Newsgroups: comp.robotics
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From: kube@cs.UAlberta.CA (Ron Kube)
Subject: Grad Student Who's Who in Robotics--Summary to date
Message-ID: <kube.751322567@kitscoty>
Summary: A list of grad students in robotics
Keywords: directory robotics
Sender: news@cs.UAlberta.CA (News Administrator)
Nntp-Posting-Host: kitscoty.cs.ualberta.ca
Organization: University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1993 20:42:47 GMT
Lines: 278

Last week I posted a request for entries in a Grad Student Who's Who in
Robotics.  Here is a summary of all the entries I have received to date.
The entries are listed alphabetically using the "1. Name: " line.
If you would like to have your entry added, just mail me your entry using
the following format.  Once the list reaches a certain size, I will request
it be added to the comp.robotics FAQ.

Ron
========================================================================
C. Ronald Kube                                       Collective Robotic
University of Alberta                               Intelligence Project
Robotics Research Laboratory                        >>>>>> (CRIP) <<<<<<
Department of Computing Science                                     
615 General Services Building            vv          kube@cs.ualberta.ca     
Edmonton, Alberta                       @,@          Tel: (403) 492-5113
CANADA  T6G 2H1                        ( * )         Fax: (403) 492-1071
========================================m-m=============================

1. Name:	Karl R Altenburg	email: altenbur@plains.nodak.edu
2. Supervisor:	Mark Pavicic		email: pavicic@plains.nodak.edu
3. Institution: North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND, USA
4. Research Area:	Multiple Mobile Robots
5. Summary:

	Investigating the efficiency gains provided by communication and
	memory during multirobot search and retrieval type tasks.  Currently
	tests are being conducted on a set of six small mobile robots, and
	in simulation.  The work also investigates reactive control 
	for individual robots and emergent control for the system.

1. Name:  Todd M. Bezenek  email: bezenek@plains.nodak.edu
2. Super: Mark Pavicic     email: pavicic@plains.nodak.edu
3. Istit: North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND
4. Area:  Communications for multiple, autonomous robots.
5. Summary:
Several groups are working with multiple robots to collectively
solve a single problem.  Those addressing the problem of communication
between robots are assuming that there exists an unbreakable data path
between each pair of robots, or between each robot and a central
station.  In many real applications where multiple robots may be used,
communication between each pair of robots may not be continuous.  As
the robots move, the network representing pairs of robots that are able
to successfully communicate changes.  My goal is to develop a protocol
which will allow robots on this network to communicate effectively.
I have built two robots which communicate at 1200 baud over a simplex
49Mhz data channel.  A third, which will act as a slave attached to a
PC, is currently being constructed.

1. Name:		C. Ronald Kube	email: kube@cs.ualberta.ca
2. Supervisor:		H. Zhang	email: zhang@cs.ualberta.ca
3. Institution: 	University of Alberta, Alberta, Canada.
4. Research Area:	Collective Robotics
5. Summary:
	This research examines the question:  Can autonomous mobile robots
	achieve tasks collectively?  The work begins with the study of social
	insects--Nature's example of a decentralized control 
	system--simulating those mechanisms that could prove useful in
	controlling teams of robots.  Our research methodology requires all
	proposed theories be tested on situated physical robots.  To date,
	a system consisting of 5 mobile micro-robots have been built and used
	in a box-pushing task.  Currently, a new system of 10 micro-robots are
	being constructed.

1. Name:	   Gerard Lacey	        email: gerard.lacey@cs.tcd.ie
2. Supervisor:	   Dr. Ken Dawson-Howe	email: ken.dawson-howe@cs.tcd.ie
3. Institution:    Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland.
4. Research Area:  Autonomus and Semi-autonomus Mobile Robotics
5. Summary:	   Developoment of a low cost multi sensor autonomus 
      robot platfrom, intended to provide a base for further research 
      into autonomus and semi autonomus robotic research.  The future 
      research work is focused on using exploritory moves to help remove 
      uncertianties in the perception of the robots environment.

1. Name:		Clint Laskowski   email: clint.laskowski@mixcom.com
3. Organization:        Robotic Systems, Inc.
                        P. O. Box 552
                        Cudahy, Wisconsin 53110-0552
                        (414) 778-7675
4. Research Area:	Mobile Robot System Design and Software
5. Summary:             Robotic Systems, Inc. is developing a low-cost
                        expandable, programmable, mobile robot platform,
                        suitable for research and applications development.

1. Name:		Mark K. Long:  long@robby.caltech.edu, 
                                       long@telerobotics.jpl.nasa.gov
2. Supervisor:		Joel W. Burdick:  jwb@robby.caltech.edu
3. Institution: 	California Institute of Technology
4. Research Area:	Locomotion, Sensor Based Distributed Control, 
                        Central Pattern Generators, Complex Systems......
5. Summary:
           
       I   Former Work:  Kinematics and Control of Redundant Manipulators,
                         Local/Remote Supervised Autonomy for systems with
                         Time-Delay

           As member of the Technical Staff at NASA/JPL for 5 years I worked 
           on the Kinematics and Control of Redundant Manipulators, developing
           Approaches for the control of the Robotics Research Arm with 
           Composite Jacobian and Damped Least Squares Techniques.  I also 
           worked in the Supervisory Telerobotics Lab on combining Impedance
           Control, Generalized Compliant Motion, and Redundancy Resolution.
           This work included a control system for supervised autonomy with 
           time delay, and some virtual sensing as well as distributed
           monitoring.

      II   Current Work: Algorithms for Locomotion based on Central Pattern
                         Generators and Distributed Sensor Based Control.
                         (beginning 1993)

           The leg motion patterns of many 4,6,... legged animals have been
           shown to correspond to the stable limit cycles of coupled 
           non-linear oscillators. Where are currently examinging this behavior
           as well as trying to understand robustness issues, changes in the
           oscillation pattern during turning motion, and the role of 
           sensor feedback in the success of the control.  Additionally, some
           aspects of complexity theory arise when examing the emergent 
           behavior of the entire system of simple local controllers for 
           each leg.  It is resonable to ask: how does one design simple 
           sensor based local controllers for each leg that when combined 
           with the other legs through a simple central pattern generator
           has the emergent bahvior of stable walking and turning at a 
           variety of speeds.

1. Name:		Fred G. Martin	email: fredm@media.mit.edu
2. Supervisor:		Edith Ackermann	email: edith@media.mit.edu
3. Institution: 	Media Laboratory, Mass. Inst. of Technology
4. Research Area:	Robotics in Education
5. Summary:
	My work is concerned with the possibility of revitalizing the
modern undergraduate engineering curriculum by including intensive
design workshops based on the task of creating mobile autonomous
robots.  Included in this work is the design of hardware and software
to support such activities, and the development and analysis of
appropriate classroom/workshop environments.  

1. Name:		Simon P. Monckton   email:monckton@mech.ubc.ca
2. Supervisor:		D. Cherchas	email: cherchas@cs.ualberta.ca
3. Institution: 	University of British Columbia, B.C., Canada.
4. Research Area:	Multiagent Robotics
5. Summary:
     Most industrial manipulators employ a mapping between joint space
     and cartesian space either in the form of an inverse kinematic solution
     or the Jacobian inverse.  This approach has evolved
     out of the understanding of kinematics and dynamics of mechanisms and now
     is the exclusive manipulator control methodology. 
     Unfortunately, these approaches require significant support by world and 
     dynamic models to achieve robust performance under varying environmental 
     conditions. Furthermore, redundant manipulation often makes
     these approaches impractical to the point where few
     manufacturers consider the development of manipulators with greater than 6
     d.o.f.. This research addresses a new possibility, a cooperative 
     architecture of intelligent agents contributing toward the pursuit of a 
     global objective while pursuing local objectives. A literature survey 
     and early  simulations indicate that this approach
     not only viable, but less compute intensive than existing adaptive 
     and redundant control methods. 

1. Name         	Jane Mulligan (mulligan@cs.ubc.ca)
2. Supervisor   	Alan Mackworth (mack@cs.ubc.ca)
3. Institution  	University of British Columbia, B.C., Canada
4. Research Area	Integration of Sensing and Action
5. Summary
	My work looks at the sensory and model information
	required to achieve robotic tasks and proposes a layered structure
	for integrating sensing and action. Layers are organized based
	on the increasing informational/environmental complexity of 5 
	basic classes of tasks.

1. Name:		Dr. David J. Musliner email: musliner@umiacs.umd.edu
3. Institution: 	University of Maryland, College Park
4. Research Area:	Real-Time AI, Robotics
5. Summary:
	My research is primarily focused on interfacing and 
integrating real-time control systems with symbolic AI systems, usually
planners.  My PhD dissertation developed the CIRCA architecture
for real-time AI, and applied the design to a domain involving
a simulated Puma robot arm.  At Maryland, I am currently 
developing a new application/testing domain consisting of 
small, relatively high-speed autonomous mobile vehicles.

Maryland also has other robotics-related projects, including Jim Hendler's
work with ISR behavior-based robots, Dave Akin`s work with
underwater teleoperated robots, etc.

1. Name:		Lynne E. Parker	  email: parkerl@ai.mit.edu
2. Supervisor:		Rodney A. Brooks  email: brooks@ai.mit.edu
3. Institution: 	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
4. Research Area:	Heterogeneous Robot Cooperation
5. Summary:  
        This research develops a theory of situated agent cooperation by 
   constructing principles, guidelines, and a software architecture facilitating
   the design of cooperative, heterogeneous agent teams.  We have developed a 
   fully distributed software mechanism that allows teams of robots to quickly
   adapt their actions to a dynamic environment, to modifications in the robot
   team composition, and to changes in the capabilities of the individual robot
   team members.  We have validated the software both on physical robot teams
   of up to 5 small mobile robots and on simulated robot teams, performing tasks
   such as an artificial toxic waste cleanup, a bounding overwatch mission, 
   a janitorial service task, and a keeping formation task.

1. Name:		Julio Kenneth Rosenblatt	email: jkr@ri.cmu.edu
2. Supervisor:		Chuck Thorpe			email: cet@ri.cmu.edu
3. Institution: 	Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University
			Pittsburgh, PA, USA
4. Research Area:	Mobile Robot Architectures
5. Summary:
The Distributed Architecture for Mobile Navigation (DAMN) provides a
framework for independent, distributed, task-achieving behaviors,
similar in spirit to the Subsumption Architecture. One important
difference between DAMN and the Subsumption Architecture is that
rather than one behavior overriding another, DAMN behaviors send
weighted votes to an arbiter wheich then selects the action that best
satisfies several objectives concurrently.

1. Name:	  Armin Sulzmann  email: sulzmann@imtsg1.epfl.ch
2. Supervisor:	  R.Clavel	  email: 
3. Institution:   Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne, Switzerland
4. Research Area: Micro-Robotics
5. Summary:
	This research examines the question: 
	Developement of a vision-based (virtuel-reality) System 
	to guide the manipulations of microsystems, microstructurs, etc.

1. Name:        Eddie Tunstel	email: tunstel@chama.eece.unm.edu
				or     tunstel@robotics.jpl.nasa.gov
2. Supervisor:	Dr. M Jamshidi	email: jamshid@houdini.eece.unm.edu
3. Institution: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque
4. Res Area:	Fuzzy and Intelligent Control of Mobile Robots
5. Summary:
	This research focusses on the development of hybrid intelligent
	control architectures for autonomous mobile robots and mobile
	manipulation.  The work includes investigations of various
	combinations of paradigms such as fuzzy logic, neural networks,
	behavior control, and genetic algorithms for real time motion
	control.  The research focus is on control architectures for
	navigation, path planning, and environment mapping with empahasis
	on embedded application.

 1. Name:		Richard Voyles		email: robodude@cmu.edu
 2. Supervisor:		Pradeep Khosla		email: pkk@ri.cmu.edu
 3. Institution: 	Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
 4. Research Area:	Multi-Agent Control/Perception
 5. Summary:
	I'm investigating the cooperation of relatively dumb agents with
	minimal communication channels during control and perception tasks.
	I'm applying systems of encapsulated agents to control of a
	Utah/MIT dextrous hand, control of a Puma 560, and possbily to
	the task of selecting control methodologies for a robot.

1. Name:	   Gabriel D. Warshaw	email: gabriel@sce.carleton.ca
2. Supervisor:	   Howard Schwartz	
3. Institution:    Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
4. Research Area:  Sampled-Data Robot Adaptive Control
5. Summary:
	I am addressing the stability and performance of discretized
adaptive control algorithms for robotic manipulator control, and the
compensation of these algorithms for improved stability and tracking
performance.  The discretization of adaptive control algorithms
published in the literature can result in a sampled-data robot system
for which stability has not been guaranteed.  By formulating the
entire sampled-data system in continuous-time, I have used Lyapunov's
direct method to determine the stability and to derive a non-linear
discrete-time compensating term.  I have demonstrated the theoretical
results through simulation and implementation on a 2 degree-of-freedom
direct drive manipulator.

1. Name:		Mark Yim	email: mark@killdeer.stanford.edu
2. Supervisor:		J.C. Latombe	email: latombe@cs.stanford.edu
3. Institution: 	Stanford University, Stanford CA, 94305
4. Research Area:	Reconfigurable Modular Robot Locomotion
5. Summary:
	A dynamically reconfigurable modular robot named Polypod has been
	designed, simulated and partially constructed.  Research is
	being done on unusual statically stable locomotion gaits implemented
	on Polypod, for example, a rolling loop, a moving carpet with many
	feet, slinky locomotion...  Each gait is achieved with a very simple
	behaviour based control scheme.  A taxonomy of locomotion and the
	kinematics of locomotion will be analyzed.
