The Michigan Robotics Newsletter, Summer 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.
A new undergraduate robotics major
New U-M robotics undergraduate program to meet surging demand for roboticists
An inclusive-by-design degree program centers on how an embodied intelligence senses, reasons, acts and works with humans to establish a pipeline of people-first roboticists.
Research
Machine Learning for Automated Detection of Shipwreck Sites from Robotic Surveys
An NOAA Ocean Exploration expedition, led by Katie Skinner with help from Corina Barbalata and Advaith Sethuraman among others, used autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) and remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) to explore Lake Huron’s Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary, generating large datasets for training and validating machine learning models for shipwreck detection using sonar imagery.
Researchers study robotic assistants for construction sites
The project, led by Vineet Kamat, aims to allow human workers to use interactive task learning technology to teach robots to perform construction tasks.
Morphable Aerial Drones: Building Simulators and Hardware
Vasileios Tzoumas is mentoring students from Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program to develop the next generation of drone technology. The goal is to meet societal needs by developing morphable drones that are efficient during takeoff, maneuvering, and landing, resilient against the elements of nature, and agile in cluttered and dynamic environments.
Resource-Aware Multi-Robot Decision-Making
Zirui Xu and Vasileios Tzoumas introduce the first algorithm for distributed decision-making that provably balances the trade-off of centralization, for global near-optimality, vs. decentralization, for near-minimal on-board computation, communication, and memory resources.
Na Du, X. Jessie Yang, and Lionel Robert report findings that suggest cultural differences should be incorporated into AV explanation interface design.
Soft Tracking Using Contacts for Cluttered Objects
Sheng Zhong, Nima Fazeli, and Dmitry Berenson propose a new method where a target object of known shape but unknown pose must be retrieved from clutter.
Glen Chou, Hao Wang, and Dmitry Berenson propose a method for learning constraints represented as Gaussian processes (GPs) from locally-optimal demonstrations.
A Personable Robot: Meta-analysis of Robot Personality and Human Acceptance
This study from Connor Esterwood and Lionel Robert found that a robot’s personality does appear to influence humans’ acceptance of robots
Congrats
We celebrated graduates from recent years in-person in the Robotics Atrium for the first time, with robot cookies, friends, and family.
Former NSF director becomes first chair of MichiganRobotics Department
Dawn Tilbury to lead department after laying blueprint for convergent roboticsresearch at the College a decade ago.
2022 NSF GRFP recipients of Michigan Robotics
The program recognizes grad students in NSF-supported disciplines pursuing MS and PhD degrees, including Kevin Best, Mark Nail, Anvay Pradhan, Anja Sheppard, Karthik Urs, and Katharine Walters.
Chad Jenkins receives Harold R. Johnson Diversity Service Award
Jenkins strives to improve the state of diversity in computing and robotics, with the goal of achieving equal opportunity for all.
Other congratulations
Wami Ogunbi, winner of the Willie Hobbs Moore Achievement Award
Alia Gilbert and Liz Olson, nominees for the Sister Mary Ambrosia Mentoring Award
Leia Stirling, nominee for the Claudia Joan Alexander Trailblazer Award
Karthik Urs, Towner Prize for Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor
Grant Gibson and Andrea Sipos, Distinguished Leadership Awards
Jinsun Liu, Towner Prize for Distinguished Academic Achievement
Lionel Robert, joining the AAAS Community Advisory Board
Talia Moore, receiving an ORAU Ralph E. Power Junior Faculty Enhancement Award
Kira Barton, an SME Leader Transforming Manufacturing
Look
Ronald and Regina McNeil talk about what motivates them to support Michigan Robotics.
Task-invariant control of the M-BLUE exoskeleton from the Locomotor Control Systems Lab.
From Kinematic to Energetic Control of Wearable Robots for Agile Human Locomotion
In this talk, Robert Gregg presents new energetic control methods for wearable robots to facilitate volitional locomotion in impaired users.
Podcast: chAIcast with Isha Bhatt
In this podcast featuring South Asians in Artificial Intelligence, Karthik Urs talks about his work as a in the EMBiR Lab before he goes off to join the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab.
Podcast: Artificial Intelligence with Andy Ilachinski
Chad Jenkins discusses the upcoming Department of Robotics, and a roboticsundergraduate degree.
Read
‘Making it easier for those like me’: assisting with robotic research
Karen Sussex of Jackson is paving the way for tens of thousands of people to get a hand back like the one they lost.