Research Overview
My broad research goals involve improving the performance of teleoperated systems with complex, difficult to model dynamics. These systems, such as snake robots, have no analytic motion model. This renders many traditional robotic planning techniques and other algorithms useless when applied to this system. I am interested in algorithms that can apply to such systems, improving their performance, extending their existing locomotive capabilities, and simplifying the user workload by increasing the level of autonomy of these robots.
Additionally, I am committed to ensuring the methods I develop are not solely applicable to snake robots, or even robots in general. Rather, I want to ensure that these methods apply to a large class of problems. Similarly, I will seek techniques used in other disciplines that can be introduced to the robotics community for the benefit of both fields.
I am also passionate about search and rescue robotics, and feel that this is a area with great potential for contribution. I feel that improvements in locomotive performance and capabilities and better situational awareness are key for many systems in order for them to be considered feasible solutions for these important tasks.
To work towards these goals, I am focused on the following more directed research goals.