RI | Seminar | February 20

Robotics Institute Seminar, February 20
Time and Place | Seminar Abstract | Speaker Biography | Speaker Appointments

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Secret Weapons: Using Robotics in Biology and Biology in Robotics

Tucker Balch

BORG Lab

Georgia Institute of Technology

Time and Place

Mauldin Auditorium (NSH 1305)
Refreshments 3:15 pm
Talk 3:30 pm

Abstract

Herb Simon once credited his success to the application of principles in one discipline to the problems of another; a "secret weapon" as he called it. In the BORG Lab we have been inspired by this idea to apply algorithms and technologies in robotics to the study of social animal behavior. We also continue to borrow ideas from biology to multi-robot systems control.

In my talk I will present our work using computer vision to track social animals (ants, bees and monkeys), as well as other techniques (e.g. HMMs) to automatically identify their behavior. I will also report on our application of social insect "algorithms" to control multi-robot teams.

This is work with Frank Dellaert, Zia Khan, Adam Feldman and Kieth O'Hara.

Speaker Biography

Tucker Balch completed a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science at Georgia Tech in 1998. He then joined the faculty at CMU, first as a postdoctoral fellow in the Computer Science Department, then as a research scientist in the Robotics Institute. At CMU he worked with Manuela Veloso in the MultiRobot Lab. Tucker joined the faculty at Georgia Tech in 2001, where he established the BORG Lab with Frank Dellaert. Professor Balch has published over 60 refereed conference and journal articles in robotics and computer vision (his efforts in poetry and haiku have not been as successful however). Balch won an NSF CAREER Award in 2004.

Speaker Appointments

For appointments, please contact Jean Harpley

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The Robotics Institute is part of the School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University.