Calendar
Speaker Bio
Dr. James R. Schatz received his Doctorate in Mathematics from Syracuse University in 1979. His dissertation area was the theory of error-correcting codes and his advisor was H.F. Mattson. Upon graduation in 1979 he began a career at the National Security Agency (NSA) where he worked until 2009. Dr. Schatz began his career at NSA in the Cryptologic Mathematics Program (CMP), a three-year development program for newly hired mathematicians. He worked as a cryptologic mathematician throughout his career at NSA, to include a tour of duty overseas. From January 1995 – February 2006, Dr. Schatz served as Chief of the Mathematics Research Group, and in February 2006 Dr. Schatz was appointed as the Deputy Director of Research at the NSA. From 2006 to 2009 Dr. Schatz served as the Director of the Research Directorate at NSA.
Dr. Schatz received various awards during his career at NSA, including the highest honor bestowed by the NSA’s Crypto-Mathematics Institute (CMI), the CMI President’s Award, the Director’s Individual Leadership Award, the Exceptional Civilian Service Award, the Distinguished Presidential Rank Award, and a very special peer award that he most treasures called the Mover and Shaker Award. He has also received the Intelligence Community Distinguished Service Medal.
In 2009 Dr. Schatz joined the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and he currently serves as the Department Head of the Research and Exploratory Development Department.
Abstract
Socially assistive robotics (SAR) is a new subfield of robotics that bridges human-robot interaction (HRI), rehabilitation robotics, social robotics, and service robotics. SAR focuses on developing machines capable of assisting users, typically in health and education contexts, through social rather than physical interaction. The robot’s physical embodiment is at the heart of SAR’s effectiveness, as it leverages the inherently human tendency to engage with lifelike (but not necessarily humanlike or otherwise biomimetic) social behavior. This talk will describe research into embodiment, modeling and steering social dynamics, and long-term user adaptation for SAR. The research will be grounded in projects involving analysis of multi-modal activity data, modeling personality and engagement, formalizing social use of space and non-verbal communication, and personalizing the interaction with the user over a period of months. The presented methods and algorithms will be validated on implemented SAR systems evaluated by human subject cohorts from a variety of user populations, including stroke patients, children with autism spectrum disorder, and elderly with Alzheimers and other forms of dementia.
Speaker Bio
Maja Mataric´ is professor and Chan Soon-Shiong chair in Computer Science, Neuroscience, and Pediatrics at the University of Southern California, founding director of the USC Robotics and Autonomous Systems Center (rasc.usc.edu), co-director of the USC Robotics Research Lab (robotics.usc.edu) and Vice Dean for Research in the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. She received her PhD in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence from MIT in 1994, MS in Computer Science from MIT in 1990, and BS in Computer Science from the University of Kansas in 1987. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Fellow of the IEEE, and recipient of the Presidential Awards for Excellence in Science, Mathematics & Engineering Mentoring (PAESMEM), the Anita Borg Institute Women of Vision Award for Innovation, Okawa Foundation Award, NSF Career Award, the MIT TR100 Innovation Award, and the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Early Career Award. She served as the elected president of the USC faculty and the Academic Senate. At USC she has been awarded the Viterbi School of Engineering Service Award and Junior Research Award, the Provost’s Center for Interdisciplinary Research Fellowship, the Mellon Mentoring Award, the Academic Senate Distinguished Faculty Service Award, and a Remarkable Woman Award. She is featured in the science documentary movie “Me & Isaac Newton”, in The New Yorker (“Robots that Care” by Jerome Groopman, 2009), Popular Science (“The New Face of Autism Therapy”, 2010), the IEEE Spectrum (“Caregiver Robots”, 2010), and is one of the LA Times Magazine 2010 Visionaries. Prof. Mataric´ is the author of a popular introductory robotics textbook, “The Robotics Primer” (MIT Press 2007), an associate editor of three major journals and has published extensively. She serves or has recently servied on a number of advisory boards, including the National Science Foundation Computing and Information Sciences and Engineering (CISE) Division Advisory Committee, and the Willow Garage and Evolution Robotics Scientific Advisory Boards. Prof. Mataric´ is actively involved in K-12 educational outreach, having obtained federal and corporate grants to develop free open-source curricular materials for elementary and middle-school robotics courses in order to engage student interest in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) topics. Her Interaction Lab’s research into socially assistive robotics is aimed at endowing robots with the ability to help people through individual non-contact assistance in convalescence, rehabilitation, training, and education. Her research is currently developing robot-assisted therapies for children with autism spectrum disorders, stroke and traumatic brain injury survivors, and individuals with Alzheimer’s Disease and other forms of dementia. Details about her research are found at http://robotics.usc.edu/interaction/.
X-Ray Products: R&D and Collaborations in the USA
Sebastian Vogt
Director R&D and Collaborations, X-Ray Products, Siemens Healthcare, USA
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Technology and Concepts for Image Guidance; and Insights into Internal Projects
Gerhard Kleinszig
Manager Innovations Surgery, Siemens AG, Germany
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Abstract
As robotic systems are moving from well controlled settings to unstructured environments, they are required to operate in dynamic and cluttered scenes. Finding an object, estimating its pose, and tracking the pose over time in these scenes are challenging problems. Although various approaches have tackled these problems, their scope of objects and robustness of their solutions are still limited. We focus on object perception using visual sensory information, which spans from the monocular camera to the recently appeared RGB-D sensor, and address four important challenges related to the topic of 6-DOF object pose estimation and tracking in unstructured environments.
A large number of 3D object models are widely available in online object model databases, and these object models have significant prior information which includes geometric shapes and photometric appearance. We note that using both geometric and photometric attributes available from the models enables to handle both textured and textureless objects. We present efforts to broaden the spectrum of objects by combining geometric and photometric features.
Another challenge is how to dependably estimate and track the pose of an object in spite of clutter in the background. The difficulties of object perception mainly depend on the degree of clutter. The background clutter is likely to lead to false measurements, and the wrong measurements tend to result in inaccurate pose estimates. We present two multiple pose hypotheses frameworks: a particle filtering framework for tracking and a voting framework for pose estimation.
Speaker Bio
Dr. Henrik I. Christensen is the KUKA Chair of Robotics at the College of Computing Georgia Institute of Technology. He is also the executive director of the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines (IRIM). Dr. Christensen does research on systems integration, human-robot interaction, mapping and robot vision. The research is performed within the Cognitive Robotics Laboratory. He has published more than 300 contributions across AI, robotics and vision. His research has a strong emphasis on “real problems with real solutions”. A problem needs a theoretical model, implementation, evaluation, and translation to the real world. He is actively engaged in the setup and coordination of robotics research in the US (and worldwide). Dr. Christensen received the Engelberger Award 2011, the highest honor awarded by the robotics industry. He was also awarded the “Boeing Supplier of the Year 2011” with 3 other colleagues at Georgia Tech. Dr. Christensen is a fellow of American Association for Advancement of Science. He received an honorary doctorate in engineering from Aalborg University 2014. He collaborates with institutions and industries across three continents.
Abstract
Legged mobility has long been among key research areas in mobile robotics. In this context, accurate dynamic models of locomotory behaviors provide tools that are useful both in understanding biological systems as well as constructing robots and controllers to realize these behaviors. In this talk, I will focus on the latter, using spring-mass models that have been instrumental in the understanding and artificial realization of running behaviors. I will first describe our work in finding approximate analytic solutions for spring-mass models of running, which possess otherwise non-integrable stance dynamics. I will then show different applications of these solutions, including adaptive control, state estimation and footstep planning for planar running. Subsequently, I will describe a new method for energy regulation through virtual tuning of damping properties for such systems, towards a level of energy and power efficiency that has not been possible with previous methods.
Speaker Bio
Dr. Uluç Saranlı is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Engineering in Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey. He received his B.S. degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from The Middle East Technical University, Turkey in 1996. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from The University of Michigan in 1998 and 2002, respectively. He then joined the Robotics Institute in Carnegie Mellon University as a postdoctoral associate until 2005. Before joining Middle East Technical University in 2012, he was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Engineering in Bilkent University. His research interests focus on autonomous robotic mobility, with specific contributions in modeling, analysis, control of legged locomotion and behavioral planning for dynamically dexterous robot morphologies.
Abstract
The clinical applications of surgical robotics have advanced greatly over the past two decades. Intuitive Surgical and the da Vinci platform have been the dominant company and system commercially in the field of surgical robotics. In the past decade, robotic platforms have been introduced commercially for applications other than assisting a laparoscopic surgical approach. One such robotic platform is the Renaissance System from Mazor Robotics. This robotic platform differs greatly from the da Vinci platform and is focused on spine surgery and cranial surgery. This talk will provide a historical review of the genesis and maturation of the Renaissance platform, an overview of its current applications in spine surgery and neurosurgery, and a review of the current limitations of the system and potential areas for further development.
Bio
Christopher Prentice is Chief Executive Officer for Mazor Robotics Inc., the US subsidiary of Mazor Robotics Ltd. He received his B.S. degree in Systems Engineering from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1992. He received his MBA in 1994 from Western New England University and his MHA in 2009 from the University of South Florida. His career in healthcare & medical devices began in 1997 and includes product management, marketing, sales, and finance roles with Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Intuitive Surgical, Tampa General Hospital, and Mazor Robotics. His product focus has been on laser, radiotherapy, and robotic platforms intended to advance the quality of surgical care.
Abstract
Photoacoustic imaging has gained widespread popularity in molecular and preclinical applications, yet it is often excluded from conversations among primary care physicians, surgeons, and interventional radiologists. As an imaging modality that relies on light transmission, optical absorption, and the subsequent generation of sound waves, three primary challenges hinder its clinical advancement: (1) acoustic clutter noise artifacts; (2) limited optical penetration depths; and (3) restrictive system designs that fix light sources relative to acoustic receivers.
In this talk, I propose the integration of optical, acoustic, and robotic principles to overcome existing challenges. Acoustic clutter, which plagues ultrasound and photoacoustic images alike, is mitigated with a novel short-lag spatial coherence (SLSC) beamformer that I developed, resulting in improved image quality and an effective tripling of optical penetration depths. It is advantageous over conventional methods when applied to longstanding and emerging clinical practices, including transcranial, prostate, and vascular photoacoustic imaging, as well as liver, fetal, and cardiac ultrasound imaging. I will describe the acoustic theories that enable these improvements and demonstrate feasibility with data from computer simulations, phantoms, ex vivo tissue, and in vivo animal and human studies. Finally, I will show that autonomous or cooperative robotic control relies on this optimal image quality to enhance the maneuverability of system components, and thereby facilitate the flexible separation of light delivery from acoustic reception. This work promises to expand the technical envelope of photoacoustic imaging systems and revolutionize clinical standards of care.
Speaker Bio
Dr. Muyinatu A. Lediju Bell is a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University. She received her Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Duke University in 2012 and earned her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering with a minor in Biomedical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2006. Dr. Bell is a recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including a Whitaker International Fellowship to spend a year abroad conducting research in the United Kingdom (2009), the UNCF-Merck Graduate (2011) and Postdoctoral (2012) Research Fellowships, and the Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship for her commitment to using diversity as a resource for enriching the education of all students (2012). Her research interests include ultrasound and photoacoustic imaging, image-guided surgery, medical robotics, and medical device design.
Abstract
The human hand is the pinnacle of dexterity – it has the ability to powerfully grasp a wide range of object sizes and shapes as well as delicately manipulate objects held within the fingertips. Current robotic and prosthetic systems, however, have only a fraction of that manual dexterity. My group attempts to address this gap in two main ways: the mechanical design of effective hands and the study of human hand function and use as inspiration and performance benchmarking. In terms of hand design, we strongly prioritize passive mechanics, including incorporating adaptive underactuated transmissions and carefully tuned compliance, and seek to maximize open-loop performance while minimizing complexity. To motivate and benchmark our efforts, we are examining human hand usage during daily activities as well as quantifying functional aspects such as precision manipulation workspaces. Besides describing these efforts, I will touch on other work in the lab related to legged robots, novel fabrication techniques, modular robots, and the study of non-human “hands”.
Speaker Bio
Aaron Dollar is the John J. Lee Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at Yale and is currently a Visiting Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Brown. He earned a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering at UMass Amherst, S.M. and Ph.D. degrees in Engineering Science at Harvard, and was a postdoctoral associate at MIT in Health Sciences and Technology and the Media Lab. Prof. Dollar is the recipient of a number of awards, including young investigator awards from AFOSR, DARPA, NASA, and NSF, and is the founder of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Technical Committee on Mechanisms and Design and open-source teaching and research repositories RoboticsCourseWare.org and OpenRobotHardware.org.
