[6.2] Student Who's Who
Any good four-year school undoubtedly offers robotics courses
within engineering programs. Departments of mechanical and electrical
engineering and computer science are all good candidates for
coursework in Robotics. However, a number of schools have established
track records with a focus on robotics and those are listed here.
Peterson's publishes a series of guides to higher education programs.
Their Graduate Programs in Engineering and Applied Sciences, 1994, lists
graduate programs in robotics in the U.S. The following are those
listed which offer PhD programs in robotics:
- Carnegie Mellon University
- PhD in Robotics
- The Robotics Institute
- Catholic University of America
- PhD in Design and Robotics
- Department of Mechanical Engineering
- Cornell University
- PhD in Robotics
- PhD in Artificial Intelligence
- Field of Computer Science
- Ohio University
- PhD in Intelligent Systems
- Department of Integrated Engineering
- University of California, San Diego
- PhD in intelligent systems, robotics, and control
- Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Note that this list is both too short and somewhat misleading because
many other universities offer robotics research within the scope of
other engineering and science programs.
[6.1] Graduate Programs in Robotics
This list is grouped by countries including the United States,
Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, Sweden and Switzerland. Many
European and Asian universities are not represented and should be -
drop me a line if you have information on some that should be
included.
Boston University
California Institute of Technology (Caltech)
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)
Colorado School of Mines
Cornell
Georgia Institute of Technology
Harvard
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
New York University (NYU)
North Carolina State Univerisity
Purdue
Rennsalear Polytechnic Institute (RPI)
Stanford University
University of California at Berkeley
University of Iowa
University of Kansas
University of Kentucky
University of Massachusetts
University of Michigan
University of Pennsylvania.
University of Rochester
University of Southern California (USC)
University of Maryland
The University of Texas at Arlington
University of Wisconsin-Madison
University of Utah
Yale University
Wilkes University
University of Western Australia
McGill University
University of Alberta
Edinburgh University (UK)
University of Essex (UK)
University of the West of England at Bristol, U.K.
Bristol University
Hull University, UK
University of Manchester
University of Oxford
Reading University, UK
Salford University
University of Surrey
University of Paris
Lulea University of Technology
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
United States
Boston University
Dept. of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
People
- John Baillieul
- Control of Mechanical Systems and Mathematical System Theory
- Pierre Dupont
- Robot Kinematics and Dynamics, Friction Compensation in Robotics.
- Ann Stokes
- Theoretical Dynamics and Control
- Matt Berkemeier
- Legged Robots, Robot Control
California Institute of Technology
Pasadena, CA
- Joel Burdick
- serpentine manipulation, control
- Richard Murray
- control of nonholonomic systems, grasping
- Pietro Perona
- biological and machine vision
For more detailed information on robotics research at Caltech see
http://robby.caltech.edu/
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)
Graduate program contact:
Graduate Admissions Coordinator
The Robotics Institute
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
The Robotics Institute is a 150 person organization that is
part of CMU's
School of Computer Science.
RI offers a PhD in Robotics but students from other programs
(engineering and computer science mostly) do research in the Institute
as well. Lots of mobile robot work, computer integrated manufacturing,
rapid prototyping, sensors, vision, navigation, learning and
architectures. Program is a set of qualifiers and a program of
research leading to a thesis and the degree.
For a look at current research in autonomous navigation in the NavLab
group see: navlab_home_page.html
Facilities include about a dozen mobile systems with more under
design and construction. Many manipulator systems and lots of
compute cycles/person.
People
- Takeo Kanade
- Vision and Autonomous Systems Center
- Pradeep Khosla
- Advanced Manipulator Laboartory
- Matt Mason
- Manipulation Laboratory
- Tom Mitchell
- Learning Robots Lab
- Hans Moravec
- Mobile Robots Lab
- Mel Seigel
- Sensors Laboratory (non vision)
- Steve Shafer
- Calibrated Imaging Laboratory
- Red Whittaker
- Field Robotics Center
- and many others.....
Case Western Reserve University
Department of Electrical Engineering and Applied Physics
Glennan Building
10900 Euclid Avenue
Cleveland, Ohio 44106
Phone (216)368-4088
Fax (216)368-2668
See file://alpha.ces.cwru.edu/pub/agents/home.html
Electrical engineering at CWRU is a broad, dynamic field
offering a great diversity of career opportunities in areas such as
microwave and rf communications, microprocessor-based digital control
systems, robotics, solid state microelectronics, signal processing,
and intelligent systems. The Department of Electrical Engineering and
Applied Physics offers Bachelor of Science in Engineering, Master of
Science in Electrical Engineering, Master of Engineering, and Doctor
of Philosophy degree programs which provide preparation for work in
these areas. The department offers a minor in electrical engineering
for bachelor's degree students in other engineering disciplines as
well as a minor in electronics for bachelor's degree students enrolled
in the College of Arts and Science.
Colorado School of Mines
Mobile Robotics/Machine Perception Laboratory
Department of Mathematical and Computer Sciences
The Colorado School of Mines is a state university,
internationally renowned in the energy, materials, and resource
fields, attracting outstanding students in a broad range of science
and engineering disciplines. The School of Mines is strongly
committed to quality teaching and research. CSM provides an attractive
campus environment, a collegial atmosphere, relatively small size
(3000 students, about 30% in graduate programs), and an ideal location
in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains 13 miles from downtown Denver
and an hour from most ski areas.
The Dept. of Mathematical and Computer Sciences offers BS, MS,
and PhD degrees under the department title. With a faculty of 18
tenured and tenure track members, the department annually receives
roughly a million dollars in grants; 116 undergraduate students and 70
graduate students are currently enrolled in ou r degree programs. The
computer science group within the department has a strong focus in AI
(symbolic and neural nets) and database and parallel processing syst
ems. The Mobile Robotics/Machine Perception Laboratory is a facility
devoted to basic and interdisciplinary research, technology transfer,
and hands-on education in artificial intelligence through robotics.
Research and technology transfer efforts concentrate on the reduction
of human risk in hazardous situations, stewardship of the environment,
and/or improvement of the quality of life throug h better
manufacturing processes. Research in the MR/MP laboratory is supported
by NSF, ARPA, NASA, and local industries.
For more information, please send email to Dr. Robin R.
Murphy, rmurphy@mines.colorado.edu. Include a brief summary of your
educational (with GPA) and work experience, what your research
interests are, and GRE scores.
Cornell
Ithaca, NY
Mechanical Engineering
Sam Landsberger
Jeff Koechling
Bruce Donald
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, GA
Georgia Institute of Technology Robotics Activities
See also: MRLHome.html
Application study areas include:
- Servo control and low level coordination
- Machine intelligence and high level control
- Design, sensors and actuators
- Human/machine interface
Robot applications are in areas such as manufacturing {K. Lee} poultry
processing {W. Daley, G. McMurray, J.C. Thompson} and nuclear waste
inspection and cleanup {R. Arkin, W. Book, S. Dickerson, T. Collins,
A. Henshaw} are underway.
Several robotics researchers are regularly involved in a
student aerial robot design competition in which concurrent
engineering concepts are being used to tailor the characteristics of
the system.{D. Schrage} This competition, held at Georgia Tech and
sponsored by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems, has been
won by Georgia Tech entries for two of the three years it has been
held.
Current research topics and researchers:
- Long arm control
- W. Book
- Parallel actuation of manipulators
- K. Lee
- 3DOF direct drive actuator
- K. Lee
- Special purpose end-effectors
- R. Bohlander, H. Lipk
- Parallel processing computer architectures for robot sensing and control.
- R. Bohlander, C. Alford, T. Collins, A. Henshaw
- Laser generated ultrasound to sense structure of materials
- C. Ume
- Gallium arsenide based rad-hard electronics.
- W. Hunt
- Autonmous vehicles positioning
- S. Dickerson
- Collision avoidance techniques
- R. Arkin, W. Book
- Flexible arm control
- W. Book
- Two arm coordinated motion.
- Alford, Vachtsevanos
- Advanced feedback control, learning control, bounded uncertainty approach, applications to rigid and flexible manipulators, force control .
- N Sadegh, Y Chen, W. Book
- Architectures, Framework for reactive control and hierarchical planning, vision feedback, fuzzy logic application
- Arkin, D. Lawton, G Vachtsevanos
- Human Computer Interaction
- M Kelly, H. Lipkin
Harvard
Roger Brockett
Iowa State University
Iowa Center for Emerging Manufacturing Technology
Ames, Iowa 50011
See also: http:// www.vislab.iastate.edu
Iowa State University has one of the better visualization labs in the
country. The lab consists of mainly mechanical engineers and computer
scientists.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science both have strong
robotics efforts. Asada, Slotine, Brooks, Raibert and others
are known and respected for their work in direct-drive arm, control
techniques, architectures, running machines etc.
New York University (NYU)
NYU's Department of Computer Science home page is at:
http://cs.nyu.edu/
Degrees:
We offer Ph.D. and MS in computer science. Ph.D. students may
work thesis research in robotics. MS students may work on a thesis
(as a substitute for one course). All graduate students are eligible
to enroll in Advaned Laboratory and work on a project in robotics.
Qualified undergraduates may take Independent Study.
The Department of Computer Science offers graduate and
undergraduate courses in robotics, computer vision, AI and neural
computation. There is also a weekly robotics colloquim For admissions
information, contact karmen@cs.nyu.edu
Research (1994):
- Multimedia (Schwartz, Wallace, Perlin) See Below
- 3-D target recognition (Hummel)
- Grasp Metrics (Mishra, Yap)
- Reactive Robotics (Mishra)
- Wavelets and Compression (Mallat)
- Human Body Animation (Perlin)
Faculty:
- Ken Perlin (Computer Graphics, Multimedia)
- Jacob T. Schwartz (Robotics, Multimedia, Computational Logic)
- Bud Mishra (Robotics, Theory of Computation)
- Chee Yap (Robotics, Computational Geometry)
- Stephane Mallat (Wavelets, Computer Vision)
- Robert Hummel (Computer Vision)
What is Multimedia Robotics?
"Multimedia Robotics" is a new area of computer science concerning
new markets for robotics technology, emphasizing the emerging
areas of virtual reality and telepresence, animation and
entertainment, and bioscience material processing.
- Wrench Displays
- Force and Torque input/output devices for
user interfaces, also called "haptic displays".
- Bioscience Applications
- Microrobots in DNA micromanipulation,
- Wrench displays for surgical VR training applications,
- Microsurgical instruments
- Advanced actuators for VR and Multimedia
- Scaling theory and dynamics of piezeoelectrics, shape memory
metals, electromagnetics and other new actuator technolgies.
- Telepresence
- Robotics and the WWW, Video Telephony, Telesensuality
Research underway at NYU represents each of these four areas.
North Carolina State Univerisity
Raleigh, NC
Professor Ren Luo
tel: 919.515.5199
West Lafayette, Indiana 47907
Here's a pointer to Purdue's Robot Vision Lab
Faculty
- Avi Kak: Vision and mobile robots
- Antti Koivo: Manipulation
- Mirek Skibiniewski: Construction Robotics
- Anthony Maciejewski: Kinematics of redundant robotic arms, computer graphic techniques for animation, visualization
- George Lee: Robot Control, Fuzzy Logic, Neural Networks
- Akio Kosaka Vision-based navigation for mobile robots
Rennsalear Polytechnic Institute (RPI)
Faculty
- George Saridis
- Arthur Sanderson
- Jon Wenn
About 20 PhD and 30 MS students. Path planning and multi-arm control
are current focus.
Stanford University
Palo Alto, CA
http://www.stanford.edu/
Mechanical Engineering:
- Bernard Roth (kinematics of manipulators)
- Mark Cutkosky: destrous manipulation and concurrent manufacturing
- Larry Liefer (rehabilitation, user interfaces)
CS Department:
- Nils Nilsson
- Mike Genesereth
- Jean-Claude Latombe (path planning and geometric reasoning)
- Leo Guibas (geometric reasoning)
- Tom Binford (vision)
- Yoav Shoham (agents)
- Oussama Khatib
Aerospace Robotics Laboratory:
- Bob Cannon
- teleoperation, free flyers, space robotics, flexible manipulators
University of California at Berkeley
Faculty:
Deparment of EE&CS
- Prof. J. Canny
- motion planning
- Prof. R. Fearing
- tactile sensing, dextrous manipulation
- Prof. J. Malik
- computer vision
- Prof. S. Sastry
- multi-fingered hands, control
Dept. of Optometry/EE&CS
- Prof. L. Stark
- telerobotics
Dept. of Mechanical Engineering
- Prof. R. Horowitz
- control of robotic manipulators
- Prof. H. Kazerooni
- man-robotic systems
- Prof. M. Tomizuka
- control of robotic manipulators
- Richard Muller
- micro mechanisms
University of Kansas
Space Technology Center (Telerobotics)
University of Kentucky
Center for Robotics and Manufacturing Systems
(founded 1990)
University of Massachusetts
Laboratory for Perceptual Robotics
Computer Science Department
www: http://piglet.cs.umass.edu:4321/lpr.html
Faculty:
- Rod Grupen
- Robin Popplestone
The lab is equipped with two General Electric P-50 robots, two GE
A4s, a Zebra Zero, and a Denning mobile platform. In addition, the
P-50s are fitted with a 4-fingered Utah/MIT and a 3-fingered
Stanford/JPL* dexterous hand, respectively. The lab includes
VxWorks distributed VME controllers and an experimental real-time
kernel (Spring kernel). Research conducted at the lab includes:
- controller composition for coordinating multiple robots
- grasp planning
- geometric reasoning for robust assembly & fine motion control
- learning for admittance control & path optimization
- biological models of motor planning
- proprioceptive, tactile, & visual model acquisition
- trajectory planning, coarse reaching
- state-space decomposition
The laboratory also engages in collaborative research with the
Computer Vision (A. Hanson, E. Riseman, directors) and Adaptive
Networks (A. Barto, director) groups within the department.
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI
Departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science are
relevant to robotics research. Research includes includes machine
vision, systems and control, multiple cooperating agents (arms and
mobile), and application of SOAR to robots (arms and mobile) in
conjunction with SOAR groups at CMU and elsewhere.
Umich robotics work can be found at
Umich Robotics
Contacts
University of Pennsylvania.
UPenn offers Masters and PhD programs in Robotics and Robotics related
fields of study. These programs are offered through the Departments of
Computer and Information Science, Systems Engineering, and Mechanical
Engineering and Applied Mechanics. The bulk of the robotics research
is conducted in the inter-disciplinary General Robotics and Active
Sensory Perception (GRASP) laboratory.
GRASP Web
SiteActive areas of research are Telerobotics, Multiple Arm
Control, Robotic Vision, Learning Control, Multi-agent Robotics and
Mechanical Design.
Faculty
- R. Bajcsy
- R.P. Paul
- Vijay Kumar
- Max Mintz
- Jim Ostrowski
- Eero Simoncelli
University of Rochester
Computer Science Department
Well known Computer Vision group. See the following web pages:
http://www.cs.rochester.edu/u/jag/PercAct/dvfb.html
http://www.cs.rochester.edu/u/jag
University of Southern California (USC)
USC has a new MS Program called: Master of Science in Computer Science
with specialization in Robotics & Automation
Beginning in Fall, 1993, this new MS program seeks to prepare students
for a career in the application of Computer Science to design,
manufacturing, and robotics. It also serves as an introduction to this
area for students who wish to pursue advanced studies and research
leading to a Ph.D. A major goal is to produce a steady stream of
graduates who are qualified to tackle challenging problems in the
development of software for CAD/CAM (Computer-Aided Design and
Manufacturing) and robotics.
There is a strong focus on designing and building within the program
Exposure to the practical aspects (and difficulties) of robotics and
automation is strongly encouraged through laboratory work, and an
optional thesis, conducted in collaboration with industry and research
laboratories.
See also http://cwis.usc.edu/dept/robotics/home.html
For additional information, a complete set of degree requirements,
and application materials, contact our Student Coordinator:
Ms. Amy Yung
Computer Science Department
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA 90089-0781
tel: 213.740.4499
net:
Faculty
- George Bekey
- Assembly planning, design for assembly, neural nets for robot control, autonomous robots.
- Ken Goldberg
- Motion planning, grasping, machine learning.
- Sukhan Lee
- Assembly planning, sensor-based manipulation.
- Gerard Medioni
- Computer vision.
- Ramakant Nevatia
- Computer vision.
- Keith Price
- Computer vision.
- Aristides Requicha
- Geometric modeling, geometric uncertainty, planning for manufacture and inspection
About twenty other faculty member associated with the Institute for
Robotics and Intelligent Systems and many others associated with
USC's Information Sciences Institute (ISI).
A Brochure can be obtained from:
Ken Goldberg, Asst Professor
IRIS, Dept of Computer Science
Powell Hall Room 204
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA 90089-0273
Internet: goldberg@usc.edu
University of Maryland
Faculty
- Dave Akin
- Director, Space Systems Laboratory.
Facilties include a large neutral bouyancy tank, and a number
of free-flying teleoperators used underwater in the NBT. Much
teleoperations research. Dave has flown shuttle experiments and his
research is in the areas of teleoperation, control, man-machine
interaction and is one of the very few in the robotics community to
fly hardware in space.
University of Notre Dame
South Bend, Indiana
The Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at the
University of Notre Dame offers several courses which are directed
toward an fundamental understanding of the mechanics, kinematics,
estimation and control theory, and computer programming which are
important considerations in the design of robotic systems. Of special
interest is a novel approach for achieving robust and precise
vision-based control of manipulators - "camera-space manipulation".
Doctoral recipients >from this program are teaching and doing research
in tenure-track positions at US universities. For more information,
see, on the World-Wide Web:
Skaar Home.html
AME HomePage.html
or contact Prof. Steven B. Skaar, Director of Graduate Studies,
steven.b.skaar.1@ND.EDU
Research in Vision-Based Robotics Using Estimation
The multimedia monograph discusses recent experimental and
theoretical work conducted at the University of Notre Dame aimed at
using methods of estimation to achieve accurate, robust and reliable
vision-based guidance of various kinds of mechanisms, including
typical holonomic robots, fork-lifts and other vehicles. The
monograph is divided into two parts: Part 1 discusses the method of
"camera-space manipulation" and is in the early stages of development.
Part 2 discusses vision-based navigation of a vehicle. Both parts
include several QuickTime movie illustrations of existing experiments,
and part 2 includes 3-D animations for illustration of principles.
The University of Texas at Arlington
F.L. Lewis
Automation and Robotics Research Institute
University of Texas at Arlington
7300 Jack Newell Blvd S
Ft. Worth, TX 76118
tel: 817.794.5972
fax: 817.794.5952
UT Arlington is located in the heart of the Dallas / Ft. Worth
metroplex. The EE department current has 33 faculty and the CSE
department has 20 faculty. Participating students will also be able
to conduct research at the Automation and Robotics Research Institute
located in Ft. Worth.
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Mechanical Engineering & Electrical Engineering
Faculty
- Roland Chin
- machine vision, pattern recognition
- Neil Duffie
- teleoperation, autonomous systems, sensors
- Robert Lorenz
- actuators and sensors, robot control algorithms
- Vladimir Lumelsky
- motion planning, real-time sensing and navigation
Computer Science:
- Charles Dyer
- machine vision
Wisconsin Center for Space Robotics and Automation (WCSAR)
Interdepartmental NASA center: work is done on various applications
of robotic systems for space.
University of Utah
Salt Lake City, Utah 84112
Steve Jacobsen
Center for Engineering Design
3176 MEB
Hands, manipulators, biomedical applications, teleoperation. Micro
electro-mechanical systems design.
Yale University
There is a broad spectrum of research activities in vision and
robotics at Yale. The members of this group include faculty from
Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Psychology, Neuroscience,
and the Yale Medical School. Active areas of research include
machine vision, humanand computer object recognition, geometric
reasoning, mobile robotics, sensor-based manipulation, control of
highly dynamic nonlinear systems, planning, and learning. There is
also a wide spectrum of interdisciplinary work integrating robotics
and machine vision.
Faculty
- James S. Duncan
- Geometric/physical models for analysing biomedical images.
- Gregory D. Hager
- Sensor-based/task-directed decision-making and planning.
- David J. Kriegman
- Model-based object recognition, mobile robot navigation.
- Drew McDermott
- Planning and scheduling reactive behavior, knowledge representation, cognitive mapping.
- Eric Mjolsness
- Neural network approaches to vision and visual memory.
- Pat Sharpe
- Computational models of hippocampal spatial learning.
- Michael J. Tarr
- Behavioral and computational approaches to visual cognition.
- Kenneth Yip
Automated reasoning about complex dynamical systems.
Wilkes University
Wilkes-Barre, PA
Wilkes University is a small,
private university located in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Despite its
size, Wilkes is well equipped with robotics laboratories and has two
faculty (
Dr. C.R. Mirman
Ph.D. in Robotics from the University of Illinois at Chicago and
Dr. M.R. Stein,
Ph.D. in Robotics from the University of Pennsylvania) to sponsor
graduate robotics research. Robotics is an integral part of the
undergraduate Mechanical Engineering curriculum, and may be a topic
for graduate study in Electrical Engineering. Wilkes offers a BS in
Mechanical Engineering and an MS and Ph.D. degree in Electrical
Engineering.
See also their
Robotics and Automation page.
Australia
University of Western Australia
Some neat telerobotic work can be found at http://telerobot.mech.uwa.edu.au
Canada
McGill University
Center for Intelligent Machines
McGill University
McConnell Engineering Building, Room 420
3480 University Street
Montreal, Que, Canada H3A 2A7
School of Computer Science
McGill University
McConnell Engineering Building, Room 420
3480 University Street
Montreal, Que, Canada H3A 2A7
There is a web page and ftp archive at http://www.cim.mcgill.ca
The McGill Centre for Intelligent Machines, CIM, was founded
in 1985 to provide researchers in robotics, computer vision, speech
recognition, and systems and control with a context in which to pursue
their common goal: the understanding and creation of systems which
exhibit intelligent behaviour. The three main research foci are
perception, robotics and control theory. The Centre now includes
faculty members and graduate students from five departments:
Electrical, Mechanical, Biomedical, and Mining and Metallurgical
Engineering, and the School of Computer Science.
The center itself does not have a degree program, rather
students enroll in one of the associated departments and gain access
by being supervised a faculty member who is also a CIM member. There
are research programs directly related to computer vision, robot
mechanical systems, walking machines, mobile robotics, etc.
CIM Members: J. Angeles, P.R. Belanger, M. Buehler,
P.E. Caines, L. Daneshmend, R. De Mori, G. Dudek, F. Ferrie,
J. Hollerbach, V. Hayward, D. Levanony, M.D. Levine, A. Malowany,
H. Michalska, J. Owen, E. Papadopoulos, M. Verma, S. Whitesides,
G. Zames, P.J. Zsombor-Murray, S.W. Zucker
University of Alberta
Edmontom, Alberta
Canada T6H 2H1
Center for Machine Intelligence and Robotics
Robotics Research Laboratory, Department of Computing Science
Faculty
Ron Kube
United Kingdom
Edinburgh University
Department of Artificial Intelligence,
5, Forrest Hill,
Edinburgh
EH1 2QL
Scotland
The Department of Artificial Intelligence has robot and vision groups within it.
Main interests of the robotics group include:
- behaviour-based control of robots (both mobiles and arms)
- hybrid control -- symbolic planning and behaviour-based actions
- learning, both reinforcement and other types implementations of
biological systems eg cricket ears; vertebrate learning models
- active vision
- real-time control
- long survival times
- direct-drive arm control
As well as PhDs by research, the Department offers a one-year,
taught, modular, Masters course in Information Technology for
Knowledge-based Systems where one of the possible specialisations is
in robotics and vision. This course is designed for people without
specific AI background. One module involves the Masters students
building and programming their own robot out of Lego and supplied
electronics. Another module gives hands-on experience with a simple
robot arm.
Contact the Admissions Secretary Judith Gordon
for information about courses.
Principal Researchers
- John Hallam
- autonomous mobiles and survival
- Bob Fisher
- vision
- Chris Malcolm
- assembly robotics and hybrid systems
- Gillian Hayes
- active vision and biological control
University of Essex
Brooker Laboratory for Intelligent Embedded Systems
email: robots@essex.ac.uk
Main interests of the laboratory:
- Behavior-Based Architectures (software and hardware)
- Active Vision
- Collaborative AI (ie multiple agents)
- Fuzzy and Neural Systems
- Virtual Systems (eg robot simulation and telepresence)
- Planning & Learning
- Reliable Robots (ie for inaccessible or hazardous environments)
Principal Researchers:
- Victor Callaghan
- Paul Chernett
- behavior-based architectures, virtual systems and active vision
- Libor Spacek
- active vision and face recognition
- Jim Doran
- Collaborative AI
- Chang Wang
- fuzzy and neural systems
- Edward Tsang & Sam Steel
- planning & learning
- John Standeven &
- Martin Colley
- reliable robotic systems
In addition to PhDs by research, there is a one-year, taught, Masters
course in Computer Science where it is possible to undertake
robotics, AI or vision.
Contact csdept@essex.ac.uk for further details of courses or
robots@essex.ac.uk for information on research. In addition some
useful information on the laboratory can be obtained at
ftp://ftp.essex.ac.uk/pub/robots/SXlab.ps.Z
University of the West of England at Bristol
(used to be Bristol Polytechnic)
Undergraduate Robotics is taught as part of undergraduate programs in
engineering courses and as part of a real time computing course. The
engineering department has in its teaching labs Puma, Adept, IBM,
Cincinatti-Milacron and Funac robots.
Intelligent Autonomous Systems group
- Yichuang Jin, Will Wray
- Neural net control of manipulators, especially stability-based
adaptive control. Comparative modelling of neurocontroller design for
robotics.
- Lawrence Bull, Owen Holland, Chris Melhuish
- Behaviour-based mobile robots, collective behaviour, reinforcement
learning and genetic algorithms.
Intelligent Flexible Assembly Technology (InFACT/ALASCA Group):
Eureka/FAMOS Projects (EC colaborative project - academic and
Industry) The group has a large gantry based robot designed and built
by the group.
- Farid Dialami, Alan Redford
- Advanced Large scale flexible assembly (Peugot cars etc), generic
tooling.
- David Eastlake (hardware), Mike Morgan(software)
- Transputer based robot control of co-operating
manipulators. Email:
Bristol University
Faculty
Mr Khodlebandelhoo
- Bi arm research
- Path planning for redundant robots
- Wall climbing robots
Hull University
Faculty
Prof Alan Pugh
- Garment Manufacturing
- Arm/controller design
University of Manchester
Department of Computer Science
The web page below describes research in mobile robotics in the areas
of autonomous competence acquisition, learning by tuition and
navigation. Papers are also available at this site.
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/robotics
University of Oxford
Robotics Research Group
The Robotics Group currently comprises about seventy academics,
postdoctoral research staff, overseas visitors, and graduate
students. A broad range of topics in advanced robotics is studied
in collaboration with industry and government establishments
throughout Europe.
- Robot Design and Control
- A number of projects are concerned with the design and control of
compliant robot arms.
- Parallel Architectures
- Real-time sensor-based control of systems such as robot vehicles is
a topic of increasing interest. For low bandwidth sensors such
sonar, the emphasis is on Transputer architectures. For high
bandwidth sensors such as vision, hybrid SIMD/MIMD architectures are
being developed. A rapidly growing effort is concerned with the
design, implementation, and application of neural networks. Digital
and hybrid digital/analog chips have been designed and are being
fabricated. Algorithms and TTL circuits have been constructed for
text-to-speech synthesis.
- Vision and Active Vision
- The theory and applications of vision accounts for approximately
one-third of the laboratory's effort. Current projects include edge
detection and texture segmentation and the computation of visual
motion by a parallel algorithm that estimates the optic flow field.
- Sensors and Sensor Integration
- Includes laser rangefinder development in addition to analog and
digital sonar sensors, as well as infrared rangers, have been
developed for the AGV project (below).
- Autonomous Guided Vehicles
- Work on a research prototype of a fielded industrial AGV cuts across
many of the separate themes of the laboratory's work. The goal of
the initial project is to equip the AGV with sonar, infrared, laser
ranging, trinocular stereo, and model-based vision sensors to enable
it to avoid unexpected obstacles and to locate pallets.
Reading University
Faculty
- Prof Kevin Warwick
- Using neural nets in robotics and novel control algorithms.
Salford University
http://WWW.salford.ac.uk/
or robotics work more directly at:
http://WWW.salford.ac.uk/docs/depts/eee/homepage.html
Faculty
- Dr D.P.Barnes, Dept. Of Electrical and Electronic Engineering,
Mobile Robots Research Group.
- Autonomous mobile robot system with a behaviour-based
architecture are designed and built with the intent to study the
processes of cooperation with and without communication. Such an
approach has led us up a number of paths with present work in
behaviour synthesis and evolutionary robotics. Expertise in:
Robotics, Sensors, Communication, Connectionist Systems, Genetic
Algorithms and Genetic Programming. Possible studies in PhD and MSc
work and courses at undergraduate level.
- Ruth Aylett, Information Technology Institute
- Robot planning systems, multi-agent systems, robot architectures,
hybrid behavioural/symbolic robots
- Dr D.Caldwell, Dept Of Electrical and Electronic Engineering.
- Multi-Functional Tactile Sensing and Feedback (Tele-taction)
Tele-presence of an operator with a full mobile robot with two
manipulator arms, stereo vision and sound. Tactile sensing
datagloves are used to control the manipulators and video camera is
used to move head. Expertise: Manipulators, Sensors,
Tele-presence. Possible studies at PhD and MSc and courses at undergraduate level.
Dr Francis Nagy
Speech Control of a Puma-560, Control of an 'Inverted Pendulum', Miniature tactile sensors
Advanced Robotics Research Centre
- Ultrasonic wrist sensor for collision avoidance
- Controller design
- Stereo Vision
University of Surrey
Mechatronic Systems and Robotics Research Group
Faculty
- Prof G A Parker (g.parker@surrey.ac.uk)
- John Pretlove (j.pretlove@surrey.ac.uk)
- Primary Areas of Research activity:
- 3D co-ordinate tracking system for robot metrology
- Neural networks and expert systems for vision and inspection
- Active stereo vision for real-time robot arm guidance
- Design of controllable stereo vision systems.
- Open architecture Puma controller
- Mobile robots
- We also offer MSc courses and undergraduate courses in automation,
- control, mechanical engineering and CIM.
France
University of Paris
INRIA (Nice) recently started a Phd program in Robotics.
Sweden
Lulea University of Technology
Department of Robotics and Automation
S-971 87 LULEE
WWW: http://www.sm.luth.se/csee/er/sm-roa/
Switzerland
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
The Institute of Robotics
ETH offers a Postgrad diploma in Mechatronics.
The Institute of Robotics at the Swiss Federal Institute of
Technology (ETH) constitutes about 40 members of staff (including
Ph.D. students). The main research theme is Intelligent Interactive
Mechines. That is to say developing intelligent robots that in
cooperation with man solves difficult tasks. The institute takes
its students from the departments of Electrical Engineering,
Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science. Robotics lectures and
project work is offered to undergraduate students. In addition there
is the "Nachdiplom" in mechatronics (somewhere near a M.Sc.) where
robotics is a central theme. For further details on the "Nachdiplom"
see below. Finally there are about 30 Ph.D. students curently
registered working on a variety of themes and projects. Institute
facilities include: several different robot arms including the in
house developed modular robot arm (MODRO), mobile vehicles including
the in house developed modular mobile robot, walking machines,
supercomputing facilities, dedicated vision and signal processing
hardware, etc.
The head of the group is Professor G. Schweitzer.
Institute of Robotics
ETH-Center, LEO,
8092 Zurich
Switzerland
tel: (01) 256 35 84 (secretary)
fax: (01) 252 02 76.
The "Nachdiplom" in mechatronics runs over two semesters plus three
months project/thesis work. The lectures covers: robotics, mobile
robotics, micro robots, computer based kinematics and dynamics of
multibody systems, control theory, magnetic bearings, real time
software techniques, information processing with neural networks,
computer vision, and artificial intelligence. The fees are 2400,-
Swiss Franks, founding is available.
Contact:
H.-K. Scherrer
Mechatronics postgraduate course
ETH-Centre, LEO B3
8092 Zurich
Switzerland
net:
[6.2] Student Who's Who
An useful additional source of information is the graduate student
guide compiled by Ron Kube . It is a list of
graduate students, their universities, and areas of research. The list
is updated monthly and can be found at
ftp://ftp.cs.ualberta.ca/pub/kube/whosWho
and is also available on the Web as:
http://www.sm.luth.se/csee/ra/sm-roa/Robotics/WhoSWho.html
The list is a good starting point for those interested in graduate
programs and for those looking for individuals with similar research
interests.
Last-Modified: Wed Mar 20 10:26:38 1996
Kevin Dowling <nivek@cmu.edu>