- Robotics-seminar - Engineering Mailing Lists

Robotics Seminar 5/19: Joe Davidson (OSU)
by Bill Smart 18 May '23

18 May '23

Roboticists, Just a reminder to join us tomorrow for Joe Davidson's seminar on his work with orchard robots, and to help us consume coffee, tea, and cake. Usual time, usual place. -- Bill *Towards Tactile Orchard RoboticsJoe Davidson, Oregon State University* *Abstract:* Recent surveys shows that automation/robotics is one of the top priorities for specialty crop producers in the United States. Despite decades of research, efforts to deploy robots that can harvest, prune, and thin have not been commercially implemented. Much of the prior work has focused primarily on visual perception (e.g. fruit detection and localization), often ignoring the complex interactions that occur during manipulation of the crop. This talk will highlight ongoing efforts within the Intelligent Machines and Materials Lab to develop dexterous manipulation incorporating tactile perception for the agricultural domain. Some of the projects discussed will include tactile sensor design, end effector design, and the use of physical twins for controller development. This talk will also discuss parallel efforts to advance tactile manipulation in the underwater domain. *Bio:* Joe Davidson is an Assistant Professor in the School of Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering at OSU where he directs the Intelligent Machines & Materials Lab (IMML). He received his B.S. from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, NY in 2004. After serving in the military for five years, Joe worked as a project manager for the CH2M HILL Plateau Remediation Company at Hanford, Washington from 2009 to 2012. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. from Washington State University and was a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2016 to 2018. Some of his current research interests include manipulation, tactile sensing, and end effector design.

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Robotics Seminar 5/19: Joe Davidson (OSU)
by Bill Smart 17 May '23

17 May '23

Roboticists, Join us this Friday for our own Joe Davidson, who will talk about his work with field robots that are actually in fields (well, orchards) while you enjoy products made with stuff from other fields: coffee, tea, and cake! Usual time, usual place. -- Bill *Towards Tactile Orchard RoboticsJoe Davidson, Oregon State University* *Abstract:* Recent surveys shows that automation/robotics is one of the top priorities for specialty crop producers in the United States. Despite decades of research, efforts to deploy robots that can harvest, prune, and thin have not been commercially implemented. Much of the prior work has focused primarily on visual perception (e.g. fruit detection and localization), often ignoring the complex interactions that occur during manipulation of the crop. This talk will highlight ongoing efforts within the Intelligent Machines and Materials Lab to develop dexterous manipulation incorporating tactile perception for the agricultural domain. Some of the projects discussed will include tactile sensor design, end effector design, and the use of physical twins for controller development. This talk will also discuss parallel efforts to advance tactile manipulation in the underwater domain. *Bio:* Joe Davidson is an Assistant Professor in the School of Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering at OSU where he directs the Intelligent Machines & Materials Lab (IMML). He received his B.S. from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, NY in 2004. After serving in the military for five years, Joe worked as a project manager for the CH2M HILL Plateau Remediation Company at Hanford, Washington from 2009 to 2012. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. from Washington State University and was a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2016 to 2018. Some of his current research interests include manipulation, tactile sensing, and end effector design.

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Robotics Seminar 5/12: Faculty AMA about jobs
by Bill Smart 11 May '23

11 May '23

Roboticists, Sorry for the late notice, but this week's robotics seminar will be an AMA. with Naomi, Joe, Heather, and Cristina, focused on getting a job and career paths. Come armed with questions, a thirst for coffee and tea, and a hunger for career knowledge and cake. cheers -- Bill

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Robotics Seminar 5/5: Matt Rueben (University of Portland)
by Bill Smart 04 May '23

04 May '23

Roboticists, Join us on Friday for a seminar by Robotics Program alum Matt Rueben, now at the University of Portland. Come and show Matt that we still gather to enjoy coffee, tea, and cake, and to listen to people talking about robots (and robot-adjacent things). cheers -- Bill *Sight Cues for Robots from a Qualitative Analysis of Video GamesMatthew Rueben (University of Portland)* *Abstract: *Robots should be able to indicate when they notice someone with their sensors. Fortunately, video game developers have already implemented a variety of cues for in-game agents that we can learn from and apply to human-robot interaction. We did a thematic analysis of over 50 cues from video games to produce design recommendations for robots that can communicate about what they "see". Some non-diegetic cues that were only possible in video games in the past - e.g., a floating "!" over an agent's head - are now becoming possible for human-robot interactions via augmented reality (AR) headsets. The fact that all cues received by humans are interpreted makes it challenging not just to design the cues, but also to estimate how a robot is being understood by a particular user. *Bio: *Dr. Matthew Rueben is an educator and human-robot interaction scholar. As a faculty member at the University of Portland he supports undergraduate students in engineering and computer science and graduate students in the Master's of Biomedical Engineering program. He also does research on how to help people understand robots' perceptual capabilities for effective, informed interactions.

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[Robotics] Nigel Swenson's PhD Preliminary Exam: May 4th 9am, Rog 226
by Swenson, Nigel Graham 03 May '23

03 May '23

Hello Roboticists, Tomorrow I will be presenting my preliminary exam, 9am Thursday May 4th. You are all welcome to attend either in person or virtually. *Title:* Reinforcement Learning Approaches for Hand Agnostic Manipulation *Date and Time:* Thursday, May 4th, 9:00 AM *Location:* Rogers 226 *Zoom Link: * https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Foregonsta… *Password:* 539551 *Abstract:* Robotic grasping and manipulation is a complex domain for control due to a wide array of sensors, hand shapes and sizes being used. In addition, manipulation covers a large number of different tasks, each with different sequences of motions required for completion. This results in controllers often being limited to specific hands, sensing strategies, tasks and even objects. Advances in Transfer Learning and Hierarchical Learning show promise in allowing learned policies to be applied to a broader number of domains than they were initially trained on, as well as allowing policies to leverage lessons from similar tasks to speed up learning on new tasks. I propose applying these advancements to the domain of grasping and manipulation with the end goal of developing manipulation controllers that are robust to changes in hand design and environment and that can be applied to multiple different tasks. Additionally, I explore commonly used sensors in grasping and evaluate their usefulness for learning based approaches. *Advisor:* Dr. Cindy Grimm *Committee Members:* Dr. Ravi Balasubramanian, Dr. Joe Davidson, Dr. Xiaoli Fern, Dr. Mike Bailey Thank you, Nigel Sweson

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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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