Michigan Robotics Newsletter, Winter 2022
Note: these posts were migrated from Twitter’s Revue newsletter after it shut down in January, 2023. Unfortunately links will not redirect at this time, but we hope to find some time to go through these and relink in the future.
Welcome to the Michigan Robotics Newsletter, a summary of what’s happening in the University of Michigan Robotics community.
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Top stories
The first Robotics Alumni Award winner
Meghan Dailey joined the inaugural Robotics graduate class in 2014, taking a risk at the time with the new Robotics graduate program.
First graduate recipients of the Ehrenberg Fellowship
Eight incoming Robotics master’s students received a scholarship award as recipients of the Roger Ehrenberg and Carin Levine Ehrenberg Fellowship.
With the new Robotics Department and undergraduate robotics program launched, we have brought on additional faculty who exemplify our values.
Research
How evolution overshot the optimum bone structure in jerboas
Carla Nathaly Villacís Núñez, Andrew Ray, and Talia Moore studied foot bones of the small hopping rodents to discover why some bones are fused and some separate.
Intelligence Augmentation: Human Factors in AI and Future of Work
Lionel Robert contributes to the intricacies of human-machine interaction that form the foundation of augmented intelligence, and discusses ethical considerations that relate to these interactions.
This study from Christina Lee, Alex Vaskov, Michael Gonzalez, Philip Vu, Alicia Davis, Paul Cederna, Cynthia Chestek, and Deanna Gates found the use of regenerative peripheral nerve interface signals can improve grasp selection accuracy in both virtual and physical environments.
Robot attractiveness and team identification on performance and viability in human–robot teams
Shared identity and social attraction between team members and their robots can be vital for human–robot interaction, as Sangseok You and Lionel Robertexplore.
Congrats
Voxel51 closes $12.5M Series A Funding
With new investors Drive Capital, Top Harvest Capital, and Shasta Ventures, Jason Corso‘s Voxel51 promises to “build FiftyOne alongside the community so that it remains the leading open source tool for building high-quality datasets and computer vision models.”
Dawn Tilbury receives Henry M. Paynter Outstanding Investigator Award
This award is given by the Dynamic Systems and Control Division of ASME to someone who has demonstrated sustained outstanding research contributions.
IROS 2022 Cloth Perception Challenge Winners
Dmitry Berenson, Zixuan Huang, and Dylan Colli found a way to detect the corners of a cloth from a single depth image, along with their orientations. Great work!
Collecting forest data, alum builds Gaia AI
Peter McHale earned a spot on the Forbes 2023 30 Under 30 in Manufacturing & Industry for cofounding the carbon-focused startup.
Look
Mind Control & Neuroprosthetics: StarTalk Radio with Neil deGrasse Tyson
Learn about engineering robotic limbs and teaching artificial intelligence how to interpret neural signals and more as Cynthia Chestek and Parag Patil join the pop-scientists podcast.
Fully Proprioceptive Slip-Velocity-Aware State Estimation from Maani Ghaffari's CURLY Lab.
Robotics Pathways & Careers: Bruce Huang, Google
Students and Industry Push for Undergraduate Robotics Programming
ASME dives into how the Michigan undergrad roboticsprogram brings other disciplines into engineering.
Parting shot
Robotics students Luis Cubillos, Mark Nail, Samanta Rodríguez, and José Montes-Pérez traveled to universities in Puerto Rico to talk robotics and graduate school, bringing Mbot along.