The intent of the award is to help Georgia Tech increase the number of women and minorities in robotics and computing, and it will be awarded to admitted Ph.D. students who have demonstrated significant academic accomplishment and potential. 

“We have far too few women and members of certain minorities, such as African Americans and Hispanics, working in robotics and computing,” said Henrik Christensen, KUKA Chair of Robotics and executive director of Georgia Tech’s Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines. “At Georgia Tech, we’re striving to change this in a number of ways. This fellowship can help by bringing more folks to the field in the first place, and we’re grateful to Georgia Robotics for its generosity and support.”

Georgia Robotics was established in 2007 by Georgia Tech Associate Professor Tucker Balch to support robotics research and education at the Institute and around the state of Georgia, and the new fellowship delivers on the nonprofit organization’s mission. 

“We were created to support robotics research and education at Georgia Tech,” said Balch, now president of Georgia Robotics. “We’re extremely pleased to deliver on that mission in this concrete way.”

The one-time $5,000 award will be provided to one student each year.

Five winners, with one parent or guardian each, will be selected to attend the DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals on June 5-6, 2015, in Pomona, Calif., and will participate in a special event there on June 7, to discuss their ideas and views with a panel of experts on robotics and society.

Henrik I. Christensen, Georgia Tech’s KUKA Chair of Robotics and executive director of the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines, is overseeing the competition.

Entries from individuals or teams will be accepted through April 1, 2015. For more information and detailed rules and requirements, visit the Robots4Us website or download the Robots4Us flyer.

Visit DARPA’s website for the official press release.

The program offers options tailored to meet the needs of all types and sizes of businesses through three different membership tiers. From startups to established corporations, IRIM can support and invigorate a wide-range of industries through partnerships with its leaders in robotics and automation at Georgia Tech. 

IP² is different than many other industry partner programs because IRIM recognizes a company’s investment in research projects as part of the membership criteria without adding on an annual membership fee.

For additional information, or to join IP², please contact IRIM’s Associate Director of Industry, Gary McMurray.

Georgia Tech’s Institute for Robotics & Intelligent Machines (IRIM) will host its own event, featuring demos of robots and tours of labs on campus, on Wednesday, April 8, 2015. But if you can’t make it in person to check out Tech’s lineup of robots, you can still take part in the festivities: For the third year in a row, we’ve released a set of trading cards to celebrate National Robotics Week. These fun cards feature some of Georgia Tech’s most talented and productive players!

And for the second year in a row, IRIM has teamed up with IEEE Spectrum and iRobot to create a “national” set of our popular robot trading cards, featuring ten famous robots developed by companies and researchers in the U.S. Don’t forget about IEEE Spectrum’s award winning, internationally acclaimed Robots for iPad app, which you can get for FREE on iTunes.

Christensen, director of Georgia Tech’s Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines, said economist Thomas Friedman’s theory that low wages and cheap transportation means that products can be built anywhere is no longer holding true.

Howard was recognized for her work at the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and at NASA and for co-founding Zyrobotics, a Georgia Tech startup that uses machine learning and robots to make educational toys for children, with a particular emphasis on helping kids with special needs.

To read the section of the article about Ayanna, visit http://www.businessinsider.com/most-powerful-women-engineers-in-2015-2015-5?#no-19-zyrobotics-ayanna-howard-5,  and to read the entire piece, visit http://www.businessinsider.com/most-powerful-women-engineers-in-2015-2015-5?#.

Another familiar Georgia Tech face in the rankings is Deb Kilpatrick, a Ph.D. ME graduate, who is the CEO of Evidation Health.

Founded in 1992 by Georgia Tech alumnus Rosser W. Pryor II, Factory Automation Systems is a systems integration leader in programmable controllers, drive systems, information solutions, and robotic systems. The company delivers solutions to manufacturers in a diverse range of industries, including building materials, automotive, metals, food processing, and paper. Headquartered in Atlanta, Ga., the company is co-owned by Pryor’s fellow alumnus and college friend, Mark Ligler.

Intelligrated is a leading North American-based, single-source provider of intelligent automated material handling solutions that drive distribution and fulfillment productivity for retailers, manufacturers, and logistics providers around the world. In addition to its corporate headquarters in Ohio, Intelligrated has key systems operations in California, Maryland, and Missouri, and certified manufacturing facilities in Ohio, Missouri, and Kentucky. The company has regional operations in numerous other states, including Georgia, and in several international locations.

IRIM’s industry partners are well positioned to take advantage of new technologies as they are developed, and its collaborative research environment provides companies with unprecedented access to some of the world’s best computer scientists and engineers. For more information about the Industrial Partners Program, please contact Associate Director of Industry Gary V. McMurray.

Presented with this award on July 2 at the American Control Conference in Chicago, Egerstedt was recognized “for outstanding contributions to control education through innovative and effective classroom teaching, textbook development, and graduate student mentoring.”

Egerstedt is the Schlumberger Professor in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), where he also serves as the associate chair for research. He is the director of the Georgia Robotics and Intelligent Systems Laboratory (GRITS Lab) and is a Fellow of the IEEE.

Earlier this year, Egerstedt was honored by Georgia Tech with two awards–the Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Advisor Award, for excellence in mentoring his Ph.D. students, and the Outstanding Professional Education Award, for the reach and impact of his massive open online course, Control of Mobile Robots, on students around the world.

In 2013, Egerstedt received the W. Marshall Leach, Jr./Eta Kappa Nu Outstanding Senior Teacher Award, an honor determined by a majority vote of the ECE senior class, and the Georgia Tech College of Engineering/Georgia Power Professor of Excellence Award, and the Alumnus of the Year Award from the Royal Institute of Technology. He is also a past recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER Award.

“I always try to infuse my lectures with the sense of excitement I still feel about control theory and robotics,” Egerstedt said. “I am greatly honored to have received this award, as the educational side of the profession is very important to me.”

They’ll also be joined onstage by percussionist Jason Barnes, who wears a prosthetic drumming arm invented by Weinberg. Rounding out the robotics super group will be Director of Georgia Tech Athletic Bands Chris Moore, Ph.D. candidate Mason Bretan, bassist Michael Bowie and trumpet player Dovonte McCoy.

Weinberg said the hour-long performance will begin with Shimon and Shimi doing what they do best - improvising and playing music based on artificial intelligence and algorithms. But this 30-minute jam session represents a gigantic step forward in the robots’ musical abilities, Weinberg said.

“It’s the first time, ever, that we will play a full evening program,” he said. “My research has always been about, ‘Let’s try this algorithm, let’s see if the robot can understand this way or improvise that way.’”

For seven years, Weinberg has experimented with Shimon’s artificial intelligence, teaching the robot to play a marimba while improvising and reacting to live musicians. Now, Shimon, the Shimis and crew will perform original music that showcases their signature blend of human and machine. Weinberg, Bretan and Moore have written six original pieces for the performance.

At the halfway point of the show, Barnes will join the group on stage. That’s when Weinberg will explain to the audience that all the technology they’ve witnessed in the first part of the show is actually inspiring similar technology for people with disabilities - as evidenced by Barnes’ cyborg drumming arm.

Barnes has become a more expressive drummer through the help of the drumming arm, Weinberg said.

“He can play things that humans can’t play, anything from speed to complexity,” said Weinberg.  “The pieces Jason plays will start as soft and detailed and sophisticated. They’ll grow to something much crazier, upbeat, showing the speeds and polyrhythms and all the unique things that only this arm can play.”

Ultimately, Weinberg said, the focus of the 25/40 performance is making music that is emotional. Up until now the value of the music Shimon made was for research purposes, but this music is to entertain an audience and have more traditional artistic merit.

“It actually got to the point where we can think about the music and how to create beautiful, expressive, emotional music that will touch people. Of course, AI is always there, but now it’s not the only thing that’s there.”

Written by Ann Hoevel, College of Architecture

Howard started working at Georgia Tech ECE in 2005, where she serves as the director of the Human-Automation Systems Lab. Prior to her appointment as the Smith Chair, she held the Motorola Foundation Professorship for three years. In addition, she served as the chair of the Institute’s multidisciplinary robotics Ph.D. program.

Howard's area of research is centered on the concept of humanized intelligence, the process of embedding human cognitive ability into the control path of autonomous systems. Her work has resulted in over 180 peer-reviewed publications about projects ranging from scientific rover navigation in glacier environments to assistive robots for the home. Some new research directions include robotic applications for child therapy and rehabilitation, telepresence for persons with visual impairments, haptic and wearable device interfaces, behavior modeling for diagnosis and intervention, and medical and health care mobile apps.

Howard is the founder and chief technology officer of Zyrobotics, LLC. Launched in September 2013, the company is commercializing assistive technology that enables children with limited mobility to operate tablet computers, smart phones, toys, gaming apps, and interactive robots.

To date, Howard’s work has been highlighted through a number of awards, articles, and televised interviews and programs, including USA Today, TIME Magazine, CNN, and American Public Television. Her recent awards include the 2013 Class of 1934 Outstanding Interdisciplinary Activities Award; the 2008 Georgia Tech Faculty Woman of Distinction Award; the 2008 ECE Outreach Award; the 2009 Janice A. Lumpkin Educator of the Year Award, given by the National Society of Black Engineers; and the 2014 A. Richard Newton ABIE Award. In 2015, Howard was named as one of the 23 most powerful women engineers in the world by Business Insider.

First established in Austria in 1955, ALPLA develops, manufactures, and markets customized plastic packaging solutions for a variety of industries, including beverages, motor oils, and cleaning supplies. The company has 16,000 employees and 154 production plants in 40 countries.

IRIM’s industry partners are well positioned to take advantage of new technologies as they are developed, and its collaborative research environment provides companies with unprecedented access to some of the world’s best computer scientists and engineers. For more information about the Industrial Partners Program, please contact Associate Director of Industry Gary V. McMurray.

As an undergraduate computer engineering major, English joined the Opportunity Research Scholars (ORS) program in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at Georgia Tech. The ORS program is an academic enrichment program that matches two or three undergraduate ECE students with a Ph.D. mentor. Undergraduate students broaden on their coursework and apply their skills to real research projects under the guidance of a faculty advisor and graduate mentor during the course of their studies.

Already fascinated by robotics and space applications from her work at Tyndall, English chose an ORS project in Professor Ayanna Howard’s lab. Her team developed software that allowed a robot to create high-definition topographic maps of Mars and other locations where GPS isn’t an option. When English decided to attend graduate school, the in-depth research under Howard’s tutelage caused her to narrow her focus to robotics, in particular rehabilitative and assistive robotics—a specialization of Professor Howard’s, who now serves as English’s Ph.D. advisor.

Now English’s graduate research is an ORS project and she is mentoring a fresh new crop of ECE undergraduates.

“When I was an undergraduate, I benefitted greatly from the ORS program. I was exposed to research in academia for the first time; received guidance with classes, research, and scholarships from my mentor; completed my first publication in an IEEE conference; and got a sneak peek into the life of a graduate student. I decided to become an ORS mentor in order to give similar opportunities to other undergraduate students,” English said.

Her team, consisting of computer engineering major Jennifer Hunter, and electrical engineering majors Jonathan Tuck and Gueorgui Tzintzarov, recently attended the Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America (RESNA) Conference where they were finalists in the Student Design Competition for their Robotic Exoskeleton and Tablet Gaming Suite device.

“This was an excellent experience for the undergraduates, because it awarded them a publication, experience presenting at a conference, and networking opportunities with other experts in the field,” English said.

Their wearable device, which fits over the wrist and arm and pairs with an interactive game on a tablet, facilitates physical therapy for patients with limited motor function. It also makes therapy more fun for patients that need to regain strength in their wrists and hands—a key factor in perceived quality of life—allowing them to do exercises at home and keeping them engaged for longer than traditional physical therapy sessions.

While wearable robotic prosthetics exist for use in rehabilitation, English’s technology takes them to a new level. Hers is the first solution that is available in more sizes than the current one-size-fits-all wearable that is only effectively used by the average adult male. Because the device’s exoskeleton is 3-D printed, it can be sized for all types of patients, including children. In the future, the hope is that a medical professional can input specific measurements and print out a customized exoskeleton for each user.

While participation in ORS has afforded the undergraduates unique opportunities in the world of research, English has also benefitted. Each student took an active, hands-on role in the research. Tuck and Tzintzarov used Solidworks software to design the exoskeletons and printed them in the Invention Studio. Hunter used Java and Android Studio to develop two interactive games, Robo Blaster and Robo Rock ‘n Roll, that pair with the devices.

“As an ORS Ph.D. mentor, I wanted to give back and give undergraduates some of the same opportunities I had. It turns out that having these students on my research team has been invaluable. They each brought a unique perspective and specific skills to the table. I only hope I’ve taught them as much as they have taught me,” English said.

With potentially limitless crowdsourced plot points, the system could allow for more creative stories and an easier method for interactive narrative generation. Current AI models for games have a limited number of scenarios, no matter what a player chooses. They depend on a dataset already programmed into a model by experts. 

Using the Georgia Tech approach, one might imagine a Star Wars game using online fan fiction to let the AI system generate countless paths for a player to take. 

“Our open interactive narrative system learns genre models from crowdsourced example stories so that the player can perform different actions and still receive a coherent story experience,” says Mark Riedl, lead investigator and associate professor of interactive computing at Georgia Tech. 

A test of the AI system, called Scheherazade IF (Interactive Fiction) -- a reference to the fabled Arabic queen and storyteller – showed that it can achieve near human-level authoring. 

“When enough data is available and that data sufficiently covers all aspects of the game experience, the system was able to meet or come close to meeting human performance in creating a playable story,” says Riedl.

The researchers evaluated the AI system by measuring the number of “commonsense” errors (e.g. scenes out of sequence) found by players, as well as players’ subjective experiences for things such as enjoyment and coherence of story.  

Three test groups played through two interactive stories – a bank robbery and a date to the movies – in order to measure performance of three narrative generators: the AI story generator, a human-programmed generator or a random story generator. 

For the bank robbery story, the AI system performed identically to the human-programmed generator in terms of errors reported by players, with a median of three each. The random generator produced a median of 12.5 errors reported.

For the movie date scenario, the median values of errors reported were three (human), five (AI) and 15 (random). This shows the AI system performing at 83.3 percent of the human-programmed generator. 

As for the play experience itself, the human and AI generators compared favorably for coherence, player involvement, enjoyment and story recognition. 

The creators say that they are seeking to inject more creative scenarios into the system. Right now, the AI plays it safe with the crowdsourced content, producing what one might expect in different genres. But opportunities exist to train Scheherazade (just like its namesake implies) to surprise and immerse those in future interactive experiences. 

The impact of this research can support not only online storytelling for entertainment, but also digital storytelling used in online course education or corporate training. 

The research paper “Crowdsourcing Open Interactive Narrative” (co-authored by Matthew Guzdial, Brent Harrison, Boyang Li and Mark Riedl) was presented at the 2015 Foundations of Digital Games Conference in Pacific Grove, Calif. 

This research was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under grant 1350339. Any conclusions expressed are those of the principal investigator and may not necessarily represent the official views of the NSF.

Howard placed at #92 on the list and was recognized for her innovations in robotics research and education. She was also lauded for her work as founder and chief technology officer at Zyrobotics, a startup company focused on robotics education and assistive technologies, especially as they relate to children with disabilities.

A faculty member in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) since 2005, Howard holds the Linda J. and Mark C. Smith Chair in Bioengineering and leads the Human-Automation Systems Lab. Before coming to Tech, she worked with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where she led robotic projects utilizing vision, fuzzy logic, and neural network methodologies.

To learn more, read Howard’s profile and the entire article at The Root website.

With the support of a five-year, $2.9 million grant from the National Science Foundation National Research Traineeship program, this faculty team will create new bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degree programs and concentrations in healthcare robotics – the first degree programs in this area in the United States.

Led by Ayanna M. Howard, the Linda J. and Mark C. Smith Chair Professor in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), this initiative will blend Emory’s medical and clinical expertise and Tech’s robotics and engineering know-how to train engineering students in robotics, physiology, neuroscience, rehabilitation, and psychology. The program also aims to increase the appeal of STEM fields to a wide range of people, including women, underrepresented minorities, and people with disabilities.

The U.S. population is living longer and is becoming older and more racially and ethnically diverse. In addition, the number of younger people living with a lifelong disability is also increasing, including 52,351 post-9/11 military veterans with combat injuries and 6.4 million children with developmental disorders or delays. Fifty million people are also diagnosed annually with neurological/neurodegenerative diseases. “Providing innovative solutions to help improve an individual’s quality of life continues to emerge as a growing need,” said Howard, who leads the Human-Automation Systems Lab in ECE. “Keeping this need in mind, we will train engineers not only to develop robotics technologies, but also learn how to work with and listen to the needs of the technology end users – patients, caregivers, and healthcare professionals.”

Three faculty join Howard’s leadership team. Charlie Kemp, an associate professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME) at Georgia Tech and Emory University and director of the Healthcare Robotics Lab in BME, focuses on intelligent mobile robots for physical assistance in the context of healthcare. Lena H. Ting, a BME professor with an appointment in Emory School of Medicine’s Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, Division of Physical Therapy, and co-director of the Neural Engineering Center, will integrate human needs related to accessibility and rehabilitation to inform the design of robotics solutions.

Randy D. Trumbower, an assistant professor in both BME and Physical Therapy and the director of research within Rehabilitation Medicine at Emory, will work on interfacing robotics and physical therapy techniques.

Additional faculty will serve as student advisors, including Wendy Rogers, professor in Tech’s School of Psychology; Jun Ueda, an associate professor from Tech’s George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering; Steven L. Wolf, a professor in Emory’s Division of Physical Therapy; and Minoru Shinohara, an associate professor in Tech’s School of Applied Physiology.

The team will focus first on developing the doctoral and master’s programs, with the goal of having a mini-cohort of Ph.D. students in spring 2016 and starting the official graduate degree programs next fall. The undergraduate degree will combine the five-year, B.S./M.S. degree program and undergraduate thesis option, allowing students to build a foundation for an eventual M.S. thesis. The graduate program will build on the highly successful multidisciplinary robotics Ph.D. program at Georgia Tech. “We’re excited about this opportunity to further enhance and grow our world-class educational programs in robotics,” said Kemp, who has served on the robotics Ph.D. program’s leadership team since its inception in 2007.

A sampling of these courses include:

•        Interfacing Engineering and Rehabilitation, taught by Trumbower, engages both engineering and clinical students. They will learn equally from clinical experts about their target demographics and the issues they face and from engineering faculty about how robotics can address these challenges. Members from collaborating medical organizations and non-profit agencies will regularly visit the class to talk with students. Discussion points and group projects will be derived from real case studies using persons with physical challenges as technology consumers and consultants.

“In order for clinicians to play a more active role in the development, evaluation, and implementation of robotics technologies in rehabilitation, they must first more comfortably engage engineers who develop and test these technologies,” said Trumbower. “Mutually, in order for engineers to play a more active role in the development, evaluation, and implementation of rehabilitation technologies, they must first more comfortably engage clinicians who evaluate and treat patients. This course provides a novel learning approach for this type of collaborative interaction.”

•        A course on ethics, privacy, and regulations in medicine and biomedical robotics will be offered, where students learn about considerations that must be addressed when designing and deploying robotic systems for health. “While engineering students at Tech are required to take ethics courses, certain areas like privacy or statistical analysis have different nuances in the healthcare arena,” said Howard. “For instance, what does ‘good’ mean as a healthcare roboticist vs. a traditional roboticist? How do you manage privacy and share information from doctor to doctor, and is there a correlation to a robot in the doctor’s office doing the same thing with a robot in a patient’s home?”

•        Interdisciplinary research training will provide students with hands-on, healthcare experience during their first summer in the program. Matched with mentors in both engineering and healthcare, students will do one week of clinical rotations, where they will observe medical practices and learn about current problems in healthcare.

Students will then conduct eight weeks of research using robotics to address healthcare issues discovered during rotations. Clinical partners with which students may work include Emory Medical School, Shepherd Center, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, Emory ALS Center, Atlanta Area Agency on Aging, and the Veterans Administration.

Additional components of the healthcare robotics degree programs are required communications training and availability of entrepreneurship activities for interested students. All students will receive communications training, so that they can interact effectively with different audiences. Examples include academic and professional communications; talking to patients or patient groups about their work; giving media interviews, writing press releases, and producing short videos about their work; and communicating with the general public. Trainees interested in entrepreneurship will be able to participate in a Georgia Tech student incubator during their second summer in the program, or they may intern at a medical startup company in the Atlanta area.

Working with engineering students to think about and design their technologies for the benefit of their target populations will be an exciting challenge, according to Howard. “Working in healthcare robotics will be a learning process, where there is no equation in the book that can be derived. It will require looking at a problem, working and talking with others, and developing a solution by being creative and thinking outside of the box,” said Howard. “This will be a different way of thinking for engineers, and when our students graduate, they will be exceptional because of that.” 

Sources for statistics: National Center for Education Statistics, Congressional Research Service/U.S. Department of Defense, and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

Using an air fluidized bed trackway filled with poppy seeds or glass spheres, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology systematically varied the stiffness of the ground to mimic everything from hard-packed sand to powdery snow. By studying how running lizards, geckos, crabs – and a robot – moved through these varying surfaces, they were able to correlate variables such as appendage design with performance across the range of surfaces.

The key measure turned out to be how far legs or wheels penetrated into the surface. What the scientists learned from this systematic study might help future robots avoid getting stuck in loose soil on some distant planet.

“You need to know systematically how ground properties affect your performance with wheel shape or leg shape, so you can rationally predict how well your robot will be able to move on the surfaces where you have to travel,” said Dan Goldman, a professor in the Georgia Tech School of Physics. “When the ground gets weak, certain animals seem to still be able to move around independently of the surface properties. We want to understand why.”

The research was supported by National Science Foundation, Army Research Laboratory and Burroughs Wellcome Fund.

For years, Goldman and colleagues have been using trackways filled with granular media to study the locomotion of animals and robots, but in the past, they had used fluidized bed only to set the initial compaction of the media. In this study, however, they used variations in continuous air flow – introduced through the bottom of the device – to vary the substrate’s resistance to penetration by a leg or wheel.

Goldman compares the trackway to the wind tunnels used for aerodynamic studies.

“By varying the air flow, we can create ground that is very, very weak – so that you sink into it quite easily, like powdery snow, and we can have ground that is very strong, like sand,” he explained. “This gives us the ability to study the mechanism by which animals and robots either succeed or fail.”

Using a bio-inspired hexapedal robot known as Sandbot as a physical model, the researchers studied average forward speed as a factor of ground penetration resistance – the “stiffness” of the sand – and the frequency of leg movement. The average speed of the robot declined as the increased air flow through the trackway made the surface weaker. Increasing the leg frequency makes the speed decrease more rapidly with increasing air flow.

The five animals – with different body plans and appendage features – all did better than the robot, with the best performer being a lizard collected in a California desert. The speed of the C. draconoides wasn’t slowed at all as the surface became easier to penetrate, while other animals saw performance losses of between 20 and 50 percent on the loosening surfaces.

“We think that this particular lizard is well suited to the variety of terrain because it has these ridiculously long feet and toes,” Goldman said. “These feet and toes really enable it to maintain high performance and reduce its penetration into the surface over a wide range of substrate conditions. On the other hand, we see animals like ghost crabs that experience a tremendous loss of performance as the substrate changes, something that was surprising to us.”

The robot lost 70 percent of its speed even with wheels designed to lighten its pressure on the surface.

Skiers and beachcombers can certainly understand why. As the surface becomes easier for a ski or foot to penetrate, more energy is required to move and forward progress slows. Human and skiers haven’t evolved solutions to that problem, but desert-dwelling creatures have. The research, Goldman says, will help us understand how they do it.

“The magic for us is how the animals are so good at this,” he said. “There’s a clear practical application to this. If you can get the controls and morphology right, you could have a robot that could move anywhere, but you have to know what you are doing under different conditions.”

As part of the research, Georgia Tech graduate students Feifei Qian and Tingnan Zhang used a terradynamics approach based on resistive force theory to perform numerical simulations of the robots and animals. They found that their model successfully predicted locomotor performance for low resistance granular states.

“This work expands the general applicability of our resistive force theory of terradynamics,” said Goldman. “The resistive force theory, which allows us to compute forces on limbs intruding into the ground, continues to work even in situations where we didn’t think it would work. It expands the applicability of terradynamics to even weaker states of material.”

In addition to those already mentioned, co-authors include Wyatt Korff from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Virginia, Paul Umbanhowar from Northwest University, and Robert Full from the University of California at Berkeley.

This research was supported by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund and by the Army Research Laboratory (ARL) Micro Autonomous Systems and Technology (MAST) Collaborative Technology Alliance (CTA) under cooperative agreement number W911NF-08-2-0004, and by the National Science Foundation Physics of Living Systems CAREER and Student Research Network and ARO Grant No. W911NF-11-1-0514. Any conclusions or opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official views of the sponsoring agencies.

CITATION: Feifei Qian, et al., “Principles of appendage design in robots and animals determining terradynamic performance on flowable ground,” (Bioinspiration & Biomimetics, 2015). http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1748-3190/10/5/056014

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And robots can too.

Researchers at Georgia Tech have identified a way to teach robots how to fall with grace and without serious damage. The work is important as costly robots become more common in manufacturing alongside humans. The skill becomes especially important, too, as robots are sought for health care or domestic tasks – working near the elderly, injured, children or pets.

Ph.D. graduate Sehoon Ha and Professor Karen Liu developed a new algorithm that tells a robot how to react to a wide variety of falls – from a single step to recover from a gentle nudge, to a rolling motion that breaks a high-speed fall. As a result, robots can minimize the damage or injury they might cause to themselves or others while falling by learning the best sequence of movements to slow their momentum. The planning algorithm was validated in physics simulation and experimentally tested on a BioloidGP humanoid.

“A fall can potentially cause detrimental damage to the robot and enormous cost to repair,” said Ha, who graduated in summer 2015 and is now a postdoctoral associate at Disney Research Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. “We believe robots can learn how to fall safely. Our work unified existing research about how to teach robots to fall by giving them a tool to automatically determine the total number of contacts (how many hands shoved it, for example), the order of contacts, and the position and timing of those contacts. All of that impacts the potential of a fall and changes the robot’s response.”

With the latest finding, Ha builds upon Liu’s previous research that studied how cats modify their bodies in the midst of a fall. Liu knew from that work that one of the most important factors in a fall is the angle of the landing. She also knew that a well-designed robot has the “brain” to compute a softer landing, but hadn’t yet optimized the sequence of motions that take place during a fall, like she and Ha were able to do in their latest research.

“From previous work, we knew a robot had the computational know-how to achieve a softer landing, but it didn’t have the hardware to move quickly enough like a cat,” Liu said. “Our new planning algorithm takes into account the hardware constraints and the capabilities of the robot, and suggests a sequence of contacts so the robot gradually can slow itself down.”

Now the robots may fall more gracefully than people and possibly cats, too. Imagine that.

The research, entitled “Multiple Contact Planning for Minimizing Damage of Humanoid Falls,” was presented this month at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems in Hamburg, Germany.

Awarded each year to an incoming Georgia Tech Ph.D. student, the fellowship is available to women and underrepresented minority students accepted to Georgia Tech’s Robotics Ph.D. program through the School of Interactive Computing.

The intent of the award is to help Georgia Tech increase the number of women and minorities in robotics and computing, and it will be awarded to admitted Ph.D. students who have demonstrated significant academic accomplishments and potential.

“We have far too few women and members of certain minorities, such as African Americans and Hispanics, working in robotics and computing,” said Henrik Christensen, KUKA Chair of Robotics and executive director of Georgia Tech’s Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines. “At Georgia Tech, we’re striving to change this in a number of ways. This fellowship can help by bringing more folks to the field in the first place, and we’re grateful to Georgia Robotics for its generosity and support.”

Georgia Robotics was established in 2007 by Georgia Tech Associate Professor Tucker Balch to support robotics research and education at the Institute and around the state of Georgia, and the fellowship delivers on the nonprofit organization’s mission.

“We were created to support robotics research and education at Georgia Tech,” said Balch, now president of Georgia Robotics. “We’re extremely pleased to deliver on that mission in this concrete way.”

The one-time $5,000 award will be provided to one student each year.

Parashar

The issue: Hobbyists can fly drones without FAA oversight as long as the aircraft weighs 55 pounds or less, flies in unpopulated areas, and remains within line of sight of the operator. Yet flying drones for commercial purposes requires review and approval by the FAA. The only way to get a thumbs-up from the FAA is to pursue airworthiness certification (an expensive and complicated process that can take up to a year), or secure a “Section 333 exemption.”

A Section 333 exemption allows the FAA to waive the airworthiness requirement as long as the commercial UAV flights are conducted under a number of restrictions. Among these restrictions: Drone operators must notify local aviation authorities two or three days prior to flight — and operations over people or near airports are off-limits.

“Securing a 333 exemption is doable for the movie industry since obtaining aerial footage can be planned far in advance,” observed Mike Heiges, a GTRI principal research engineer who leads the CNN project. “Yet journalists can’t operate under these rules for breaking news and chaotic situations where there may be emergency responders, police helicopters, or the National Guard.”

Granted, drones aren’t needed for every news story, but they provide a unique perspective in many situations, said Greg Agvent, senior director of news operations for CNN/US.

“Being able to fly over an area after an earthquake or tornado hits would provide a deeper understanding of how widespread the devastation is,” Agvent explained and pointed to the May 12 Amtrak train derailment in Philadelphia. “Part of the issue with the accident was the speed going into the curve. The ability to get footage from 200 feet in the air would have presented a better sense of the curve — context that you simply couldn’t get from the ground.”

Safety of news personnel is another benefit of drone journalism, Agvent added. “In many cases, such as a flood, safety would trump context. We could capture footage of an event without putting our people in harm’s way.”

Some of the research that comes out of the project will be helpful beyond newsgathering, observed Dave Price, a GTRI senior research technologist working on the project. “Commercial drones are of interest for crop monitoring and inspection of bridges and railroad tracks,” he explained. “Railroads and agriculture agencies will be able see the results of CNN’s camera selection and stabilization systems and take advantage of this for their own applications.”

The Right Stuff

During the past year, the researchers, including GTRI and CNN staff, have been investigating different UAVs that could carry the type of camera systems journalists need to shoot and transmit aerial footage.

That’s easier said than done. For one thing, the commercial drone industry is in its infancy. Manufacturers come and go, and there aren’t a great number with a long track record. Another challenge is finding the right equipment — airframes and payloads that match up. “It’s a trade-off,” Heiges explained. “You have to factor in size, weight, and power of what you want to put on the aircraft with what the aircraft can carry.”

Flight times for many commercial drones aren’t long enough for CNN’s purposes, nor is video quality high enough. “To install a better camera, you need a bigger vehicle for endurance,” Heiges said. “And that means stepping up to UAVs that were developed for the military, which dramatically increases price.”

GTRI has been testing drones since 2006 through the FAA’s certificate of authorization process, which enables public institutions to operate drones in national airspace for research purposes. Currently, GTRI holds 28 certificates of authorization for specific locations in five states. For the project with CNN, GTRI provides pilots to fly the drones in approved areas, plans the flight tests with CNN’s participation, collects data, and prepares reports with recommendations.

One of CNN’s takeaways from the flight tests: Drone journalism is no one-person show. “In most cases, especially for live video, you need three people,” Agvent said. This includes a pilot to guide the actions of the UAV and an operator for the camera, which is usually suspended under the drone and sits on gimbals for stabilization.

“The third person, a spotter, is particularly important in urban areas,” Agvent continued. “The spotter focuses solely on situational awareness and communicates to the pilot about people and other aircraft that may be in the area. In some cases, you could get by with a two- person team — a pilot/cameraman and a spotter — but a trio is best to ensure both high quality and safety.”

Advancing to Operational Protocols

“We’ve hit a lot of milestones in the past year,” Agvent said. “Now, we begin to work on the finer points of flight operations and coordinating with air traffic control.”

One of the FAA’s chief concerns with drones is getting the word out to manned aircraft about a UAV’s presence in the area. The current practice is to file a “notice to airmen” two or three days in advance.

A new technology known as automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) could provide a just-in-time alternative to the notice to airmen. Developed by the FAA, this technology enables aircraft to broadcast their GPS coordinates to anyone in the local air space that has ADS-B, and vice-versa, so the drone operator would be able to see other aircraft.

“It’s like having an air traffic radar map inside your cockpit,” Heiges said. “Even better, unlike conventional radar, ADS-B works all the way to the ground.” That’s important, because, in some situations, journalists may need to cooperate with police helicopters or medical aircraft flying at low altitudes to pick up patients.

Geo-fencing technologies, which prevent UAVs from entering airport and other restricted areas, could add another layer of safety, Heiges added.

Because FAA rules prohibit drones from flying over people, crowd-control issues must also be resolved. For example, are journalists responsible for blocking off the area where they wish to fly drones — or do they communicate with on-scene commanders to find out where they can operate?

Over the next few months, GTRI and CNN will meet with regional emergency responders and other stakeholders to address these questions and develop an operational framework. Then GTRI will work with law enforcement agencies to test the procedures at remote locations. “We’ll hold mock trials and simulate circumstances that would happen in a breaking news situation,” Heiges explained.

Creating appropriate regulations for various types of UAV flights is important, as the flight landscape has changed dramatically in recent years.

“When people built radio-controlled airplanes out of balsa wood, they learned the rules for flying and flew aircraft at sanctioned sites,” Heiges said. “Yet in the past few years, we now have multi-rotors and quad-rotors with automatic stabilization that don’t require the same skills. People are flying them out of the box without knowing the rules. That can be dangerous if flown beyond visual range. Any significant accident will set back the industry, punishing those who do follow the rules.”

Even small drones could cause a helicopter or aircraft to go down if it gets caught in a propeller or pulled into an engine. Indeed, drones have been in the news this past summer for interfering with firefighting efforts in California, including a San Bernadino wildfire where drones operated by curious hobbyists caused fire pilots to pull out of the fray for 30 minutes, allowing the fire to spread.

“The one thing that doesn’t get talked about enough is the differentiation between hobbyists and commercial drone users — and that most of the problems are caused by laymen,” said Agvent. “Our goal is to create a framework that allows for safe integration of commercial drones for newsgathering. It’s about having trusted vendors, trusted aircraft, and trusted procedures in place to act in a safe manner.”

Research News
Georgia Institute of Technology
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Media Relations Contact: John Toon (404-894-6986) (jtoon@gatech.edu)

Writer: T.J. Becker