[Apologies for multiple postings]


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*    GRAND Seminar
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*    http://cs.gmu.edu/~robotics/pmwiki.php/Main/GrandSeminar
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*Title*

Transformations and Frontiers in Robotics

*Time/Venue*

Nov. 20, noon, Tuesday, 2012
ENGR 4201

*Speaker*

Dmitry Berenson
http://users.wpi.edu/~dberenson/

Assistant Professor
Robotics Engineering and Computer Science
Worcester Polytechnic Institute

*Host*

Jyh-Ming Lien

*Abstract*

Robotics is undergoing three transformations, which are changing not
only our research focus but also the way we do research. A new focus
on human-robot collaborative systems and the availability of parallel
and cloud computing is transforming the topics we study, while new
open-source communities and common research platforms are transforming
the way we work in the lab and collaborate with others. I will present
my contributions to these transformations in the areas of robotic home
assistants and medical robotics, where I have developed motion
planning algorithms that enable new robotic manipulation capabilities.
These include algorithms that plan motion with multiple simultaneous
constraints, manage sensor uncertainty in the planning process, and
use previous experience to plan faster. I will discuss the theory
behind these approaches and show practical applications on real-world
robots. I will end by discussing three frontiers that are emerging as
a result of these transformations as well as prospects for their
exploration.

*Bio*

Dmitry Berenson received a BS in Electrical Engineering from Cornell
University and received his Ph.D. degree from the Robotics Institute
at Carnegie Mellon University in 2011. He recently completed a
post-doc at UC Berkeley in the Department of Electrical Engineering
and Computer Sciences and started as an Assistant Professor in
Robotics Engineering and Computer Science at WPI. He founded and
directs the Autonomous Robotic Collaboration (ARC) Lab at WPI, which
focuses on motion planning, manipulation, and human-robot
collaboration.

-- 
Jyh-Ming Lien
Assistant Professor, George Mason University
+1-703-993-9546

MASC Group: http://masc.cs.gmu.edu
Homepage: http://cs.gmu.edu/~jmlien