Egerstedt was cited for "contributions to hybrid and networked control, with applications in robotics," while Essa was noted for "contributions to computer vision and graphics."
The IEEE Grade of Fellow is conferred by the Board of Directors upon a person with an extraordinary record of accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest. The total number selected in any one year cannot exceed one-tenth percent of the total voting membership. IEEE Fellow is the highest grade of membership and is recognized by the technical community as a prestigious honor and an important career achievement.
]]>“Automation has made possible a vast number of efficiencies in modern commercial logistics and manufacturing,” said Henrik Christensen, RIM director and KUKA Professor of Robotics. “Using supply chains as an example, if we can use robots to optimize the entire process from start to finish, we can make improvements on a whole range of measures, such as end costs to consumers and environmental impact from transportation.”
The new 3,400-square-foot logistics lab initially will be outfitted with $944,000 in hardware from a CCBCC prototype bottling plant. Built by KUKA, a world leader in manufacturing robotics and system integration, the equipment includes robots, automated guided vehicles (AGVs), conveyor technology, safety components and other system technology. KUKA has provided the resources and manpower for delivery and set-up of the robots.
Also providing resources to move the automation equipment to Georgia Tech and start-up the AGVs is Efacec USA, a leading supplier of Automated Material Handling and Storage Systems located in the greater Atlanta area.
“We are happy to partner with KUKA to bring Georgia Tech students the opportunity for hands-on learning with sophisticated robotics equipment,” said Lauren Steele, vice president of corporate affairs at CCBCC. “Using this technology, these students will be able to develop commercial applications in manufacturing that will strengthen our economy and create American jobs.”
Specifically Christensen said Georgia Tech will use the laboratory for three purposes: creating optimization algorithms for logistics; testing sensing equipment such as automated cameras and laser sensors; and for supporting the annual Virtual Manufacturing and Automation Challenge, organized in conjunction with the National Institute for Standards and Technology.
In addition to the specific uses Christensen envisions, he said the new lab will open up new possibilities for robotics students and faculty.
“As Georgia Tech continues to advance its robotics research in industrial systems, this major donation will give our students unparalleled access to a professional, industry-quality facility,” Christensen said. “No other university has a similar facility.”
”KUKA is very excited about the opportunity to collaborate with Georgia Tech in the field of manufacturing and logistics,” said Dr. Christian Wurll, Technical Director for Logistics of KUKA Systems North America. “The lab will be used to intensify the research and development in mixed case palletizing, mobile robotics and new manufacturing processes. In addition KUKA is glad to setup and support a state of the art lab environment which will inspire the young generation and will get them in touch with real world applications and equipment.”
“While Efacec has already been involved with Georgia Tech for the past few years in helping to develop engineering curriculum for the power transmission industry, we are pleased to continue our relationship in being a part of the creation of this new Manufacturing Robotics Logistics Laboratory,” said Jorge Guerra, Executive Director for Business & Operations of Efacec USA. “This new lab will give engineering students access to high-tech equipment with which they can increase their exposure to robotics and logistics.”
Manufacturing—along with health care and service robotics—is one of the three main robotics areas to which the United States should devote the bulk of its research focus and support in the future, according to a 2009 report by the Computing Research Association.
###
About the Georgia Tech College of Computing
The Georgia Tech College of Computing is a national leader in the creation of real-world computing breakthroughs that drive social and scientific progress. With its graduate program ranked 10th nationally by U.S. News and World Report, the College’s unconventional approach to education is defining the new face of computing by expanding the horizons of traditional computer science students through interdisciplinary collaboration and a focus on human centered solutions. For more information about the Georgia Tech College of Computing, its academic divisions and research centers, please visit http://www.cc.gatech.edu.
About Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated
Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated is the nation’s largest independent Coca-Cola bottler. Headquartered in Charlotte, NC, the company has more than 5800 employees who make, sell and deliver Coca-Cola products in franchise sales territories across the Southeast.
About KUKA Systems
KUKA AG is a global leader of automated systems with its headquarters in Augsburg, Germany and offices and affiliations in over 35 locations around the world. With over 6,000 employees worldwide, KUKA AG is divided into two major divisions: Systems and Robotics. KUKA Systems has in-depth automation and integration knowledge in material handling with over 30 years of experience. Our global network allows us to leverage best practices all around the world across multiple industries. The business unit of KUKA Systems North America which initiated Coca Cola’s donation develops, implements, and launches robot-based logistics solutions for general industry. Our fields of competence include end-of-line palletizing, depalletizing, mixed product palletizing, and engineering & consulting services in connection with overall warehouse and distribution center storage and order fulfillment generation. Please visit http://www.kukanao.com.
About Efacec USA
Efacec is a global corporation with ten business units and 4,500 employees around the world. The Material Handling Business Unit offers automated systems consisting of automated storage & retrieval systems (AS/RS) for cartons, pallets, and rolls; automatic guided vehicles (AGVs); Turnkey Conveyor Systems; and also Warehouse Management & Order Fulfillment Software (WMS). Automated systems have been supplied to handle products such as plastic totes, cartons, pallets and even 13,000 lb. rolls of paper. With over 25 years of experience in material handling, Efacec has the capability to design and manufacture products and systems to match our customer's needs. www.efacecusa.com
Contact
Brendan Streich
Director of Communications
College of Computing at Georgia Tech
404-313-5944
]]>Director of Communications
College of Computing at Georgia Tech
404-313-5944
]]>Principal Research Engineer Tom Collins helped mentor the Fernbank LINKS team from DeKalb County Schools to a first-place finish, while Research Engineer Bob Baggerman’s Grady High School team took second place. In 2010, the Grady High team took the overall top prize.
]]>Georgia Tech will provide prize-based educational challenges for high school students, encouraging them to use the latest technology to design and build items such as wind-turbine blades, mobile air and ground robots and electric car bodies–hopefully inspiring the next generation of manufacturers.
The project is part of DARPA’s Manufacturing Experimentation and Outreach (MENTOR) program. MENTOR is aimed at bolstering the U.S. manufacturing industry by sparking teens’ interest in engineering, design manufacturing, math and science-related university programs. Georgia Tech is one of several organizations awarded a contract from DARPA to help with the initiative.
“We want to change the mindset out there about manufacturing,” said David Rosen, Georgia Tech professor of mechanical engineering and co-principal investigator on the contract. “We’re trying to use the latest technologies to attract a new generation into STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) areas and the manufacturing career field.”
Georgia Tech’s program will focus on introducing students to design and manufacturing processes by using 3-D printers and additive manufacturing. Social media will also play a role. Students will be able to connect via social networking sites and form teams that will compete to showcase their work.
For the first two years of the project, Georgia Tech will work to get ten high schools in Georgia involved in the program. The goal is to expand the program to 100 high schools across the country by year three and 1,000 high schools globally within four years.
Georgia Tech will be working with key partners to make the program a reality.
Dassault Systemes, a global company specializing in 3D and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) software, is providing the Georgia Tech project team with its PLM V6 academic software and its expertise in designing educational projects It is also providing user-friendly tools that will allow thousands of students across multiple sites to collaborate in a crowdsourcing fashion in design and manufacturing.
Georgia Tech is also partnering with two leading U.S. rapid prototyping providers, 3D Systems and Stratasys, which will help equip the high school teams with the latest manufacturing tools, including 3-D printers. The Boeing Learning, Training and Development (LTD) Group is also a GT MENTOR Partner and will participate in the evaluation assessment of the GT MENTOR Program.
The program will add onto the Engineering Design Summer Camp that has been conducted for the past four years in Georgia Tech’s Integrated Product Lifecycle Engineering (IPLE) Laboratory in the School of Aerospace Engineering. During the 2011 camp, Georgia Tech partnered with the University of Detroit Mercy (UDM). The Ford Foundation sponsored approximately 25 students and teachers at the UDM camp that was led by graduate and undergraduate students from the IPLE Laboratory. Georgia Tech and UDM plan to continue this partnership and expand the camp next summer to include GT MENTOR activitities.
Expanding the program to hundreds of high schools could help create a resurgence of manufacturing in the U.S., researchers said.
“What we’re trying to do is make manufacturing an attractive career path,” said Daniel Schrage, professor and director of the IPLE Laboratory and co-principal investigator on the contract. “A lot of students in college don’t look at manufacturing as the best choice of jobs; they would rather go into design or analysis. You can have the most beautiful design, but if you cannot build it and you can’t operate it, it’s not successful. So we’re trying to change the culture from that perspective.”
Written by Liz Klipp
]]>"The EFRI research teams will probe some profound aspects of the interface of biology and engineering," said Sohi Rastegar, director of EFRI. "If they are successful, the principles and theories uncovered in their investigations could unlock many technological opportunities."
This year, 14 transformative, fundamental research projects were awarded EFRI grants in two emerging areas: technologies that build on understanding of biological signaling, and machines that can interact and cooperate with humans.
The three Georgia Tech projects include:
The therapeutic robot could enhance, assist and improve motor skills in humans with varying motor capabilities and deficits. The goal of the project is to program a humanoid rehabilitation robot to perform a "partnered box step," which is a defined pattern of weight shifts and directional changes, solely based on interpreting movement cues from subtle changes in forces between the hands and arms of the robot and the person.
To do this, researchers at Georgia Tech and Emory University will study how humans use their muscles to walk, balance and generate force signals with the hands for guidance when moving in cooperation with another person. They will also study "rehabilitative partnered dance," which has been specifically adapted to help improve gait and balance in individuals with motor impairments.
"Our vision is to develop robots that will interact with humans as both assistants and movement therapists," explained principal investigator Lena Ting, an associate professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. "We expect our project to have a long-term impact on quality of life of individuals with movement difficulties, such as those caused by Parkinson's disease, stroke and injury by improving fitness, motor skills and social engagement."
Working with Ting on the project are Emory University School of Medicine (geriatrics) assistant professor Madeleine Hackney, Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering assistant professor Charlie Kemp and Georgia Tech School of Interactive Computing assistant professor Karen Liu.
For the second project, researchers at Georgia Tech and The City College of New York will investigate devices for "alternative perception" and the principles underlying the human-machine interaction. Alternative perception combines electronics and the other senses to emulate vision. In addition to aiding the visually impaired, the findings are expected to have other applications, such as the development of intelligent robots.
The researchers plan to untangle how humans learn to coordinate input from their senses -- e.g. vision, touch -- with movements, like reaching for a glass or moving through a crowded room. They will then map out how machines, such as robots and computers, learn similar tasks, to model devices that can assist humans.
The team envisions a multifunctional array of sensors on the body and has already developed prototypes for some of the devices. The full complement of wearable sensors would help a sightless person navigate by conveying information about his or her surroundings.
The researchers hope their findings on perception, and the prototypes they develop, will spawn a raft of wearable electronic devices to help blind people "see" their environment at a distance through touch, hearing and other senses. The technology would also benefit sighted individuals who must navigate in poor visibility, such as firefighters and pilots.
Principal investigator Zhigang Zhu, professor of computer science and computer engineering in City College's Grove School of Engineering, will collaborate with City College professor of psychology and director of the Program in Cognitive Neuroscience Tony Ro, City College professor of electrical engineering Ying Li Tian, Georgia Tech Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering professor Kok-Meng Lee, and Georgia Tech School of Applied Physiology associate professor Boris Prilutsky.
The third project will address a fundamental question of developmental biology: what controls the spatial and temporal patterns of cell differentiation? Answering this question will lead to a better understanding of the basic principles of embryogenesis, explain origins of developmental disorders, and provide guidelines for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine.
The research will be conducted by principal investigator and Princeton University Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering associate professor Stanislav Shvartsman, Georgia Tech School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering associate professor Hang Lu, New York University Department of Biology professor Christine Rushlow, and University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign Department of Computer Science associate professor Saurabh Sinha.
Scientists know that among an embryo's first major developments is the establishment of its dorsoventral axis, which runs from its back to its belly. The researchers plan to study how this axis development unfolds -- specifically the presence and location of proteins during the process, which give rise to muscle, nerve and skin tissues.
To enable large-scale quantitative analyses of protein positional information along the dorsoventral axis, Lu and Shvartsman will further develop a microfluidic device they previously designed to reliably and robustly orient several hundred embryos in just a few minutes.
"By understanding this system at a deeper, quantitative level, we will elucidate general principles underlying the operation of genetic and multicellular networks that drive development," said Lu.
Research News & Publications Office
Georgia Institute of Technology
75 Fifth Street, N.W., Suite 314
Atlanta, Georgia 30308 USA
Media Relations Contacts: Abby Robinson (abby@innovate.gatech.edu; 404-385-3364) or John Toon (jtoon@gatech.edu; 404-894-6986)
Writers: Abby Robinson, Holly Korschun and Jessa Forte Netting
]]>
]]>
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a glove with a special fingertip designed to improve the wearer's sense of touch. Applying a small vibration to the side of the fingertip improves tactile sensitivity and motor performance, according to their research results.
Previous research has shown that adding an appropriate amount of white noise -- a concept called stochastic resonance -- can improve sight, hearing, balance control and touch, but the white noise had not been incorporated into a wearable device. The Georgia Tech prototype is believed to be the first wearable stochastic resonance device, attaching to the fingertip to improve the sense of touch.
"This device may one day be used to assist individuals whose jobs require high-precision manual dexterity or those with medical conditions that reduce their sense of touch," said Jun Ueda, an assistant professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech.
Ueda worked with Minoru Shinohara, an associate professor in the School of Applied Physiology at Georgia Tech, and visiting scholar Yuichi Kurita, to design the device and test its capabilities on a small group of healthy individuals.
Details of the device and preliminary test results were presented in May at the 2011 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Shanghai.
The device uses an actuator made of a stack of lead zirconate titanate layers to generate high-frequency vibration. The ceramic layers are piezoelectric, which means they vibrate when an electrical charge is applied to them. The actuator is attached to the side of the fingertip so that the palm-side of the finger remains free and the individual wearing the glove can continue to manipulate objects.
For this study, the researchers attached the device to 10 healthy adult volunteers who performed common sensory and motor skill tasks, including texture discrimination, two-point discrimination, single-point touch and grasp tests. The experimental results showed that the volunteers performed statistically better on all of the tasks when mechanical vibration was applied.
"All of the experimental results showed that some mechanical vibration was better than none at all, but the level of vibration that statistically improved sensorimotor functions varied by test," noted Ueda.
For each test, researchers attached the device to a volunteer's non-dominant index finger and subjected the finger to six randomized vibrations that ranged from 0-150 percent of that person's vibration amplitude threshold, a value that was determined by earlier testing. The threshold value was the magnitude of vibration required for a subject to feel that the device was vibrating.
In the two-point discrimination test, two sharp points were pressed against the fingertip and volunteers reported whether they could reliably distinguish two points touching their finger versus just one. The results showed that when individuals were subjected to vibrations equal to 75 and 100 percent of their thresholds, they could sense two points that were closer together.
The single-point touch experiment involved pressing a fiber strand against each individual's finger. Subjects were asked to report if they could feel filaments of different weights touching their fingers. The volunteers could feel lighter weight filaments when exposed to vibrations up to their vibration amplitude threshold.
In the third experiment, pieces of sandpaper with different grits were glued on one side of a plastic board. Researchers then randomly selected a test piece of sandpaper and attached it to the other side of the board -- which the subjects could not see. Subjects touched the single piece of sandpaper and tried to select the matching piece from the nine samples on the other side of the board. At vibration levels of 50 and 100 percent of their thresholds, the subjects selected the correct piece of sandpaper 15 percent more often than when they were not exposed to any vibration.
For the grasping test, each subject pinched and held an object for three seconds with as small a force as possible without letting it slip. Statistically significant improvements in grasping were observed for cases of 50, 100 and 125 percent of threshold vibration.
All four sensing ability tests confirmed that the application of certain levels of mechanical vibration enhanced the tactile sensitivity of the fingertip. However, because the levels of vibration that created statistically significant results varied, the researchers are currently conducting experiments to determine the optimal amplitude and frequency characteristics of vibration and the influence of long-term exposure to vibrations. The researchers are also working on optimizing the design of the glove and testing the effect of attaching actuators to both sides of the fingertip or the fingernail.
"The future of this research may lead to the development of a novel orthopedic device that can help people with peripheral nerve damage resume their daily activities or improve the abilities of individuals with jobs that require skills in manipulation or texture discrimination," said Ueda.
Research News & Publications Office
Georgia Institute of Technology
75 Fifth Street, N.W., Suite 314
Atlanta, Georgia 30308 USA
Media Relations Contacts: Abby Robinson (abby@innovate.gatech.edu; 404-385-3364) or John Toon (jtoon@gatech.edu; 404-894-6986)
Writer: Abby Robinson
]]>Obamainvited leaders from industry, government and higher education to helpestablish a national manufacturing agenda. He will announce several actionsbeing implemented by his administration including the creation of an AdvancedManufacturing Partnership, to be spearheaded by leaders from top engineeringuniversities and several major U.S. manufacturers. President Obama's speech, held inCarnegie Mellon University’s National Robotics Engineering Center, will bestreamed online at the following link: http://www.whitehouse.gov/live
Thepresident is expected to discuss establishing U.S. leadership innext-generation robotics. Henrik Christensen, KUKA Chair of Robotics at GeorgiaTech who serves as an academic and research leader on the National RoboticsInitiative, will also participate in the summit.
“Iam very pleased to be a part of this effort that brings together government,industry and research universities to design solutions to ensure America’smanufacturing competitiveness now and in the future,” Peterson said. “Georgia Tech is an economic engine for the stateof Georgia, and we are honored to work in concert with other universities,industries and the government to foster economic development and help create jobson a national level as well.”
Accordingto Peterson, commercialization is deeply ingrained in the mission of theInstitute.
“GeorgiaTech will continue to play an important role in assisting the Americanmanufacturing sector in becoming more competitive,” he said.
Petersonalso serves as a member of the Secretary of Commerce's National AdvisoryCouncil on Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
]]>“We applaud this initiative, and Georgia Tech is honored to collaborate to identify ways to strengthen the manufacturing sector to help create jobs in Georgia and across the United States,” said Peterson, who also serves as a member of the Secretary of Commerce's National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
The steering committee will guide the efforts of industry leaders, federal agency heads and university presidents, and will partner universities with industry and government agencies to develop new research and education agendas related to advanced manufacturing.
The president also announced a new National Robotics Initiative as part of the advanced manufacturing and technology focus. Henrik Christensen, KUKA Chair of Robotics for Georgia Tech, serves as an academic and research leader on the National Robotics Initiative.
According to Christensen, this is a critical time for the U.S. While the last 25 years saw tremendous progress due to the Internet, the next game-changing revolution will be robotics.
“Robotics technology addresses a number of our nation’s most critical needs, including reinvigorating the U.S. manufacturing base, protecting our citizens and soldiers, caring for our aging population, preserving our environment, and reducing our dependence on foreign oil,” Christensen said. “Through the National Robotics Initiative, the United States can regain our leadership position from Europe, Japan and South Korea, both in terms of basic research and in terms of the application of the technology to secure future growth. As home to one of the nation’s top robotics programs, Georgia Tech is an enthusiastic member of this strategic effort.”
The Advanced Manufacturing Partnership will commit to form a multiuniversity, collaborative framework for the sharing of educational materials and best practices relating to advanced manufacturing and its linkage to the innovation.
Susan Hockfield, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Andrew Liveries of Dow Chemical are chairing the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership steering committee. In addition to Peterson, other committee members include University of California at Berkley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman, Stanford President John Hennessy and Carnegie Mellon President Jared Cohon.
“Many of our challenges can be solved through innovation and fostering an entrepreneurial environment, as well as collaboration between industry, education and government to create a healthy economic environment and an educated workforce,” Peterson said. “This collaborative effort will facilitate job creation and global competitiveness and is a component of Georgia Tech’s strategic plan.”
]]>This isn't a future-tech scenario. This advanced autonomous capability has been developed by a team from the Georgia Institute of Technology, the University of Pennsylvania and the California Institute of Technology/Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). A paper describing this capability and its present level of performance was presented in April at the SPIE Defense, Security and Sensing Conference in Orlando, Fla.
"When first responders -- whether it's a firefighter in downtown Atlanta or a soldier overseas -- confront an unfamiliar structure, it's very stressful and potentially dangerous because they have limited knowledge of what they're dealing with," said Henrik Christensen, a team member who is a professor in the Georgia Tech College of Computing and director of the Robotics and Intelligent Machines Center there. "If those first responders could send in robots that would quickly search the structure and send back a map, they'd have a much better sense of what to expect and they'd feel more confident."
The ability to map and explore simultaneously represents a milestone in the Micro Autonomous Systems and Technology (MAST) Collaborative Technology Alliance Program, a major research initiative sponsored by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory. The five-year program is led by BAE Systems and includes numerous principal and general members comprised largely of universities.
MAST's ultimate objective is to develop technologies that will enable palm-sized autonomous robots to help humans deal with civilian and military challenges in confined spaces. The program vision is for collaborative teams of tiny devices that could roll, hop, crawl or fly just about anywhere, carrying sensors that detect and send back information critical to human operators.
The wheeled platforms used in this experiment measure about one foot square. But MAST researchers are working toward platforms small enough to be held in the palm of one hand. Fully autonomous and collaborative, these tiny robots could swarm by the scores into hazardous situations.
The MAST program involves four principal research teams: integration, microelectronics, microsystems mechanics, and processing for autonomous operation. Georgia Tech researchers are participating in every area except microelectronics. In addition to the College of Computing, researchers from the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), the School of Aerospace Engineering and the School of Physics are involved in MAST work.
The experiment -- developed by the Georgia Tech MAST processing team -- combines navigation technology developed by Georgia Tech with vision-based techniques from JPL and network technology from the University of Pennsylvania.
In addition to Christensen, members of the Georgia Tech processing team involved in the demonstration include Professor Frank Dellaert of the College of Computing and graduate students Alex Cunningham, Manohar Paluri and John G. Rogers III. Regents professor Ronald C. Arkin of the College of Computing and Tom Collins of GTRI are also members of the Georgia Tech processing team.
In the experiment, the robots perform their mapping work using two types of sensors – a video camera and a laser scanner. Supported by onboard computing capability, the camera locates doorways and windows, while the scanner measures walls. In addition, an inertial measurement unit helps stabilize the robot and provides information about its movement.
Data from the sensors are integrated into a local area map that is developed by each robot using a graph-based technique called simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM). The SLAM approach allows an autonomous vehicle to develop a map of either known or unknown environments, while also monitoring and reporting on its own current location.
SLAM's flexibility is especially valuable in areas where global positioning system (GPS) service is blocked, such as inside buildings and in some combat zones, Christensen said. When GPS is active, human handlers can use it to see where their robots are. But in the absence of global location information, SLAM enables the robots to keep track of their own locations as they move.
"There is no lead robot, yet each unit is capable of recruiting other units to make sure the entire area is explored," Christensen explained. "When the first robot comes to an intersection, it says to a second robot, 'I'm going to go to the left if you go to the right.'"
Christensen expects the robots' abilities to expand beyond mapping soon. One capability under development by a MAST team involves tiny radar units that could see through walls and detect objects -- or humans -- behind them. Infrared sensors could also support the search mission by locating anything giving off heat. In addition, a MAST team is developing a highly flexible "whisker" to sense the proximity of walls, even in the dark.
The processing team is designing a more complex experiment for the coming year to include small autonomous aerial platforms for locating a particular building, finding likely entry points and then calling in robotic mapping teams. Demonstrating such a capability next year would culminate progress in small-scale autonomy during MAST's first five years, Christensen said.
In addition to the three universities, other MAST team participants are North Carolina A&T State University, the University of California Berkeley, the University of Maryland, the University of Michigan, the University of New Mexico, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and two companies: BAE Systems and Daedalus Flight Systems.
This research was sponsored by the Army Research Laboratory under Cooperative Agreement Number W911NF-08-2-0004. The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the Army Research Laboratory or the U.S. Government.
Research News & Publications Office
Georgia Institute of Technology
75 Fifth Street, N.W., Suite 314
Atlanta, Georgia 30308 USA
Media Relations Contacts: John Toon (404-894-6986)(jtoon@gatech.edu) or Abby Robinson (404-385-3364)(abby@innovate.gatech.edu).
Writer: Rick Robinson
]]>The Robotics Technology Consortium (RTC) is a non-profit industry organization formed in 2008 to speed the creation and deployment of ground robotics technology for the U.S. Dept. of Defense and other government entities. The RTC, with a membership of nearly 200 large and small commercial companies, academic institutions and non-profit organizations, develops solutions to meet critical needs identified by the Office of the Secretary of Defense Joint Ground Robotics Enterprise (OSD/JGRE) to support national security objectives.
Christensen is KUKA Chair of Robotics in the College of Computing’s School of Interactive Computing, as well as director of the Robotics and Intelligent Machines Center (RIM@GT). He is former chair of the European Robotics Research Network and led the 2008-09 Computing Research Association effort to develop a roadmap for U.S. robotics research. In March, Christensen received the Engelberger Award, considered the world’s highest honor in industrial robotics.
]]>Christensen also serves as director of the Robotics & Intelligent Machines Center at Georgia Tech (RIM@GT). In May 2009 he appeared before Congress to deliver the report “From Internet to Robotics: A Roadmap for U.S. Robotics.” Christensen led a group of 160 people in preparing the report, which has prompted spinoff research programs in federal agencies from the National Institutes of Health to the Department of Defense. From 2004 to 2006, while serving as a chaired professor in robotics at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, he led an effort to produce a similar roadmap for the European Union.
In January 2011, 11 presidents of universities with robotics programs sent a letter to U.S. President Barack Obama endorsing the U.S. roadmap report and pledging their action on several of its recommendations.
"It's not every day a Georgia Tech faculty member is asked to lead a group that will chart the way forward for an entire nation in a major area of scientific research and industry—and Henrik has now done it twice,” said Zvi Galil, John P. Imlay Jr. Dean of Computing at Georgia Tech. “I’m very proud of him for receiving the Engelberger Award but not at all surprised. He is one of our most distinguished faculty members and an international leader in the field of robotics. Under Henrik’s guidance, Georgia Tech is building one of the finest robotics research programs in the world, and this award is just a hint of the great things to come."
Christensen will receive the award at a ceremony to be held March 22 in Chicago, in conjunction with the 42nd International Symposium on Robotics and Automate 2011. Bestowed by the Robotic Industries Association (RIA), the award is named after Joseph Engelberger, founder of Unimation Inc. and widely known as the “father of robotics.” It carries an honorarium of $5,000. Also receiving a 2011 Engelberger Award will be Ake Lindqvist, who recently retired as vice president and head of automotive global product sales for ABB Robotics.
“I’m deeply honored to receive this award, and I thank the RIA for considering me a worthy recipient,” Christensen said. “This is a great example of how Georgia Tech as an institution not only educates ‘a helluva engineer’ but also plays an important role in leading-edge research and the formulation of national policies. For RIM@GT, the Engelberger Award will open a number of new doors to allow us to pursue more and bigger cooperative projects in robotics research and development.”
A native of Denmark, Christensen earned his master’s (1987) and doctoral (1990) degrees in electrical engineering from Aalborg University. His research focuses on systems integration, human-robot interaction, mapping and robot vision. He has published more than 250 contributions across artificial intelligence, robotics and vision. He came to Georgia Tech in 2006.
###
About the Georgia Tech College of Computing
The Georgia Tech College of Computing is a national leader in the creation of real-world computing breakthroughs that drive social and scientific progress. With its graduate program ranked 10th nationally by U.S. News and World Report, the College’s unconventional approach to education is defining the new face of computing by expanding the horizons of traditional computer science students through interdisciplinary collaboration and a focus on human centered solutions. For more information about the Georgia Tech College of Computing, its academic divisions and research centers, please visit http://www.cc.gatech.edu.
Contacts
Michael Terrazas
Interim Director of Communications
College of Computing at Georgia Tech
404-245-0707
]]>Interim Director of Communications
College of Computing at Georgia Tech
404-245-0707
]]>