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Type of Talk:  UTCS Colloquium/AI

Speaker/Affiliation:&nbs

p; Marsette Vona/MIT

Date/Time:  Wednesday, March 25, 2009&n

bsp; 11:00 a.m.

Location:  ACES 2.402

Host:  Kris

ten Grauman

Talk Title:  "Virtual Articulations for Coord

inated Motion in High-DoF Robots"

Talk Abstract:

In this

talk I show how to use virtual kinematic joints and links---"virtual

articulations"---as the basis for a new kind of expressive, rapid,

and generic graphical interface for specifying coordinated motions in robot

s with 10s to 100s of joints. Virtual links can represent task-relevant coo

rdinate frames; virtual joints can parameterize task motion, and, by clo

sing kinematic chains, constrain coordinated motions.

I demonst

rate hardware results where NASA''s 36-DoF All Terrain Hex Limbed Extra Ter

restrial Explorer (ATHLETE) executes a variety of previously challenging co

ordinated motion tasks. I also show interactive operation of a simulated mo

dular robot involving nearly 300 joints. These results are all based on my

new articulated robot operations interface system, the Mixed Real/Virtual

Interface, in which the operator attaches virtual articulations to a model
of the robot and then interactively operates the combined structure. I cov

er core challenges in handling arbitrary topology, supporting a variety of
joints, and scaling to large numbers of DoF with both convenience and spe

ed.

Speaker Bio:

Marsette Vona is a Ph.D. candidate in EECS at
MIT CSAIL with Professor Daniela Rus. His current work explores theory and
applications for virtual articulations in robotics, operations interface

software and hardware for exploration robots, and reliable compliant/propr

ioceptive climbing and walking strategies. From 2001 to 2003 Marsette was a
software developer at NASA/JPL, where he helped build the award-winning s

cience operations interface for the Mars Exploration Rover mission. His 200

1 M.S. in EECS at MIT developed new techniques in precision metrology for m

achine tools, and his 1999 B.A. thesis in CS at Dartmouth College describe

d a self- reconfiguring robot system based on compressing cube modules.