April 2023 - Robotics-seminar - Engineering Mailing Lists

Robotics Seminar 4/28: George Kantor (Carnegie Mellon University)
by Bill Smart 27 Apr '23

27 Apr '23

Roboticists, Just a reminder to come to the seminar tomorrow for a talk by George Kantor from CMU, on field robots that literally work in a field. Yes, coffee, tea, and cake, as usual. cheers -- Bill Got a suggestion for a future seminar speaker? Submit it here <https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fforms.gle…>.

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[Robotics] Ameer Helmi's PhD Preliminary Exam: April 26th, 2pm, Rog 226
by Helmi, Ameer 25 Apr '23

25 Apr '23

Hello roboticists, I will be presenting the talk for my preliminary exam tomorrow, Wednesday, April 26th at 2 PM. Everyone is welcome to attend in person or virtually, per details below. *Title:* Movement as a Human Right: Scaffolding Child Physical Activity with Assistive Robots *Date & Time:* Wednesday, April 26th, 2:00 pm *Location:* Rogers 226 *Zoom Link:* https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Foregonsta… <https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.googl…> Password: 953686 *Abstract:* Despite the numerous benefits of physical activity, children across the globe are not meeting the recommendations set by health organizations and children with motor disabilities lag behind their peers without disabilities. Assistive robots show promise for impacting children's engagement with physical activity and movement but few works have analyzed the long-term effects of using an assistive robot in this context for children without disabilities and children with motor disabilities. The work in this thesis aims to address this gap by building a stronger base of evidence and experience through both short- and long-term user studies that expands the field's understanding of child-robot interactions, both for children without disabilities and children with motor disabilities. Additionally, we detail methods and evaluations of robot autonomy during child-robot interactions and propose the construction of models of child engagement based on thermal imaging data. This work has four contributions: The first contribution is an iterative design and evaluation of robot reward hardware for child-robot interactions. The second contribution is empirical evidence demonstrating that a mobile assistive robot with different levels of autonomy can encourage young children to engage in physical activity in short- and long-term interactions. The third contribution is initial and ongoing evidence demonstrating that an assistive robot can be coupled with physical therapy technologies to keep a child with a motor disability engaged and moving during interventions. The fourth contribution is proposed modeling of child engagement through thermal imaging. *Advisor:* Dr. Naomi T. Fitter *Committee Members:* Dr. Geoff A. Hollinger, Dr. Julie A. Adams, Dr. Samuel W. Logan, Dr. Christopher A. Sanchez Thank you! Ameer

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Robotics Seminar 4/28: George Kantor (Carnegie Mellon University)
by Bill Smart 24 Apr '23

24 Apr '23

Roboticists, Please join us this Friday for a talk about robots and agriculture by George Kantor from the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute. Coffee, tea, cake, and robots picking delicate stuff from trees; what could make for a better Friday? cheers -- Bill Got a suggestion for a future seminar speaker? Submit it here <https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fforms.gle…>.

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No Seminar Tomorrow
by Bill Smart 20 Apr '23

20 Apr '23

Roboticists, Just a reminder that there's no seminar tomorrow. Instead, please come and support your colleagues in their qualifying exams. -- Bill

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No Seminar this Week
by Bill Smart 17 Apr '23

17 Apr '23

Roboticists, No seminar this week, to make space for qualifying exam redos. -- Bill

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Ian Rankin's PhD Preliminary Exam: April 18th, 12PM, Rog 226
by Rankin, Ian Connor 17 Apr '23

17 Apr '23

Hello roboticists, I will be presenting the talk for my preliminary exam tomorrow, Tuesday, April 18th at 12 PM. Everyone is welcome to attend in person or virtually, per details below. *Title:* User-Friendly Robot Planning for Scientific Data Collection *Date & Time:* Tuesday, April 18th at 12:00PM *Location:* Rogers 226 *Zoom Link:* https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Foregonsta… Password: 673814 *Abstract:* In this thesis, we propose methods to improve the interaction between decision making algorithms for robotic systems and the human users. Why do we care if a scientific data collection robot is user-friendly? The traditional approach to human robot interaction looks at robots that physically inhabit the same space as humans. However, robots used for scientific data collection tasks typically do not inhabit the same space as humans, such as planetary exploration rovers. These robots are still commanded by humans, and their interaction must be carefully considered as there is limited time that humans and the robot can interact. Similar to the planetary exploration example, many other scientific data collection robots, such as ocean monitoring, require complex high-level decision making algorithms to maximize their performance. Before a robotic system can make decisions, a user must define the constraints and objectives of the robot. Additionally, users prefer robotic systems that make understandable decisions. Defining the constraints, objectives, and understanding the output from these high-level decision making algorithms is a challenging problem. In order to advance user-friendly robot planners, we propose three contributions. The first contribution improves constraint definition by mapping language instructions into topological constraints a robot planner can follow. The second contribution allows objective definition by learning tradeoffs between potentially competing objectives by asking users to select, rank, or rate a set of paths. We propose a method that selects different query types to show to the user that allows them to characterize their own objectives without having to explicitly define the function. The third contribution enables understanding of decision making algorithms by adding explainability to their choices using insights from the social sciences. In this third contribution, we additionally propose combining explainability and user preferences to allow the user to elucidate their preferences using an interactive user preference method. These contributions allow users to efficiently provide input to the robotic system to define constraints and objectives. Together, these contributions combine to enable both efficient definition of constraints and objectives, as well as improved interpretability of robotic decision making algorithms for scientific data collection. *Advisor:* Dr. Geoff Hollinger *Committee Members:* Dr. Julie Adams, Dr. Alan Fern, Dr. Maria Kavanaugh, Dr. Stefan Lee Thank you! Ian

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Robotics Seminar 7/14: Julie A. Adams (Oregon State University)
by Bill Smart 13 Apr '23

13 Apr '23

Roboticists, Our originally-scheduled seminar speaker for Friday had to drop out at the last minute, but Prof. Adams has nobly volunteered to fill the seminar with a talk about her experiences as a judge for the recent ANA Avatar XPRIZE. This talk will be given over Zoom, but please plan on coming to the seminar in Rogers 230 as usual, to enjoy the company of the others in the program, the coffee, the tea, the cake, and the farce of me trying to set up Zoom. cheers -- Bill

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Robotics Seminar 4/7: Zachary Brock & Daniel Fernández (Torc Robotics)
by Bill Smart 06 Apr '23

06 Apr '23

Roboticists, Please join us for the first seminar of the term with Robotics Program Alumni Zach Brock and Dan Fernández, at 10am in Rogers 230. Coffee, tea, and cake as usual. cheers -- Bill

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Re: [Robotics-seminar] [Robotics] Robotics Seminar 4/7: Zachary Brock & Daniel Fernández (Torc Robotics)
by Knight, Heather M 06 Apr '23

06 Apr '23

FYI On Wed, Apr 5, 2023 at 10:09 AM Smart, William <Bill.Smart(a)oregonstate.edu> wrote: > Roboticists, > > Please join us for the first seminar of the term with Robotics Program > Alumni Zach Brock and Dan Fernández, at 10am in Rogers 230. Coffee, tea, > and cake as usual. > > cheers > > -- Bill > > -- Assistant Professor of Computer Science CHARISMA Robotics Lab Collaborative Robots and Intelligent Systems (CoRIS) Institute Oregon State University

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Robotics Seminar 4/7: Dan Fernandez (TORC Robotics)
by Bill Smart 03 Apr '23

03 Apr '23

Roboticists, Join us for the first seminar of the term this Friday, at 10am in Rogers 230. The speaker will be Robotics Program alumnus Dan Fernandez from TORC Robotics. We're still waiting on the title and an abstract, but you can be sure there will be coffee, tea, and cake! I'll send out another email once we have more details. cheers -- Bill

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New Seminar List
by Bill Smart 03 Apr '23

03 Apr '23

Roboticists, We have a new seminar list, robotics-seminar(a)engr.orst.edu. This list includes our local robotics email list, but also allows external people to sign up for seminar and talk announcement, without receiving all of the other program emails that we send out. If you have a talk, defense, or other public thing, please post an announcement of it to this new list. cheers -- Bil

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