Warning:
This page is
provided for historical and archival purposes
only. While the seminar dates are correct, we offer no
guarantee of informational accuracy or link
validity. Contact information for the speakers, hosts and
seminar committee are certainly out of date.
Senior Research Scientist
The Robotics Institute
Carnegie Mellon University
Recently, a new technology for stably levitating and controlling the position and orientation of a rigid body has been introduced. A unique feature is the use of Lorentz forces rather than the usual Maxwell forces as in magnetic bearings. The Lorentz force approach, which uses the force experienced by a conductor in a magnetic field, is seen to have several advantages. After an initial exploration phase and period of feasibility study, a number of potentially important applications are emerging. Among them are a way to provide fine compliant motion for assembly, to provide high-fidelity force/torque feedback for teleoperation and virtual reality haptic interfaces, and to isolate sensitive payloads from environmental vibrational disturbances, either in space or on earth. In this talk, which is an expanded version of my recent presentation at the International Symposium for Robotics Research, I will discuss recent work intended to demonstrate the efficacy of Lorentz levitation technology for these application areas.
Host: Yangsheng Xu (xu@cs.cmu.edu) Appointment: Lalit Katragadda (lalit@cs.cmu.edu)