal infrastructure, and agile recycling. This talk will discuss these confined space applications, and if time permits, the five spin off companies, and one manufacturing institute, that my colleagues and I co-founded to commercialize the core technologies covered in m this talk.

Bio: Howie Choset is a Professor of Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University where he serves as the co-director of the Biorobotics Lab and as director of the Robotics Major. He received his undergraduate degrees in Computer Science and Business from the University of Pennsylvania in 1990. Choset received his Masters and PhD from Caltech in 1991 and 1996. Choset's research group reduces complicated high-dimensional problems found in robotics to low-dimensional simpler ones for design, analysis, and planning. Motivated by applications in confined spaces, Choset has created a comprehensive program in modular, high DOF, and multi- robot systems, which has led to basic research in mechanism design, path planning, motion planning, and estimation. This work has been supported by both industry and government; DOD support includes two MURIs, one of which Choset was the CO-PI, a young investigator award, and multi-PI awards for modular systems. Choset.s group has produced over 60 journal papers (including 2 in Science and one in Proceedings of the National Academies of Sceince), 180 conference papers and 15 patents. Choset.s work has also been recognized by several best paper awards and nominations at ICRA, IROS and other robotics meetings. Choset's research program has made contributions to challenging and strategically significant problems in diverse areas such as surgery, manufacturing, infrastructure inspection, and search and rescue. In addition to publications, this work has led to Choset, along with his students, to form several companies including Medrobotics, for surgical systems, Hebi Robotics, for modular robots, and Bito Robotics for autonomous guided vehicles. Recently, Choset.s surgical snake robot cleared the FDA and has been in use in the US and Europe since. Choset also leads multi-PI projects centered on manufacturing: (1) automating the programming of robots for auto-body painting; (2) the development of mobile manipulators for agile and flexible fixture-free manufacturing of large structures in aerospace, and (3) the creation of a data-robot ecosystem for rapid manufacturing in the commercial electronics industry. This year, Choset co-lead the formation of the Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing Institute, which is $250MM national institute advancing both technology development and education for robotics in manufacturing. Finally, Choset is a founding Editor of the journal .Science Robotics. and is currently serving on the editorial board of IJRR.

PLEASE NOTE LOCATION CHANGE | Klaus Advanced Computing Building 1116