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Urban Robotics: A chance to develop new and different robots

Hagen Schempf
Robotics Institute
Carnegie Mellon University

Place and Time
Adamson Wing, Baker Hall
Refreshments 3:15 pm
Talk 3:30 pm

Abstract
The use of robots in urban environments (roads, buildings, sewers, yards, etc.) poses tremendous challenges to the locomotion of such devices. In addition, should these devices need to operate as autonomously as possible, they will require competent sensing and possibly on-board computing to be truly self-sufficient. Tethers or umbilicals are a no-no, hence on-board power is also needed. If you couple all this into a (set of) system(s) that need to perform reconnaissance in hostile environments, you can come up with what a team of RI scientists, staff and students had to develop for DARPA as pre-prototype systems in early 1998. I will summarize and give the highlights of the effort, showcase the hardware developed as part of that effort (plus later versions), and show a video of the systems in action.

Speaker Biography
Dr. Schempf is currently employed as a Senior Systems Scientist at the Field Robotics Center within the Robotics Institute at CMU. He earned a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering in 1984 from Stevens Institute of Technology, an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering in 1986 from MIT and a joint Ph.D. from MIT and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Mechanical and Oceanographic Engineering in 1990. At CMU, he has worked on such projects as a NASA space-shuttle tile rewaterproofing robot, DoE hazardous waste cleanup robots, oil-tank internal ultrasonic and visual inspection robots for the U.S. Army, automated cargo transport AGVs for the U.S. Postal Service, state-of-the-art operator interface systems for telerobotics, process vision-systems for the copper-mining industry, urban robotics for DARPA, and is beginning new work in the areas of gas pipeline repair robots and plant-nursery automation systems.

Speaker Appointments
For appointments, please contact the speaker, Hagen Schempf, at hagen@ri.cmu.edu.