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Type of Tal

k: UTCS Colloquium/ AI

Speaker/Affiliation: Manuela Veloso/Carnegie Me

llon University

Date/ Time: Thursday, October 22, 2009, 3:30 p.m.

n
Location: ACES 2.302

Host: Peter Stone

Talk Title: "A Visitor

''s Companion Robot: Localization, Navigation, and Symbiotic Human-Robot

Interaction"

Talk Abstract:
We have been developing an indoor robot

, CoBot, as a visitor''s companion robot. CoBot moves in buildings for whi

ch it knows the map, but that offer dynamic challenges, such as people mo

ving and obstacles without fixed placements. I will present the wifi-based

localization and navigation algorithms, illustrating them with examples of
multiple hours-long autonomous runs of the robot. I will conclude with our
symbiotic interaction algorithm in which the robot and the human have comp

lementary limitations and expertise.

This work is joint with my studen

ts Joydeep Biswas, Stephanie Rosenthal, and Nick Armstrong-Crews. The rob

ot was designed and constructed by Michael Licitra, as an omnidirectional

four-wheeled robot, inspired by his own previous platform of our small-siz

e soccer robots.

Speaker Bio:
Manuela M. Veloso is the Herbert A. Si

mon Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. She resear

ches in artificial intelligence and robotics, in the areas of planning and
learning for single and multirobot teams in uncertain, dynamic, and adve

rsarial environments. Veloso is a Fellow of the American Association of Art

ificial Intelligence, and the President of the RoboCup Federation. She was
recently awarded the 2009 ACM/SIGART Autonomous Agents Research Award. Vel

oso is the author of one book on "Planning by Analogical Reasoning" and edi

tor of several other books. She is also an author in over 200 journal artic

les and conference papers.