Robotics Research

I am a researcher at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My research interests include human-robot interaction, minimalist mechanisms, compliant manipulation, and legged locomotion.


Contents

human-robot interaction: [HERB Drama][ProCam]
legged locomotion: [Flame][bipeds][Bow Leg][BowGo][Uniroo]

Theatrical Performance

In Spring 2014, I worked with the Personal Robotics Lab to develop, produce and stage a live theatrical performance using the robot HERB and a human actress.

Compliant Manipulation

I have contributed to the design of several compliant manipulators working with Nancy Pollard and Matt Mason.

Dynamic Walking Bipeds

In my work with Christopher Atkeson I constructed two bipedal walking robots motivated by passive-dynamic principles.

From September to December of 2005 I worked with the TU Delft Biorobotics Laboratory in the Netherlands on the design of a new walking robot.

The 3D Bow Leg Hopper

The 3D Bow Log Hopper is an ongoing project to extend the 2D Bow Leg Hopper into a fully autonomous hopping robot. My contribution to the this work primarily took place while I was a Postdoctoral Fellow with Illah Nourbakhsh and the Toy Robots Initiative.

The BowGo

One spinoff of the work on the 2D Bow Leg is the development of the BOWGO (patent pending), a new kind of pogo stick that is a scaled-up, human-sized version of the Bow Leg. The prototypes have been primarily designed and tested by Ben Brown and Illah Nourbakhsh.

The Planar Bow Leg Hopper

I am a graduate of the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Ph.D. program. As a graduate student I was a member of the Manipulation Lab, advised by Matt Mason and Ben Brown. For my doctoral thesis (1993-1999) I developed planning algorithms to control a novel locomotion machine, the Planar Bow Leg Hopper, a hopping robot with high efficiency and natural stability. The thesis document is available on my publications page. I have available some pictures of the machine, papers, and my dissertation ([PDF, 3533K] [PS,8530K] [gzipped PS, 1938K]).

Uniroo

As an undergraduate at MIT, I worked with Marc Raibert and David Barrett at the MIT Leg Lab during 1990-1991 to develop the Uniroo, a one legged kangaroo robot.

The MIT Leg Lab also has their own Uniroo page.

Last updated: 2016-06-08