Date: Tue, 05 Nov 1996 00:23:52 GMT Server: NCSA/1.4.1 Content-type: text/html
Our research activities lie at the intersection of intelligence and motion. We are interested in analysis and design of systems, both in humans and in machines, that lie behind one of the most complex behavioral functions found in nature - sensing-based motion planning. How does one combine sensing, spatial reasoning, prior experience, and the sense of goal to produce purposeful motion in a complex, uncertain, and time-changing environment? By its nature, this is multi-disciplinary research: members of the Lab include researchers from Engineering, Computer Science, Mathematics, Psychology.
In the area of robotics, our projects cover mobile robots, manipulators, and human-guided teleoperated systems; different types of sensing, from a simple sonar to vision to whole-body sensing; various kinematic systems including highly redundant structures like snakes and multi-finger wrists; static and dynamic systems. In the cognitive science area, we study human skills in motion planning, with the purpose of developing (a) hybrid machinery in which human and machine intelligences are utilized together in a synergistic manner, and (b) virtual human-centered interactive computer systems.
Our research can be divided into three groups:
The gist of our research is perhaps best expressed in a project where a professional ballerina dances with a robot arm manipulator. It is a naturally symmetric act - one partner can turn her/his/its back to the other and expect a friendly half-learned, half-improvized motion. They can count on each other.