Fall 2023 GRASP on Robotics: Leslie Kaelbling, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “Doing for our robots what nature did for us”

Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

This is a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Wu and Chen and virtual attendance on Zoom. ABSTRACT We, as robot engineers, have to think hard about our role in the design of robots and how it interacts with learning, both in "the factory" (that is, at engineering time) and in "the wild" (that is, […]

MEAM Seminar: “Granular and Photoelastic Avalanches”

Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Flowing granular materials arise everywhere around us, in industry from pharmaceutical processes to bulk good transport lines, and in nature from snow avalanches to captivating dune fields. In landslides, we have an interesting interplay between microscale (grain-grain contacts) and macroscale processes (continuum behavior). In order to understand critical macroscale processes such as stability of a […]

Fall 2023 GRASP SFI: Matthew D. Kvalheim, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, “Discovering engineering (im)possibilities with geometry and topology”

Levine 307 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

This is a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Levine 307 and virtual attendance on Zoom. ABSTRACT I will describe engineering (im)possibilities discovered with geometry or topology. These provide or revoke “hunting licenses” for the search of quantities of interest in three contexts: feedback control, applied Koopmanism, and deep neural network autoencoders. Control-Lyapunov or barrier […]

CBE Seminar: “Transformer-based Hybrid Modeling and Control of Evolving, Nonlinear Processes” (Kwon, Texas A&M University)

Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Traditionally, the dynamic modeling of chemical processes has relied on first-principles models grounded in fundamental physics and chemistry laws. These models, primarily formulated through differential equations with constant parameters, enable the calculation of control actions optimizing process operations, taking both process and actuator limitations into account. However, the ever-evolving and nonlinear nature of chemical processes […]

MSE Seminar: “Advanced Analytical Characterization of Next Generation Energy Storage Systems” – Nik Singh – Toyota Research Institute of North America

Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Advances in hybrid and electric vehicle technologies combined with a demand for green initiatives have recently motivated necessary diversification in energy storage research. To achieve customer expectations for hybrid and electric vehicles, new battery systems with higher energy densities, power densities and cycle life than the current state-of-art Lithium (Li)-ion battery are needed. Further, to […]

Fall 2023 GRASP on Robotics: Nick Gravish, University of California, San Diego, “Adaptive robots through reconfiguration, compliance, and contact”

Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

This is a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Wu and Chen and virtual attendance on Zoom. ABSTRACT Recent advances in robot materials and algorithms have enabled new levels of adaptive and versatile behavior. In this talk I will describe my lab’s efforts to create robots, mechanisms, and control algorithms capable of adaptive behaviors in […]

MEAM Seminar: “Hardware / Controls Co-design to Overcome Challenges for Aerial Robots”

Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Aerial robotics have become ubiquitous, but (like most robots) they still struggle to operate at high speed in unstructured, cramped environments. By considering a vehicle's mechanical design simultaneously with the design of controls and automation algorithms, we have more degrees of freedoms to find creative solutions to problems. In this talk I will present some […]

Fall 2023 GRASP SFI: E. Farrell Helbling, Cornell University, “Autonomy for insect-scale robots”

Levine 307 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

This is a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Levine 307 and virtual attendance on Zoom. ABSTRACT Countless science fiction works have set our expectations for small, mobile, autonomous robots for use in a broad range of applications. The ability to move through highly dynamic and complex environments can expand capabilities in search and rescue […]

CBE Seminar: “Structure-Independent Peptide Binder Design via Generative Language Models” (Chatterjee, Duke University)

Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

The ability to modulate pathogenic proteins represents a powerful treatment strategy for diseases. Unfortunately, many proteins are considered "undruggable" by small molecules, and are often intrinsically disordered, precluding the usage of structure-based tools for binder design. To address these challenges, we have developed a suite of algorithms that enable the design of target-specific peptides via […]

MSE Seminar: “Nonlinear and Topological Quantum Photonics” University of Central Florida

Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

In this talk we will discuss how to engineer the dispersion relation of photonic platforms to provide robust propagation of classical and quantum states of light. In the first part of this talk, we will unveil how to leverage the interaction of nonlinearity with higher orders of dispersion to create novel types of solitons, wave […]