GRASP On Robotics: “Advancing Innovations for Robotic Teams in Complex Environments”

https://upenn.zoom.us/j/96715197752

Abstract: Complex real-world environments continue to present significant challenges for fielding robotic teams, which often face expansive spatial scales, difficult and dynamic terrain, degraded environmental conditions, and severe communication constraints. Breakthrough technologies call for integrated solutions across autonomy, perception, networking, mobility, and human teaming thrusts. As such, the DARPA OFFSET program and the DARPA Subterranean […]

Spring 2021 GRASP SFI: “Considerations for Human-Robot Collaboration”

Zoom

Abstract: The field of robotics has evolved over the past few decades. We’ve seen robots progress from the automation of repetitive tasks in manufacturing to the autonomy of mobilizing in unstructured environments to the cooperation of swarm robots that are centralized or decentralized. These abilities have required advances in robotic hardware, modeling, and artificial intelligence. […]

GRASP/MEAM Seminar: “Towards Safe and Efficient Learning and Control for Physical Human Robot Interaction”

Zoom - Email MEAM for Link peterlit@seas.upenn.edu

From factories to households, we envision a future where robots can work safely and efficiently alongside humans. For robots to truly be adopted in such dynamic environments, we must i) minimize human effort while communicating and transferring tasks to robots; ii) endow robots with the capabilities of adapting to changes in the environment, in the […]

Spring 2021 GRASP SFI: “Robotic Caregivers—Sensing, Simulation, and Physical Human-Robot Interaction”

Zoom

Abstract: Autonomous robots have the potential to serve as versatile caregivers that improve quality of life for millions of people with disabilities worldwide. Yet, physical robotic assistance presents several challenges, including risks associated with physical human-robot interaction, difficulty sensing the human body, and a lack of tools for benchmarking and training physically assistive robots. In […]

GRASP On Robotics: “Perspectives on Machine Learning for Adaptive Robotic Systems”

https://upenn.zoom.us/j/96715197752

Abstract: Recent advances in machine learning are leading to new tools for designing intelligent robots: functions relied on to govern a robot’s behavior can be learned from a robot’s interaction with its environment rather than hand-designed by an engineer. Many machine learning methods assume little prior knowledge and are extremely flexible, they can model almost […]

MEAM Seminar: “Design, Fabrication, and Control of Biologically Inspired Soft Robots”

Zoom - Email MEAM for Link peterlit@seas.upenn.edu

Robotics has the potential to address many of today’s pressing problems in fields ranging from healthcare to manufacturing to disaster relief. However, the traditional approaches used on the factory floor do not perform well in unstructured environments. The key to solving many of these challenges is to explore new, non-traditional designs. Fortunately, nature surrounds us […]

May 2021 Robotics Master’s Thesis Presentations

Zoom

9:30am – Welcome from Ani Hsieh 9:35am – Weiyu Du “Learning Human Affordance in the Wild” Advised by: Jianbo Shi 9:55am – Jie Min “Instance-aware imagesuper-resolution” Advised by: Jianbo Shi 10:15am – Shenghao Zhou “Image Synthesis with Latent Space Embedding” Advised by: Jianbo Shi 10:35am – Jun Wang “Model Based Robust SemanticSegmentation” Advised by: George […]

MEAM Seminar: “Towards Manipulation of Large Objects by Robotic Edge Rolling with Quori, an Affordable Socially Interactive Humanoid Robot”

Zoom - Email MEAM for Link peterlit@seas.upenn.edu

Hardware platforms for socially interactive robotics can be limited by cost or lack of functionality. In this talk I will present the overall system—design, hardware, and software—for Quori, a novel, affordable, socially interactive humanoid robot platform for facilitating non-contact human-robot interaction(HRI) research. The design of the system is motivated by feedback sampled from the HRI […]

MEAM Seminar: “A Methodology for Self-Replicating Robots from Ice”

Zoom - Email MEAM for Link peterlit@seas.upenn.edu

In the late 1940s, John von Neumann first introduced the concept of self-replication as a way of furthering cellular reproduction research. By the late ‘50s and ’60s this research diverges along two separate paths: cellular automata replication with a focus on biological systems and robotics/machine replication. Generally the work in robotic systems focuses on the […]