Newsgroups: comp.robotics
Path: brunix!news.Brown.EDU!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!math.ohio-state.edu!cyber2.cyberstore.ca!nntp.cs.ubc.ca!alberta!kube
From: kube@cs.ualberta.ca (Ron Kube)
Subject: Grad Students Who's Who in Robotics
Message-ID: <kube.756063544@alberta>
Summary: A summary of entries received to date for the Grad Students Who's Who
Keywords: Who's Who
Sender: news@cs.UAlberta.CA (News Administrator)
Organization: University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 1993 17:39:04 GMT
Lines: 645



    >>>>>>>>>>>>>> GRAD STUDENTS WHO'S WHO IN ROBOTICS <<<<<<<<<<<<<<
    =================================================================
Have you ever wondered what grad students are doing in robotics?
A trip to your local research library allows you to see Who's Who
in robotics at the post-doc level, i.e. Professor SoNso, and SuchNsuch,
but what about the graduate students working on their MSc. or PhD?
Here is a summary of the received entries to date.  If you would like to
appear in the Grad Students Who's Who in Robotics send a note to 
kube@cs.ualberta.ca using the 5 point format.

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 : Venkateswara Rao Ayyadevara 	(email : avrao@vax2.concordia.ca)
2. Supervisors : Dr.R.M.H. Cheng	(email : richard@vax2.concordia.ca)
	      Dr.Ramesh Rajagopalan	(email : ramesh@vax2.concordia.ca)
3. Institution : 	Centre for Industrial Control,
		Dept. of Mechanical Engineering
		Concordia University
		Montreal, Canada
4. Research Topic : Development of an Automated Robotic Deburring Workcell for
		 Impeller Blades
5. Summary :
Impeller is a component used in aircraft engines.  Owing to their geometrical
complexity and the rigorous standards specified by air safety regulations, 
impellers are extremely expensive to produce.  After several thousand hours in
use, the blades of an  impeller are warped and the edges are corroded.  If 
some of these impeller blades can be refurbished after being used for several 
thousand hours, considerable amount of money could be saved.  I am working as 
part of a team which is developing an automated workcell using Yamaha Zeta 
Deburring robot to probe the surface of the impeller blade, reconstruct the 
surface, determine the desired edge profile and then use the robot to machine 
the workpiece to obtain that edge profile.  My task is to develop set up for 
probing the surface of the impeller blades and to interface the controller of 
the robot with a PC-transputer network which is responsible for directing the 
probe, surface reconstruction and control of the robot.

1. Name:            Johan G Benade email: jgb@ing1.rau.ac.za
2. Supervisor:      Andre L Nel    email: aln@ing1.rau.ac.za
3. Institution:     Rand Afrikaans University, Johannesburg, RSA.
4. Research Area:   Autonomous Robotics
5. Summary:
Research is aimed at producing an improved biologically based 
controller for use in hexapod locomotion.  The leg controller must be 
able to cope with uneven terrain - gaps in surfaces - inclines and 
surface tension variability.  At the end of the project a functioning 
hardware realisation must be produced.

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:		Chris Connolly	email: connolly@cs.umass.edu
2. Supervisor:		Rod Grupen
3. Institution: 	Laboratory for Perceptual Robotics,
			University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA (USA)
4. Research Area:	Motor and task planning using harmonic functions
5. Summary:
    Harmonic functions are solutions to Laplace's equation, and can be
    rapidly computed using resistive networks.  They exhibit no local minima,
    and can be used to generate smooth goal-reaching trajectories [1].
    We're using them for coarse reaching (on P-50 hand/arm systems) and
    mobile robot trajectory planning (on an unmanned ground vehicle).
    The resistive network formulation also turns out to be useful for modeling
    certain nuclei of the basal ganglia [2,3], and provide a theory for
    aspects of motor and cognitive planning in the mammalian central
    nervous system.

    [1] Connolly CI, Grupen RA, (1993) "The Applications of Harmonic Functions 
	to Robotics", Journal of Robotic Systems, 10(7):931-946.
    [2] Connolly CI, Burns JB, (1993) "A Model for the Functioning of 
        the Striatum", Biological Cybernetics, 68(6):535-544.
        its Relationship to
	Basal Ganglia Diseases", Neuroscience Research, 16:271-274.

1.	Name:		Joe Cronin	J.Cronin@UNSW.edu.au
2.	Supervisor:	Richard Frost
			Richard Wilgoss
3.	Institution:	University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
4.	Research Area:	Biped Robot.
5.	Summary.	
I'll make it brief. It will have two legs. It will be anthropomorphic.
It will walk.

The ultimate goal of this project is to design, model and build a biped
robot platform, capable of dynamic motion. It will be hydraulically 
driven, use an HC11 on every joint and stand about four feet high. There
are two main areas of research; the first is to develop and control an
ankle and foot with all degrees of freedom of the human ankle and foot, 
the second is to use distributed HC11's to solve the inverse kinematics
at the joint.

The project is at the stage where construction will begin before the end
of 1993. As the school is in some financial difficulty, I have had to raise
all funds for this project privately. The school does not have an active
mobile robot group, I would be interested in anyone who would be interested
in me.

1. Name:		    Bruce Digney		digney@dvinci.usask.ca
2. Supervisor:		M. M. Gupta 
3. Institution: 	Dept. of Mech. Eng., University of Saskatchewan (Canada)
4. Research Area:   Distributed Adaptive Control Systems	
5. Summary:
	In my research I propose that by incorporated learning
	and adaption into a behavior based control system, the skills and
	behaviors which are impossible or impractical to be predetermined
	and embedded can be learned by  the robot during operation.
	The result is a distributed adaptive control system (DACS), which
	can be thought of as the robot's artificial adaptive nervous
	system. This DACS autonomously learns the sensory-response couplings
	between the highest behavioral level, where the desired tasks
	are specified, and the lowest level actuators, which ultimately
	perform those tasks. A DACS has been developed for a simulated
	quadruped mobile robot and extensions to a physical robot
	are planned.

1. Name:	Sean P. Engelson	email: engelson@cs.yale.edu
2. Supervisor:	Drew V. McDermott	email: mcdermott@cs.yale.edu
3. Institution: Yale University
4. Research Area: Map Learning
5. Summary:
   My work explores a `passive' mapping paradigm, in which the
   map-learning system has no direct control over the agent's actions.
   The main problem in map-learning is the fact that the agent's location
   is never perfectly known.  Errors in localization lead inevitably to
   mapping errors.  Passive mapping exacerbates this problem, since the
   mapper cannot perform experiments to verify the robot's location.  My
   approach allows mapping errors to occur, and deals with them in two
   ways.  First, is the use of a graph-based representation scheme which
   incorporates both connectivity and positional information to locally
   bound mapping error.  Second, errors are diagnosed and repaired as
   information becomes available.  The diagnosis and repair strategies
   are based on a taxonomy of possible mapping errors.

 1. Name: Bridget Hallam <bridget@aifh.ed.ac.uk>
 2. Supervisor: Gillian Hayes
 3. Institution: Dept of Artificial Intelligence, Edinburgh University, UK
 4. Research Area: Controlling Robots using Biological Theories
 5. Summary:

   Studying animal behavioural control can give insights into autonomous
   behaviour that may prove useful for those wishing to build autonomous
   robots. Implementing Halperin's neuro-connector model of learning and   
   motivation on a mobile robot has shown that it can be used to control 
   robots, and that it is reasonably complete. Implementation in simulation
   will discover the sensitivity of the various features to variations in 
   parameters and the exact equations used, and so improve the model as a
   robot controller. It may also improve the model for ethologists.

1. Name:	   Roger B. Hertz	(hertz@ecf.toronto.edu)
2. Supervisor:	   Peter C. Hughes	(hughesp@ecf.toronto.edu)
3. Institution:	   University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies
4. Research Area:  Articulated-Truss Manipulators
5. Summary:
	We are investigating the use of articulated truss mechanisms
	for both space and terrestrial robotics applications.  We have
	constructed a prototype manipulator based on this concept that
	is capable of 3-DOF spatial motion.  My research is centered
	on applying the technology to a 6-DOF industrial version of the
	manipulator.  Current work is involved with manipulator design, 
	development of kinematics algorithms, workspace analysis, and 
	customization of an industrial robot contoller.

1. Name:	Tomas Hogstrom  	email: tomas@idefix.ikp.liu.se
2. Supervisor:	Ake Wernersson  	email: -
3. Institution: RAMeS, Linkoping Inst. of Tech, Linkoping, Sweden
4. Research Area: Supervisory controlled (mobile) robots
5. Summary:
	I'm looking at supervisory controlled robots, i.e. an operator sends commands / instructions to the remote robot which is to autonomous execute the given subtask. I have built a robot with a turnable camera and a rate gyro, and have investigated what is possible to do with this (simple) sensor combination. I will probably add a laser range scanner for autonomous wall/corridor following. Our sister group has developped algorithms for that. (Robust navigation using the Hough transform). I'm also interested 

in using virtual reality, but I'm not sure we have enough resources for such a project.
We have my robot, and a Robosoft Robuter, some range measuring lasers, two inertial sensor systems, range cameras.

The other students in my group works with:
Inertial navigation, surface estimation. - Bengt Boberg
Reducing ambiguites from reflective and/or transparent objects when using a laser range camera. - Jonas Nygaards
Dual Control, exploratory moves, dynamic programming. - Bernt Nilsson

 1. Name: Taehee Kim <taehee@aifh.ed.ac.uk>
 2. Supervisor: Chris Malcolm
 3. Institution: Dept of Artificial Intelligence, Edinburgh University, UK
 4. Research Area: Sensor Fusion
 5. Summary: Focusing on the benefits of biological sensors and the
sensor utilisation scheme, my research is aiming at implementation of a
flexible control structure co-ordinating multiple sensors for assembly
robots. Skin-like sensors have been developed. Application of the
sensors are being investigated.

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?  We begin 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. Proposed theories are 
then 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 [1].  The
reactive architecture is implemented in simple combinational logic, with
behaviour arbitration trained using an Adaptive Logic Network (ALN) [2].
Currently, a new system of 10 micro-robots are being constructed to extend
the box-pushing task to transporting.

[1] Kube CR, Zhang H, (1992) "Collective Robotic Intelligence," 
    Second International Conference on Simulation of Adaptive Behavior, 460-468.
[2] Kube CR, Zhang H, Wang X, (1993) "Controlling Collective Tasks With an ALN,"
    International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems IROS, 289-293.
[3] Kube CR, Zhang H,(1993) "Collective Robotics: From Social Insects to 
    Robots," Adaptive Behavior, 2(2), MIT Press.

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:        David E. Lee		email: dlee@cs.ucla.edu
2. Supervisors: Michel A. Melkanoff	email: mam@cs.ucla.edu
		H. Thomas Hahn		       hahn@seas.ucla.edu
3. Institution: University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
4. Research Area:	Force Control & Mating Models for Component-Component
			Interactions During Product Assembly Simulation
5. Summary:

	This research focuses on the development of force control models and
	representations of the dynamics of component-component interactions
	to predict and simulate mating conditions during product assembly.
	These analytic models are sought in order to provide a theoretical
	underpinning to virtual assembly production analysis - assessing
	assembly feasibility and the reliability of mating conditions prior
	to the physical realization of individual components and actual
	assembly of a product.

   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.

NAME :            Elizabeth Nitz     enitz@mines.colorado.edu
SUPERVISOR :      Dr. Robin Murphy    rmurphy@mines.colorado.edu
INSTITUTION :     Colorado School of Mines, Golden, Colorado
RESEARCH AREA :   Multiple Mobile Robotics & Communication
SUMMARY :         Current work focuses on constructing a new
                  collaborative robot architecture consisting
                  of one computationally-powerful "master" robot,
                  who learns all it needs to know about a particular
                  environment and possibly produces plans, 
                  and multiple less-powerful "apprentice" robots
                  who then use the knowledge gathered by the master 
                  to carry out the plans or tasks within the environment.
                  This type of system should combine the robustness of
                  multiple homogeneous robots via redundancy with the 
                  cost-efficiency (and possibly disposability) of simple    
                  robots, and at the same time use the latest in
                  computationally-intensive perceptual algorithms
                  for learning.  The target application is exploration 
                  and monitoring of hazardous or unfriendly environments.

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:        Vicente Parra-Vega     email:vega@arimotolab.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp
2.- Supervisor:  Suguro Arimoto         email:
3.- Institution: University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
4.- Research Area:    Control of Robot (adaptive/VSS/discontinuous/robustness)
5.- Summary:
	The research has focused on controlling robot manipulator for
free (position) and constrained motion (force/position) as well by
means of nonlinear techniques. Adaptive control. Discontinuous
adaptive control. Variable structure control. Adaptive VSC. PD. 
Robustness. Stability (asymptotic and exponential). It takes into
account the nonlinear model of the robot manipulator plus friction
forces and the dynamics of the motor at each joint. No experiments,
only theoretical work and computer simulations.

 1. Name:		Miles Pebody.	e-mail: M.Pebody@cs.ucl.ac.uk
 2. Supervisors:	John Campbell.	e-mail: J.Campbell@cs.ucl.ac.uk
			John Gilby.	e-mail: 100115.624@compuserve.com
 3. Institution: 	University College London, UK.
 4. Research Area:	Applied intelligent sensing and control
 5. Summary:
	
     My project deals with aspects of intelligent sensing and control
in a system of functionally and physically distributed control
elements that are embedded and situated in a real-world environment.
The system is an active laser scanning sensor device used in industry
for analysing and detecting defects in products such as glass, plastic
film, metal and painted surfaces which are moved through its laser
beam. Reflected laser light is detected by a number of different
sensors and information interpreted to locate and identify defects.
This in turn can be used to direct the production process to deal with
any critical situation detected. The aims of the project are to
develop and explore the nature and effectiveness of the techniques
used in Behaviour Based Artificial Intelligence when applied to a real
world environment other than that of mobile robotics.  The initial aim
of the work is to develop a Subsumption Architecture based control
mechanism and then to expand on initial results by exploring aspects
of agent cooperation and learning. New control strategies will be
experimented with which aim to increase the reliability and robustness
of the system.

 1. Name: Giovanni Cosimo Pettinaro <giovanni@aifh.ed.ac.uk>
 2. Supervisor: Chris Malcolm
 3. Institution: Dept of Artificial Intelligence, Edinburgh University, UK
 4. Research Area: Behaviour Based Approach in Assembly Robots
 5. Summary:
        Investigating the existance of a set of atomic behaviour with which
        describing any kind of more complex behaviour. 

1. Name: Chris J. Pudney          email: chrisp@cs.uwa.edu.au
2. Supervisor: Prof. Robyn Owens  email: robyn@cs.uwa.edu.au
3. Institution: Univ. Western Australia, Nedlands 6009, Western AUSTRALIA
4. Research Area: Surface modelling for sensor equipped robots
5. Summary:
A robot equipped with range sensors moves its sensors over the surface of an
object.  The sensor data obtained from the sensors is used to construct a model
of the surface, and the surface is used in turn to control the robot's motion.
Thus the surface model is constructed on-line.  3-D surface modelling
techniques and algorithms for controlling the robot's surface following motion
are being developed.

Name : Ranganathan Ramanathan (AKA Rungun) email : ramanath@asel.udel.edu
Supervisor : Dr. Rahmim Seliktar  &        email : seliktr@duvm.ocs.drexel.edu
             Dr. Tariq Rahman              email : rahman@asel.udel.edu
Institution : Drexel University, MEM department, Philadelphia, PA 19014, USA
Research Area :  Rehabilitation Robotics
Summary :
     Design and development of powered orthosis.  Stuck at an interesting but
     tough problem of finding out an GOOD anti-gravity mechanism to use.  Then
     we power this mechanism, and look into various control issues  and human
     machine interface.

1. Name:	Dan S Reznik		email: reznik@robios.me.wisc.edu
2. Supervisor:	Vladimir Lumelsky	email: lumelsky@robios.me.wisc.edu
3. Institution: University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, 53706, USA
4. Research Area:	Sensor-based motion planning for
			highly-redundant kinematic structures
5. Summary:
I am working on the design of sensor-based algorithms for
for highly-redundant robots -- so far I have considered
snake-shaped robots, multi-finger hand with lots of links per
finger, and "multi-branch" snakes, which are tree-shaped robots with
lots of degrees of freedom. We consider both planar and 3D
structures.

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:	Peter Scheffel		email: peter@concave.cs.wits.ac.za
2. Supervisor:	Conrad Mueller		email: conrad@concave.cs.wits.ac.za
3. Institution:	University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, SA
4. Research Area:	Path planning for manipulators with DOF<6
5. Summary:
  	
	The aim of the research is to find genrally applicable techniques
	to improve the performance of path planning without precomputing the
	configuration space.  Initially an implementation of an approach
	that does precompute the configuration space was attempted.  This was
	found to have very poor performance especilly on simple cases like
	an empty environment!  The research has therefore concentrated on
	finding solutions to simple problems quickly.  Results achieved so
	for obvious paths in 3 DOF for a 2D env. take under 20 seconds, on a 
	standard 486 PC, with some paths only taking 3 seconds. Most paths 
	can be found in under 10 minutes and memory limitations hinder paths
	that could take more than an hour.  Optimisations have played a
	large part in the feasiblity of the reasearch.  Improvements of the
	order of 5 fold are not uncommon using compulational geometry
	techniques to improve the geometric intersections of lines.

1. Name:          Jeff Schneider   email: schneider@cs.rochester.edu
2. Supervisor:    Chris Brown      email: brown@cs.rochester.edu
3. Institution:   University of Rochester
4. Research Area: Acquisition of Robot Motor Skills
5. Summary:
In open loop skills such as throwing a ball, an entire robot control sequence 
can be viewed as a single point in a high dimensional space.  Then, the problem
of improving accuracy as well as increasing range of performance is a search 
problem.  We have implemented a throwing robot with a flexible link.  We have 
designed an efficient way to search the space with the result that our robot 
learns to "whip" its flexible link at the right frequency to produce long 
throws.  The result is particularly encouraging since the robot was not given 
any model of its flexible link, and no samples of the "whipping" motion were 
ever shown to it.  Recent work considers the acquisition and improvement of 
closed loop skills.  Highly skilled humans have the ability to perform complex 
motions relatively open loop (consider a hockey player that corners in a single 
smooth motion compared to the beginner that must concentrate on balance 
throughout the turn).  We believe that closed loop skill acquisition can benefit
from an attempt to make the skills more open loop as learning progresses.

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: 	Cem Unsal    	email: unsal@blackbox.cl.ee.vt.edu  
2. Supervisor:	John S. Bay	email: bayj@vtvm1.cc.vt.edu
3. Institution: Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA
4. Research Area:  Multiple Mobile Robots (Army-ant Project)
5. Summary: 
My research is based on the idea of using a large homogeneous population of  
mobile robots as a transportation system. Army-ant scenario may also be  
applied to space/underwater missions. We treat "army-ant swarm" as a  
self-organizing system. Robots are simple in terms of knowledge and/or  
communication abilities. Important characteristic of the scenario are: lack  
of map knowledge, large number of agent, non-hiererchical structure,  
emergence (of some form) of intelligence from local interactions and simple  
behavioral rules. 

I'm currently working on behavioral  self-organization (decision systems) of  
multiple agents. 

 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: Martin D. Westhead <martinwe@aifh.ed.ac.uk>
 2. Supervisor: John Hallam
 3. Institution: Dept of Artificial Intelligence, Edinburgh University, UK
 4. Research Area: Theoretical underpinnings of behaviour based systems
 5. Summary:
This work is still in its early stages, but will attempt to apply
formalisms such as process algebra's, dynamical systems and petri nets
to the problem of behaviour based robotic control. The goal of the work
is a better understanding of the parallel interaction of behaviour based
systems with the hope that this might provide the foundation for a more
rigorous design methodology than those currently employed.

 1. Name: Jeremy Wyatt <jeremyw@aifh.ed.ac.uk>
 2. Supervisor: Gillian Hayes and John Hallam
 3. Institution: Dept of Artificial Intelligence, Edinburgh University, UK
 4. Research Area: Learning in Mobile Robots
 5. Summary: I an interested in using learning to help design robot
controllers.  I am working on combining a technique called reinforcement
learning with a behaviour based controller.  Elementary behaviours are
learned separately, and then coordinating behaviours are learned. 
Ultimately the aim is to build a hierarchy of behaviours with several levels.

1. Name:	Brian Yamauchi		email: yamauchi@alpha.ces.cwru.edu
2. Supervisor:	Randall Beer		email: beer@alpha.ces.cwru.edu
3. Institution: Department of Computer Engineering and Science
		Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH
4. Research Area: Mobile Robots/Neural Networks/Genetic Algorithms
5. Summary:
	My research involves the use of genetic algorithms to evolve
recurrent neural networks for the control of autonomous agents and
mobile robots.  My previous work concentrated on generating networks
that can generate sequential behavior and learn from environmental
reinforcement.  Current research is focused on landmark-based
navigation and learning tasks in simulated environments.  I have also
applied these techniques to evolve controllers for predator avoidance
and landmark recognition on a real Nomad 200 mobile robot equipped
with sonar sensors (at the Navy Center for Applied Research in AI at
the Naval Research Laboratory).  My long-term goal is to put these
pieces together to develop a mobile robot system capable of navigation
and spatial learning in dynamic real world environments.

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.

