Congratulations to Prashant Rao from the ReNeu Lab, Gray Thomas from the Human Centered Robotics Lab, and ReNeu’s Lab PI Ashish Deshpande, for winning the IEEE ICRA 2017 Best Robotic Manipulation Paper Award!

Gray, Donghyun and Luis had a blast talking about our new lab’s pet topic “Uncertainty in Human-Centered Robots” #icra2017 #singapore #marinabaysands

Abstract: Uncertainty permeates in all control approaches and significantly complicates controller design. This is specially true for human-centered robots which rely on oversimplications such as ignoring high-frequency behaviors or realtime delays to central computers. In this talk Luis will join forces with HCRL students Gray and Donghyun to present detailed mathematical work on choosing structure for measuring uncertainty in a meaningful statistical sense, motivate the nature of uncertainty in hardware systems involving high performance series elastic actuators, and devise a planning and control framework that embraces uncertainty to external disturbances via reinforcement learning of locomotion responses.

Look at our new robotic companion, the Toyota HSR. Fun times ahead for #RoboCup2017 #UTAustin.

https://steveminq.wixsite.com/robocup-hcrl/media

PI, Luis Sentis gave a 45 minutes interview during SXSW discussing cognitive computational control and human-centered robotics. Here is a preview snapshot. The full interview will be aired later in the year by XPRIZE.

Qualification Material for RoboCup@Home 2017: Semi-autonomous grocery organization using the Dreamer compliant humanoid robot with whole-body control. Speech recognition and synthesis enabled.
Participants: Kwan Suk Kim, Jaemin Lee, Minkyu Kim, Steve Jorgensen, Luis Sentis

Title: A Developer’s Primer for Coding Human Behavior in Bots
Abstract: This session demonstrated ways to model human-robot interaction (HRI) using a practical coding scenario. We explored how to program a humanoid robot head that manages its eye contact to maximize “connection” and minimize “social awkwardness” in human interaction. This session addressed practical computational questions and frame cognitive modeling problems based on intuitive mechanical analogies. We leveraged the power of feedback Whole-Body Control to generate useful behaviors – and demonstrated the results on the Dreamer Humanoid robot head!
Participants: Steven Jorgensen, Travis Llado, Orion Campbell, Luis Sentis

People Talking to Dreamer

arXiv Paper Link

We are very pleased to have an all star line up of keynote speakers for the IEEE International Workshop of Advanced Robotics and its Social Impact in Austin, during March 8-10, 2017: (1) Ruzena Bajcsy, Director Emerita of Citrus at the University of California at Berkeley and co-founder of the renown GRASP laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania , (2) Sabine Hauert, Professor of Swarm Robotics at the University of Bristol, TED talk speaker, and expert in science communication, (3) Mady Delvaux, member of the European Parliament and advocate of increasing digital competences in education systems, and (4) Alan Manning, a renowned UK labour economist and professor of the London School of Economics.

You can find the biographies of the speakers on this link.

Additionally, a panel in conjunction with SXSW is scheduled to take place on Friday March 10, 2017.

Dissertation-Ye-Zhao

Congratulations to Ye for successfully defending his PhD! Some of his contributions include formalizing non-periodic locomotion gait planning, using formal methods to maneuver in dynamically changing environments, and studying distributed realtime control architectures.

A new NSF grant has been awarded to our lab in collaboration with the Computer Science and Aerospace Engineering Departments to explore human-aware robotic navigation in populated environments.