FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) is an organization that was founded to inspire interest in science and engineering among young people. The 2010 Challenge theme, "Body Forward," will have teams of students aged 9-14 exploring the cutting-edge world of biomedical engineering to discover innovative ways to repair injuries, overcome genetic predispositions, and maximize the bodies' potential, with the purpose of leading happier, healthier lives.

In this year's tournament, 337 teams are competing in 12 qualifiers and three super-regional contests, involving a total of 2,500 students. Through these qualifiers, the field will be narrowed to 48 teams, involving 450 students, that will advance to the January 29 tournament at Georgia Tech.

Volunteers are needed to serve as referees, scorekeepers, scorekeeper assistants, queue runners, pit monitors, food coordinators, judges' assistants, judges, and registration table attendants. For more information, please contact ECE Associate Professor Jeff Davis at 404.894.4770, jeff.davis@ece.gatech.edu, or visit http://www.georgiafll.org/ or http://firstlegoleague.org.

It does that using omni-directional wheels and compliant arms, and the only information it needs is the location and orientation of the handles. The researchers discussed their results at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, held May 3rd – 8th in Anchorage, Alaska, where they presented a paper, "Pulling Open Doors and Drawers: Coordinating an Omni-Directional Base and a Compliant Arm with Equilibrium Point Control.

"We have developed algorithms that allow a robot to determine whether it should deceive a human or other intelligent machine and we have designed techniques that help the robot select the best deceptive strategy to reduce its chance of being discovered," said Ronald Arkin, a Regents professor in the Georgia Tech School of Interactive Computing.

The results of robot experiments and theoretical and cognitive deception modeling were published online on Sept. 3 in the International Journal of Social Robotics. Because the researchers explored the phenomena of robot deception from a general perspective, the study's results apply to robot-robot and human-robot interactions. This research was funded by the Office of Naval Research.

In the future, robots capable of deception may be valuable for several different areas, including military and search and rescue operations. A search and rescue robot may need to deceive in order to calm or receive cooperation from a panicking victim. Robots on the battlefield with the power of deception will be able to successfully hide and mislead the enemy to keep themselves and valuable information safe.

"Most social robots will probably rarely use deception, but it's still an important tool in the robot's interactive arsenal because robots that recognize the need for deception have advantages in terms of outcome compared to robots that do not recognize the need for deception," said the study's co-author, Alan Wagner, a research engineer at the Georgia Tech Research Institute.

For this study, the researchers focused on the actions, beliefs and communications of a robot attempting to hide from another robot to develop programs that successfully produced deceptive behavior. Their first step was to teach the deceiving robot how to recognize a situation that warranted the use of deception. Wagner and Arkin used interdependence theory and game theory to develop algorithms that tested the value of deception in a specific situation. A situation had to satisfy two key conditions to warrant deception -- there must be conflict between the deceiving robot and the seeker, and the deceiver must benefit from the deception.

Once a situation was deemed to warrant deception, the robot carried out a deceptive act by providing a false communication to benefit itself. The technique developed by the Georgia Tech researchers based a robot's deceptive action selection on its understanding of the individual robot it was attempting to deceive.

To test their algorithms, the researchers ran 20 hide-and-seek experiments with two autonomous robots. Colored markers were lined up along three potential pathways to locations where the robot could hide. The hider robot randomly selected a hiding location from the three location choices and moved toward that location, knocking down colored markers along the way. Once it reached a point past the markers, the robot changed course and hid in one of the other two locations. The presence or absence of standing markers indicated the hider's location to the seeker robot.

"The hider's set of false communications was defined by selecting a pattern of knocked over markers that indicated a false hiding position in an attempt to say, for example, that it was going to the right and then actually go to the left," explained Wagner.

The hider robots were able to deceive the seeker robots in 75 percent of the trials, with the failed experiments resulting from the hiding robot’s inability to knock over the correct markers to produce the desired deceptive communication.

"The experimental results weren't perfect, but they demonstrated the learning and use of deception signals by real robots in a noisy environment," said Wagner. "The results were also a preliminary indication that the techniques and algorithms described in the paper could be used to successfully produce deceptive behavior in a robot."

While there may be advantages to creating robots with the capacity for deception, there are also ethical implications that need to be considered to ensure that these creations are consistent with the overall expectations and well-being of society, according to the researchers.

"We have been concerned from the very beginning with the ethical implications related to the creation of robots capable of deception and we understand that there are beneficial and deleterious aspects," explained Arkin. "We strongly encourage discussion about the appropriateness of deceptive robots to determine what, if any, regulations or guidelines should constrain the development of these systems."

This work was funded by Grant No. N00014-08-1-0696 from the Office of Naval Research (ONR). The content is solely the responsibility of the principal investigator and does not necessarily represent the official view of ONR.

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With this award, Dr. Zhang will establish a fundamental research program to lay out the theoretical foundation for agile marine autonomy

With this award, Dr. Zhang will establish a theoretical foundation for battery supported cyber-physical systems. These systems play vital roles in real-time controlled applications across multiple disciplines such as sensor networks, robotics, and transportation systems, where limited computing resources and energy budgets pose major constraints. This effort will advance control theory to understand and adjust the behaviors of control tasks supported by embedded computing devices and batteries.

An ECE faculty member since 2007, Dr. Zhang was previously a lecturer and postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University. He earned his Ph.D. in ECE from the University of Maryland at College Park, where he also worked for the Institute for Systems Research. His B.S. and M.S. degrees, both in electrical engineering, are from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China.

Thomaz, who joined the Georgia Tech faculty in 2007, focuses her research on social interactions between robots and humans.

"It's quite hard to enumerate, much less engineer ahead of time, all the tasks and skills people will need robots to do," said Thomaz. "We're working on developing robots that can learn new skills from everyday people so that the robots can adapt their behavior to the task at hand."

It's called Socially Guided Machine Learning, and Thomaz is working on bridging the gap between state-of-the-art learning systems and the kind of teaching an everyday person is able to give the robot.

For example, her robots - Junior and Simon - give visual cues, such as gestures and facial expression, to indicate whether they understand what a human is telling them. Thomaz also develops machine learning methods to help robots learn physical tasks more quickly, particularly from teachers who are not necessarily programmers.

Thomaz was selected from more than 300 nominees by a panel of expert judges and the editorial staff of Technology Review, MIT's magazine on science and technology. She will be featured along with the other 34 finalists in the magazine's September/October issue, and will be recognized at MIT's Emerging Technologies Conference in September.

The MATE competition, a first for Georgia Tech-Savannah, was held at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. The Savannah team received the "design elegance" award and was commended for their ROV's design aesthetics, simplicity and functionality."The success of this team exemplifies Georgia Tech-Savannah's close community of undergraduates and graduate engineering students," said David Frost, director of Georgia Tech-Savannah. "Their inspired creativity and work ethic is typical of our hands-on approach to education."Faculty sponsor Fumin Zhang, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, provided limited direct guidance. "Virtually all the labor, ideas, programming and fabrication came from the students," he said.

"We started with a core group of four Georgia Tech-Savannah students six months ago," explained team captain Justin Shapiro, an interdisciplinary robotics Ph.D. candidate at Georgia Tech who came from Rutgers University. "We realized that this project would allow us to apply what we learned in class, and then push beyond what we learned."Along with Shapiro from Cranbury, N.J., the Georgia Tech-Savannah team included the following members: Angel Berrocal, Silver Spring, Md.; Chasen Born, Tarrytown, Ga.; Steven Bradshaw, Cleveland, Ohio; Spencer Burch, Brunswick, Ga.; Matt Carroll, Lavonia, Ga.; Brandon Groff, Lancaster, Pa.; Scott Hales, Frisco, Texas; Winton Key, Fort Knox, Ky.; Jasmine Magerkurth, Warner Robins, Ga.; Leslie Maldonado, Miami, Fla.; Sean Maxon, Richmond Hill, Ga.; and Richard Nguyen, Marietta, Ga.

McMurray brings to his new position two decades of experience designing and building advanced robotic systems for the food, transportation and biomedical industries.

"Gary has the vision to diversify our revenues and expand our critical Agricultural Technology Research Program (ATRP), which is one of the major activities within the Food Processing Technology Division," said Rusty Roberts, director of the Aerospace, Transportation and Advanced Systems (ATAS) Laboratory, which oversees the division.

Ranked as one of the top programs of its kind in the country, ATRP works closely with Georgia agribusiness, especially the poultry industry, to develop new technologies and adapt existing ones for specialized industrial needs. Researchers focus efforts on both immediate and long-term industrial needs, ranging from advanced robotic systems to improved wastewater treatment technologies to machine-vision grading and rapid microbial detection.

McMurray currently leads a project to develop a "smart" deboning system. The system uses computer vision and other sensing technologies to recognize and react to size and shape differences of a carcass to perform precision cuts that optimize yield (the amount of meat removed from the bone) while reducing the risk of bone fragments in finished product.

The Food Processing Technology Division also conducts significant industrial research under Georgia's Traditional Industries Program for Food Processing, which is managed through the Food Processing Advisory Council (FoodPAC). FoodPAC enhances the competitiveness of Georgia's food industry, and through the Traditional Industries Program, has helped GTRI to commercialize some of its developments while also adapting them to the needs of such industries as bakeries and fruit processors.

While food processing technologies remain the division's research priority, funding from the Georgia Department of Transportation has allowed researchers to develop technologies for the transportation industry. For one project, GTRI researchers developed a system capable of automatically placing reflective pavement markers along highway lane stripes from a moving truck.

Since division researchers have core expertise in automation, information technology, food safety, worker safety and environmental technology, McMurray plans to further expand the division's research focuses into areas including biomedical devices, unmanned and autonomous systems, and biofuels.

"We are mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, software engineers, image processing experts and many of our core competencies transfer very nicely into areas outside of food processing," said McMurray.

McMurray has personally initiated collaborations with physicians at Emory University to develop new technology to support doctors performing minimally invasive procedures and add new functionality to these procedures.

He is currently developing a new breed of endoscope -- the medical devices used to inspect spaces inside the body -- that will allow doctors to focus their attention on inspecting the space rather than manipulating the medical device. For colonoscopies, doctors must currently guide a specialized endoscope through the patient's colon by pushing the endoscope and controlling the orientation of the instrument's tip while simultaneously watching a video monitor that displays images captured by the endoscope's camera.

Division researchers are also collaborating with other ATAS researchers to develop and test unmanned and autonomous systems. These systems are recognized as critical components to all aspects of modern warfare across the joint forces, and they are growing in mission effectiveness.

In addition to leading the division's research efforts, McMurray will also lead a $3 million fundraising campaign to expand the 36,000-square-foot Food Processing Technology Building by an extra 10,000 square feet. Bettcher Industries, Inc., a world leader in designing and manufacturing food processing equipment and cutting tools, was the first company to support the construction with a donation of $125,000.

"While the building holds facilities to conduct research in automation technology, information technology and environmental systems, it's not large enough for our food safety, human factors and bioprocessing research," explained McMurray.

McMurray earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in mechanical engineering from Georgia Tech in 1985 and 1987, respectively. He lives in Smyrna with his wife Stephanie -- also a Georgia Tech graduate -- and sons Ben, 7, and Alex, 5.

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Writer: Abby Vogel

Most people would marvel at the 1970s television show "The Bionic Woman" and just hope to emulate the technologically advanced heroine.

Not a young Ayanna MacCalla Howard. "I said, 'I can build The Bionic Woman,'" she says with a laugh.

But it formed the foundation for a now stellar career in engineering and robotics for Dr. Howard, an associate professor in the School of ECE at Georgia Tech.

Howard focuses on the area of humanized intelligence and robotics. According to her Georgia Tech biography, this area of research centers on the process of embedding human cognitive capability into the control path of autonomous systems. She says this doesn't mean building robots that will become human.

"I'm designing robotic technology

Shimon is able to interact with his human counterparts on a much more social level. The robot's head is made to be more interactive and give fellow musicians social cues that relate to the music it's playing.

"I really wanted to make this robot more socially dynamic to enrich the interaction experience for the human musicians," said Gil Weinberg, director of Music Technology. "We start with simple social cues such as recognizing a beat and moving the robot's head. Sort of getting itself into the groove."

Shimon is able to interact with his human counterparts on a much more social level. The robot's head is made to be more interactive and give fellow musicians social cues that relate to the music it's playing.

"I really wanted to make this robot more socially dynamic to enrich the interaction experience for the human musicians," said Gil Weinberg, director of Music Technology. "We start with simple social cues such as recognizing a beat and moving the robot's head. Sort of getting itself into the groove."

"There is really a back channel of social cues that go on between musicians," said Andrea Thomaz, assistant professor in the School of Interactive Computing, who is collaborating with Weinberg on building the robot's head. "Shimon's head is really meant to take Gil's robotic musicians into that realm of being a true social collaborative music partner."

"When a guitar player and a drummer want to finish a piece together, there are synchronization and anticipation social cues given," said Weinberg. "With Shimon, there are four arms that stretch over a large instrument that give other musicians anticipatory cues of what is going to happen next."

Shimon is able to interact with the environment around it, analyze rhythm, melodies and harmony and use his musical understanding to improvise with humans.

Weinberg says that it can help study the way we think and play music because it expands the knowledge we have about music making and the musical mind.

Haile, Weinberg's first robotic percussionist, played in venues all around the world and has led to additional research in human-robotic interaction. The Robotic Musicianship project, which led to the development of Shimon, was supported by NSF and by the GVU Research Innovation grant.

Yet with a cost averaging $16,000 per dog - not to mention the two years of training required to hone these skills - the demand for these canines' exceeds their availability.

But what if these duties could be accomplished with an electronic companion that provides the same efficiency at a fraction of the cost?

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have engineered a biologically inspired robot that mirrors the actions of sought-after service dogs. Users verbally command the robot to complete a task and the robot responds once a basic laser pointer illuminates the location of the desired action.

For instance, if a person needs an item fetched, that individual would normally command a service dog to do so and then gesture with their hands toward the location. The service robot mimics the process, with the hand gesture replaced by aiming the laser pointer at the desired item.

Employing this technology, users can accomplish basic yet challenging missions such as opening doors, drawers and retrieving medication.

"It's a road to get robots out there helping people sooner," said Professor Charlie Kemp, Georgia Tech Department of Biomedical Engineering. "Service dogs have a great history of helping people, but there's a multi-year waiting list. It's a very expensive thing to have. We think robots will eventually help to meet those needs."

Kemp presented his findings this week at the second IEEE/RAS-EMBS International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics - BioRob 2008 - in Scottsdale, Ariz.

This technology was achieved with four-legged authenticity.

Kemp and graduate student Hai Nguyen worked closely with the team of trainers at Georgia Canines for Independence (GCI) in Acworth, Ga. to research the command categories and interaction that is core to the relationship between individuals and service dogs.

Betty, a Golden Retriever, was studied to understand her movements and relationship with commands. Key to the success is Betty's ability to work with a towel attached to a drawer or door handle, which allows her to use her mouth for such actions as opening and closing. The robot was then successfully programmed to use the towel in a similar manner.

Her handlers were thrilled at the potential benefits of the technology.

"The waiting list for dogs can be five to seven years," said Ramona Nichols, executive director of Georgia Canines for Independence. "It's neat to see science happening but with a bigger cause; applying the knowledge and experience we have and really making a difference. I'm so impressed. It's going to revolutionize our industry in helping people with disabilities."

In total, the robot was able to replicate 10 tasks and commands taught to service dogs at GCI - including opening drawers and doors - with impressive efficiency. Other successes included opening a microwave oven, delivering an object and placing an item on a table.

"As robotic researchers we shouldn't just be looking at the human as an example," Kemp said. "Dogs are very capable at what they do. They have helped thousands of people throughout the years. I believe we're going to be able to achieve the capabilities of a service dog sooner than those of a human caregiver."

While the robot may not be able to mirror the personality and furry companionship of a canine, it does have other benefits.

"The robot won't require the same care and maintenance," Kemp said. "It also won't be distracted by a steak."

"This competition includes one of the most difficult missions of any engineering competition," said Eric Johnson. "To attempt it, we came with a system that combined proven components developed over the past six years with some new components that were put together over the past year in a challenging system integration effort."

The GTMax-helicopter is based on the Yamaha RMAX helicopter. It was equipped with two general purpose computers, differential GPS, inertial navigation and two cameras. The slung-load system consisted of redundant release mechanisms, a bump-switch to detect hitting a wall to enable retries, a data-link relay and a magnetometer to measure its twist. The rover system included a high-resolution camera, a general-purpose computer to control driving and manage images, and infrared sensors to enable it to effectively move around rooms indoors.

Software was developed by the team for helicopter navigation and flight control, three different image processing and tracking systems (locating correct building based on sign, locating openings and tracking the opening during approach to the window), automated mission management and simulation tools.

"We were delighted that all parts of the system were demonstrated multiple times during our mission attempts," said Johnson. "My worst fear was that the initial part of the mission would fail and all the work that went into later phases would be for naught - like a rover designed to drive on Mars that fails to get off the launch pad."

The Georgia Tech team made four attempts at the complete mission. On all four of these attempts, the GTAR research UAV system (referred to as the GTMax, a small helicopter) automatically flew a three-kilometer flight to a small village and flew a search pattern, looking at the exterior walls of the buildings within. It automatically located a pre-specified sign on one of the buildings, identifying the correct "building of interest" on all but one of the attempts.

The vehicle then automatically flew a search pattern looking for openings into the building. Having selected a suitable opening, it then dropped a 12-foot-long boom on a 90-foot two-wire slung load, allowed to gently descend by use of a spool/damper system. A camera on the boom was then used to steer the boom to the opening on the building. The boom missed the opening in all three attempts, coming within feet of an open door on one attempt.

The plan was to have a small ground robot drop from the boom inside the opening. This rover would then drive within the building and take a picture of a specific item to complete the mission. Due to missing the openings, the rover was dropped outside the building on these attempts, and so it drove around outside the building transmitting images relayed by the 'mother ship' helicopter back to the launch point.

"To finish the mission completely in the required time would have been great, but we are completely happy with the first place finish," said Johnson. "The mission itself can now retire undefeated, for it will be something different next year."

This is the final year for this contest mission, one that teams have attempted since 2001. Since no team completed the entire mission, $80,000 in prize money was distributed among the teams according to how far their system progressed in the mission in 2008. Having come the closest, the Georgia Tech team, getting the closest, will receive a $27,200 prize for its performance.

The competition was sponsored by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International. The team consists of graduate and undergraduate students from Aerospace and Electrical & Computer Engineering. The team wishes to thank other sponsors of GTAR 2008: Lockheed Martin, Adaptive Flight Inc., and NovAtel.

ATLANTA (August 6, 2008)—Through the Institute for Personal Robots in Education (IPRE)—a partnership between Georgia Tech College of Computing, Bryn Mawr College and Microsoft Research—28 high schools and universities are being provided the opportunity to enhance their introductory Computer Science curriculum using personal robots as a context for teaching foundational computing skills. Winners will share $250,000 and receive paperback book-sized robots called Scribblers, enhanced with special IPRE hardware technology, along with the IPRE software and class text.

Awards were presented to schools whose goals closely matched IPRE’s mission. Additional grant criteria included the technical quality of the proposed program, chances for successful implementation and potential to support students in groups that are not traditionally well represented in computing.

“Many students, especially non-majors, used to think Computer Science was boring, and now they love it. We found that bringing personal robots into the classroom creates a dynamic context for learning the foundations of Computer Science and makes computing a more social and creative activity,” said Dr. Tucker Balch, director of IPRE and professor of interactive computing at the Georgia Tech College of Computing. “During a time of declining student interest in science and technology, our goal is to get as many schools as possible to adopt the curriculum and help reverse that trend.”

The award winners are: Arkansas Tech University, Austin College, Brooklyn College, Canisius College, Fayetteville State University, Florida Virtual School, Georgia State University, Haddonfield Memorial High School, Hammond School, Harvey Mudd College, Indiana University, Ithaca College, Olin University, Park University, Phillips Exeter Academy, Presbyterian College, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rollins College, Rowan University, St. Xavier University, Stetson University, Tecnologico de Monterrey, Texas Tech University, University of Delaware, University of Georgia, University of Minnesota – Morris, University of Minnesota – Twin Cities and University of Tennessee. Fifty-five universities, colleges and high schools in the U.S. and abroad applied for the funding.

"Robots are a compelling way to stimulate students and spark their imaginations to consider the endless possibilities of careers in Computer Science," said Dr. Stewart Tansley, senior program manager at Microsoft Research. "With these awards, our continued partnership with Georgia Tech and Bryn Mawr College, and new technologies such as the Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio, we hope to accelerate the broad development of robotics programs, making computer science more immediate, relevant and significant for students and professors everywhere."

IPRE was created in 2006 to reinvigorate Computer Science through robotics. Today’s awards were made possible through a gift from Microsoft Research.

To date, results from IPRE’s work have proven the draw of personal robots as a way to attract students to degrees and careers in computing. In fall 2007, more than 400 students at Georgia Tech chose to enroll in the robotics-based courses, which showed a higher pass rate than the traditional programming course. In surveys, students in the robotics-based courses reported that they were more excited about computers than before, liked working with the robots and had spent extra time on at least one homework assignment because they “thought it was cool.”

At Bryn Mawr, a liberal arts college for women, the enrollment of upper level Computer Science classes has more than quadrupled since introducing the robot in the first course,” a sign that students are staying in the field beyond the introduction.

"We have found that students are really enjoying and learning using the personal robot in the classroom. It's interactive, engaging and fun. Our numbers of majors and students in Computer Science is at a record high. This is especially encouraging since women have traditionally been underrepresented in the field We hope that these awards can help other institutions make a difference in exploring robots in education," said Prof. Doug Blank, co-director of IPRE and chair of the Computer Science Department at Bryn Mawr College.

Winners of the grant may adopt the curricula, software and text developed by IPRE, which is now used in about half the introductory Computer Science classes at Georgia Tech, or they can adapt their own. Any school can buy the enhanced Scribblers used at Georgia Tech and Bryn Mawr College—an upgraded version of an off-the-shelf product-- which cost about the same as a typical introductory computer science textbook, are made of blue molded plastic equipped with three wheels, two motors, light sensors and a speaker. They contain a circuit board that allows for more complex programming, a camera and wireless connectivity so students can program and control the robots from their computers. Scribblers are packaged with the software and the class text.

About The Institute for Personal Robots in Education
Founded in 2006 and sponsored by Microsoft Research, the Institute for Personal Robots in Education was designed to reinvigorate undergraduate computer science curriculum by delivering robotics technology tailored to education and by applying and evaluating robotics for teaching purposes. At Georgia Tech, IPRE is associated with Robotics and the College of Computing. At Bryn Mawr College, IPRE is associated with the Computer Science Department. For more information about IPRE, please visit http://www.roboteducation.org/.

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 9th 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 Bryn Mawr College
One of the original “Seven Sisters,” Bryn Mawr College is among the most highly selective liberal-arts college in the United States and a leader in developing women scientists. The College ranks among the top 10 of colleges and universities in the country, and first among women’s colleges, in the percentage of women undergraduates who go on to receive Ph.D.’s in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields.

For more information, contact:
Stefany Wilson
Georgia Tech College of Computing
404.894.7253
stefany@cc.gatech.edu

Unfortunately, the locations in question are volatile ice sheets, possibly cracking, shifting and filling with water - not exactly a safe environment for scientists.

To help scientists collect the more detailed data they need without risking scientists' safety, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology, working with Pennsylvania State University, have created specially designed robots called SnoMotes to traverse these potentially dangerous ice environments. The SnoMotes work as a team, autonomously collaborating among themselves to cover all the necessary ground to gather assigned scientific measurements. Data gathered by the Snomotes could give scientists a better understanding of the important dynamics that influence the stability of ice sheets.

"In order to say with certainty how climate change affects the world's ice, scientists need accurate data points to validate their climate models," said Ayanna Howard, lead on the project and an associate professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech. "Our goal was to create rovers that could gather more accurate data to help scientists create better climate models. It's definitely science-driven robotics."

Howard unveiled the SnoMotes at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) in Pasadena on May 23. The SnoMotes will also be part of an exhibit at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry in June. The research was funded by a grant from NASA's Advanced Information Systems Technology (AIST) Program.

Howard, who previously worked with rovers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is working with Magnus Egerstedt, an associate professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Derrick Lampkin, an assistant professor in the Department of Geography at Penn State who studies ice sheets and how changes in climate contribute to changes in these large ice masses. Lampkin currently takes ice sheet measurements with satellite data and ground-based weather stations, but would prefer to use the more accurate data possible with the simultaneous ground measurements that efficient rovers can provide.

"The changing mass of Greenland and Antarctica represents the largest unknown in predictions of global sea-level rise over the coming decades. Given the substantial impact these structures can have on future sea levels, improved monitoring of the ice sheet mass balance is of vital concern," Lampkin said. "We're developing a scale-adaptable, autonomous, mobile climate monitoring network capable of capturing a range of vital meteorological measurements that will be employed to augment the existing network and capture multi-scale processes under-sampled by current, stationary systems.'

The SnoMotes are autonomous robots and are not remote-controlled. They use cameras and sensors to navigate their environment. Though current prototype models don't include a full range of sensors, the robots will eventually be equipped with all the sensors and instruments needed to take measurements specified by the scientist.

While Howard's team works on versatile robots with the mobility and Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) skills to complete missions, Lampkin's team will be creating a sensor package for later versions of Howard's rovers.

Here's how the SnoMotes will work when they're ready for their glacial missions: The scientist will select a location for investigation and decide on a safe 'base camp' from which to release the SnoMotes. The SnoMotes will then be programmed with their assigned coverage area and requested measurements. The researcher will monitor the SnoMotes' progress and even reassign locations and data collection remotely from the camp as necessary.

When Howard's research team first set out to build a rover designed to capture environmental data from the field, it took a few tries to come up with an effectively hearty design. The group's first rover was delicate and ineffective. But after an initial failure, they decided to move on to something designed for consistent abuse - a toy. Instead of building yet another expensive prototype, Howard instead opted to start with a sturdy kit snowmobile, already primed for snow conditions and designed for heavy use by a child.

Howard's group then installed a camera and all necessary computing and sensor equipment inside the 2-foot-long, 1-foot-wide snowmobile. The result was a sturdy but inexpensive rover.

By using existing kits and adding a few extras like sensors, circuits, A.I. and a camera, the team was able to create an expendable rover that wouldn't break a research team's bank if it were lost during an experiment, Howard said. Similar rovers under development at other universities are much more expensive, and the cost of sending several units to canvas an area would likely be cost-prohibitive for most researchers, she added.

The first phase of the project is focused primarily on testing the mobility and communications capabilities of the SnoMote rovers. Later versions of the rovers will include a more developed sensor package and larger rovers.

The team has created three working SnoMote models so far, but as many SnoMotes as necessary can work together on a mission, Howard said.

The SnoMote represents two key innovations in rovers: a new method of location and work allocation communication between robots and maneuvering in ice conditions.

Once placed on site, the robots place themselves at strategic locations to make sure all the assigned ground is covered. Howard and her team are testing two different methods that allow the robots to decide amongst themselves which positions they will take to get all the necessary measurements.

The first is an 'auction' system that lets the robots 'bid' on a desired location, based on their proximity to the location (as they move) and how well their instruments are working or whether they have the necessary instrument (one may have a damaged wind sensor or another may have low battery power).

The second method is more mathematical, fixing the robots to certain positions in a net of sorts that is then stretched to fit the targeted location. Magnus Egerstedt is working with Howard on this work allocation method.

In addition to location assignments, another key innovation of the SnoMote is its ability to find its way in snow conditions. While most rovers can use rocks or other landmarks to guide their movement, snow conditions present an added challenge by restricting topography and color (everything is white) from its guidance systems.

For snow conditions, one of Howard's students discovered that the lines formed by snow banks could serve as markers to help the SnoMote track distance traveled, speed and direction. The SnoMote could also navigate via GPS if snow bank visuals aren't available.

While the SnoMotes are expected to pass their first real field test in Alaska next month, a heartier, more cold-resistant version will be needed for the Antarctic and other well below zero climates, Howard said. These new rovers would include a heater to keep circuitry warm enough to function and sturdy plastic exterior that wouldn't become brittle in extreme cold.

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC), a program of the National Science Foundation, is providing support for developing the roadmap, which will be a unified research agenda for robotics across federal agencies, industry and the universities.

The effort began last year and includes representatives from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University and the universities of Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, California- Berkeley, Southern California, Utah and Illinois, as well as Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Stanford University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Henrik I. Christensen, the KUKA Chair of Robotics at Georgia Tech and a principal investigator for the CCC, is leading the group effort to develop the roadmap with the involvement of industry. This spring, a series of workshops are being organized and this fall a National Robotics Senior Leadership Conference in Washington, D.C., will take place. The conference will review the preliminary results from the workshops and take steps toward an integrated national research agenda. The roadmap will then be reported to the year-old Congressional Robotics Caucus, headed by U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) and U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp (R-Tenn.).

"It is essential that the United States begins to solidly outline a leadership position in robotics," said Carnegie Mellon President Jared L. Cohon. "Robotics already is having a transformative impact on the workplace, from the factory floor to hospital operating rooms. In the decades ahead, this impact can be extended to our homes and our highways to increase our ability to live independently and to save lives."

"The planning process now getting under way is a historic opportunity to build upon broad-based collaboration among industry and academic leaders in the field of robotics," said Georgia Tech President Wayne Clough. "We want to create a plan that will keep this nation competitive in a technology that is rapidly advancing."

The failure of the robotics community to previously speak with one voice has resulted in inconsistent funding and missed opportunities, said Matthew T. Mason, director of Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute. "The technology is finding wider application, but its full potential is not fully appreciated by policy makers," he explained. "We need to develop a common vision so that we can work effectively with the Congressional Robotics Caucus and with funding agencies."

Christensen noted that all of the planning events are designed to focus on the research needs that are vital to the development of a growing robotics industry.

"Several key competencies are not available today," Christensen said. "Through a community effort that includes end-users, industry and academia, the key challenges and opportunities will be identified. The workshops and conferences will allow us to develop a mature plan."

"The key to the workshops will be the collaborative discussions between representatives from both academia and industry," stated John Reid, Director, Product Technology and Innovation at John Deere's Moline Technology Innovation Center. "We need to proceed in a market-driven fashion to envision key future robotics-enabled capabilities and then map these capabilities to the required robotics technologies that we need to be researching and developing today."
Doyle and Wamp of the Congressional Robotics Caucus expressed enthusiasm for the effort.

"We applaud the researchers at some of our nation's top universities for this effort to craft a national agenda for robotics research," they said in a statement released by the caucus. "We especially want to commend the presidents of Carnegie Mellon and Georgia Tech for their initiative in organizing this conference. The Congressional Robotics Caucus looks forward to reviewing the results of this important work so that we can more fully understand the impact that robotics is likely to have on the future security and prosperity of our nation."
More information about the Community Computing Consortium can be found at:
www.cra.org/ccc/

The roadmapping effort is detailed at www.us-robotics.us

About Carnegie Mellon: Carnegie Mellon is a private research university with a distinctive mix of programs in engineering, computer science, robotics, business, public policy, fine arts and the humanities. More than 10,000 undergraduate and graduate students receive an education characterized by its focus on creating and implementing solutions for real problems, interdisciplinary collaboration, and innovation. A small student-to-faculty ratio provides an opportunity for close interaction between students and professors. While technology is pervasive on its 144-acre Pittsburgh campus, Carnegie Mellon is also distinctive among leading research universities for the world-renowned programs in its College of Fine Arts. A global university, Carnegie Mellon has campuses in Silicon Valley, Calif., and Qatar, and programs in Asia, Australia and Europe. For more, see www.cmu.edu.

A team of researchers led by Charlie Kemp, director of the Center for Healthcare Robotics in the Health Systems Institute at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University, have found a way to instruct a robot to find and deliver an item it may have never seen before using a more direct manner of communication - a laser pointer.

El-E (pronounced like the name Ellie), a robot designed to help users with limited mobility with everyday tasks, autonomously moves to an item selected with a green laser pointer, picks up the item and then delivers it to the user, another person or a selected location such as a table. El-E, named for her ability to elevate her arm and for the arm's resemblance to an elephant trunk, can grasp and deliver several types of household items including towels, pill bottles and telephones from floors or tables.

To ensure that El-E will someday be ready to roll out of the lab and into the homes of patients who need assistance, the Georgia Tech and Emory research team includes Prof. Julie Jacko, an expert on human-computer interaction and assistive technologies, and Dr. Jonathan Glass, director of the Emory ALS Center at the Emory University School of Medicine. El-E's creators are gathering input from ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig's disease) patients and doctors to prepare El-E to assist patients with severe mobility challenges.

The research was presented at the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction in Amsterdam on March 14 and an associated workshop on 'Robotic Helpers' on March 12.

The verbal instructions a person gives to help someone find a desired object are very difficult for a robot to use (the cup over near the couch or the brush next to the red toothbrush). These types of commands require the robot to understand everyday human language and the objects it describes at a level well beyond the state of the art in language recognition and object perception.

"We humans naturally point at things but we aren't very accurate, so we use the context of the situation or verbal cues to clarify which object is important," said Kemp, an assistant professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory. "Robots have some ability to retrieve specific, predefined objects, such as a soda can, but retrieving generic everyday objects has been a challenge for robots."

The laser pointer interface and methods developed by Kemp's team overcome this challenge by providing a direct way for people to communicate the location of interest to El-E and complimentary methods that enable El-E to pick up an object found at this location. Through these innovations, El-E can retrieve objects without understanding what the object is or what it's called.

In addition to the laser pointer interface, El-E uses another approach to simplify its task. Indoors, objects are usually found on smooth, flat surfaces with uniform appearance, such as floors, tables, and shelves. Kemp's team designed El-E to take advantage of this common structure.

Regardless of the height, El-E uses the same strategies to localize and pick up the object by elevating its arm and sensors to match the height of the object's location. The robot's ability to reach objects both from the floor and shelves is particularly important for patients with mobility impairments since these locations can be difficult to reach, Kemp said.

El-E uses a custom-built camera that is omni-directional to see most of the room. After the robot detects that a selection has been made with the laser pointer, the robot moves two cameras to look at the laser spot and triangulate its position in three-dimensional space.

Next, the robot estimates where the item is in relation to its body and travels to the location. If the location is above the floor, the robot finds the edge of the surface on which the object is sitting, such as the edge of a table.

Picking up the unknown object is a significant challenge El-E faces in completing its task. It uses a laser range finder that scans across the surface to initially locate the object. Then, after moving its hand above the object, it uses a camera in its hand to visually distinguish the object from the texture of the floor or table. After refining the hand's position and orientation, it descends upon the object while using sensors in its hand to decide when to stop moving down and start closing its gripper. Finally, it closes its gripper upon the object until it has a secure grip.

Once the robot has picked up the item, the laser pointer can be used to guide the robot to another location to deposit the item or direct the robot to take the item to a person. El-E distinguishes between these two situations by looking for a face near the selected location.

If the robot detects a face, it carefully moves toward the person and presents the item to the user so it can be taken. It uses the location of the face and legs to determine where it will present the object.

If no face is detected near the location illuminated by the laser pointer, the robot decides whether the location is on a table or the floor. If it is on a table, El-E places the object on the table. If the location is on the floor El-E moves to the selected location on the floor.

After delivering the item, the robot returns to the user's side, ready to handle the next request.

El-E's power and computation is all on board (no tethers or hidden computers in the next room) and runs Ubuntu Linux on a Mac mini.

El-E's laser pointer interface and methods for autonomous mobile manipulation represent an important step toward robotic assistants in the home.

"If you want a robot to cook a meal or brush your hair, you will probably want the robot to first fetch the items it will need, and for tasks such as cleaning up around the home, it is essential that the robot be able to pick up objects and move them to new locations. We see object fetching as a core capability for future robots in healthcare settings, such as the home," Kemp said.

The Georgia Tech and Emory research team is now working to help El-E expand its capabilities to include switching lights on and off when the user selects a light switch and opening and closing doors when the user selects a door knob.

"We are pleased to offer the first truly interdisciplinary robotics Ph.D. program in the country," said Dr. Henrik Christensen, KUKA Chair of Robotics for the College of Computing at Georgia Tech. "Exposing our students to course work from multiple disciplines early on prepares them to think about robotics from a holistic approach once they enter the workforce. True to our mission in robotics at Georgia Tech, our program will recruit and educate outstanding students who will provide leadership in a world that is increasingly dependent on technology."

According to robotics industry associations in North America and Japan, the global robotics market is expected to significantly expand over the next five years, including gains in both the service and personal robotics fields. With a focus on personal and everyday robotics, as well as the future of automation, faculty involved with RIM@Georgia Tech developed the doctoral degree program to best enable students to understand and drive the future role of robotics in society and industry. Approximately 15 candidates per year are expected to be admitted, gradually building the program to 60 enrolled students.

"Over the next five to ten years, robotics technologies will become more integrated throughout various industries that directly impact human activity and culture, such as healthcare, food processing, logistics and others," said Dr. Christensen. "At Georgia Tech, our doctorate students will be guided through their research by at least two faculty members from distinct participating schools, providing more insight and expertise into a specific industry sector or focus area."

Students in the Robotics Ph.D. program must first be admitted to one of the participating academic units, subsequently designated as the student's home unit. Students will then progress through the course requirements consisting of 36 semester hours of core research and elective courses, the passing a comprehensive qualifying exam with written and oral components, and the successful completion, documentation and defense of a piece of original research culminating in a doctoral thesis.

Over 30 faculty members from the schools of Interactive Computing, Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Biomedical Engineering are affiliated with this new Ph.D. program. Faculty involved in the development of the new doctoral program include Henrik Christensen (College of Computing), Frank Dellaert (College of Computing), Eric Johnson (School of Aerospace Engineering), Ayanna Howard (School of Electrical and Computer Engineering), Steve DeWeerth (Department of Biomedical Engineering), and Harvey Lipkin (School of Mechanical Engineering).

About the Robotics & Intelligent Machines at Georgia Tech (RIM@GT)
The Center for Robotics and Intelligent Machines (RIM@Georgia Tech) leverages the strengths and resources of Georgia Tech in robotics education, research, and leadership by reaching across traditional boundaries to embrace a multidisciplinary approach. The College of Computing, College of Engineering and the Georgia Tech Research Institute play key, complementary roles through Tech's traditional expertise in interactive and intelligent computing, control, and mechanical engineering. Emphasizing personal and everyday robotics as well as the future of automation, faculty involved with RIM@Georgia Tech help students understand and define the future role of robotics in society. www.robotics.gatech.edu

About the College of Engineering at Georgia Tech
The College of Engineering at Georgia Tech is the largest engineering program in the U.S. and ranked 4th among the country's best graduate programs by U.S. News and World Report. A respected leader in interdisciplinary research and education, the College of Engineering grants the highest number of engineering degrees in the nation across nine fields of study. For more information about the programs in the College of Engineering, please visit www.coe.gatech.edu.

About the College of Computing at Georgia Tech
The College of Computing at Georgia Tech is a national leader in the creation of real-world computing breakthroughs that drive social and scientific progress. With its graduate program ranked 11th 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 College of Computing at Georgia Tech, its academic divisions and research centers, please visit www.cc.gatech.edu.

This scene may sound normal, but this is no ordinary Porsche Cayenne-it thinks for itself and requires no driver. This autonomous vehicle was designed by the Georgia Institute of Technology in collaboration with Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) Urban Challenge.

Georgia Tech's vehicle, named Sting 1, did not qualify for the final challenge during the National Qualifying Event (NQE) held from October 26-31 at the urban military training facility located on the former George Air Force Base in Victorville, California. Sting 1 finished as one of 35 teams that made it to the NQE.

"As a first-time entrant, the team has done an outstanding job making it to the semifinal round of the world's most challenging robotics competition," said Tucker Balch, team lead and associate professor in Georgia Tech's School of Interactive Computing in the College of Computing.

With six cameras, eight computers, Doppler radar and infrared laser radar on board, Sting 1 was designed to operate without any human intervention and obey California traffic laws while performing maneuvers such as merging into moving traffic, navigating traffic circles and avoiding moving obstacles.

The road to California began in the summer of 2006, when Georgia Tech and 88 other teams signed up to participate in this year's Urban Challenge.

"Georgia Tech didn't compete in the two previous Grand Challenges, but SAIC did," added Balch. "Their experience helped us develop software that could have enabled a robot to place well in the previous challenges and then we took it further with additional capabilities necessary for the Urban Challenge."

The Georgia Tech team, consisting of researchers in Georgia Tech's College of Computing and College of Engineering and the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), chose the Porsche Cayenne as their vehicle and in August 2006 began to install computers that would drive the car automatically.

Eight computers networked together through two high speed networks were programmed to know the rules of the road. This included knowing how to stay in a lane, how to overtake another car, how to make turns in city traffic, how to maneuver the waiting patterns at an intersection, how to merge into traffic and how to behave in a parking lot.

According to the racing team, the car really had to think for itself.

"When moving forward, the car usually ignored obstacles that were in its planned path," said Tom Collins, electronics lead and GTRI principal research engineer. "But when obstacles were detected, the car would plan and execute a different route."

SAIC engineers developed methods for visual lane detection and tracking. On unpaved dirt roads, the colors of the road and non-road areas were modeled to identify a path, adapting over time as lighting or surface colors changed. On marked paved roads, a camera kept the car in its lane by detecting the typical white and yellow lines that mark a driving lane. If the vision system was unable to find a lane, the car used lasers to follow the curb. Ten laser range finders sent out infrared laser beams that constantly scanned to provide Sting 1 with an accurate measurement of the distance to any objects, such as curbs and other cars.

At intersections, the team used laser and radar sensors to see other waiting or approaching vehicles. Six off-the-shelf Doppler radar systems used to detect moving objects allowed the car to see as far as two football fields away in all directions. Cameras helped guide the car through the intersections and onto new roadways.

"We had to guarantee that there was at least a 10 second window that would allow us to pull out onto a road, accelerate and get up to a reasonable speed without cutting someone off," noted Henrik Christensen, principal investigator for the team and director of Georgia Tech's Robotics and Intelligent Machines Center.

The researchers tested their car for months in the parking lot behind the Centergy One building in Technology Square on the Georgia Tech campus. They also utilized the Georgia Public Safety Training Center in Forsyth, Ga. on weekends to test the ability of the car to maneuver in an urban environment.

The Urban Challenge is the third in a series of DARPA-sponsored competitions to foster the development of robotic ground vehicle technology without a human operator, designed for use on the battlefield. Safe operation in traffic is essential to U.S. military plans to use autonomous ground vehicles to conduct important missions and keep American personnel out of harm's way.

Georgia Tech researchers are already thinking about life after the Urban Challenge.

"We've already talked about expanding this work to other areas," said Vince Camp, hardware lead and GTRI senior research engineer. "We're looking forward to using the technologies in applications such as autonomous lane striping for the Department of Transportation."

Challenges like this also aim to improve safety in vehicles consumers purchase. Some high-end vehicles sold today have backup sensors that alert the driver to obstacles and can parallel park without driver assistance. There are also systems that will alert a driver that is approaching a car in the same lane too quickly or if a driver is leaving the appropriate lane.

"These types of systems will help us become better drivers, but it's probably going to be a decade or so before we see fully autonomous vehicles," said Christensen. "At some point, though, drivers will realize that their cars are probably much more aware of what's going on around the car and are better equipped to deal with a situation than human drivers."

DARPA awarded a first-place prize of $2 million to Carnegie Mellon's Tartan Racing Team. Second and third places went to teams from Stanford Univesity and Virginia Tech.

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Media Relations Contacts: Stefany Wilson, College of Computing (404-894-7253); E-mail: (stefany@cc.gatech.edu) or Abby Vogel, Research News & Publications Office (404-385-3364); E-mail: (avogel@gatech.edu) or Kirk Englehardt, Georgia Tech Research Institute (404-407-7280); E-mail: (kirk.englehardt@gtri.gatech.edu).

Writer: Abby Vogel

ATLANTA (October 22, 2007) – The College of Computing at Georgia Tech today announced that the Sting Racing team, a collaboration between Georgia Tech and Science Applications International Corporation [NYSE: SAI], has left for Victorville, Calif. to compete in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Urban Challenge semifinals and finals events with their fully autonomous vehicle entry, Sting 1. The semifinal National Qualifying Event (NQE) is scheduled to begin October 26, with the final event on November 3 on the site of the former George Air Force Base. Georgia Tech-SAIC Sting Racing, composed of researchers from Georgia Tech’s Colleges of Computing, Engineering, the Georgia Tech Research Institute, and SAIC, is one of only 35 semifinalist teams from across the country.

“We invite the public to join us in applauding the members of the Sting Racing team and their inspiring enthusiasm and commitment,” said Dr. Henrik Christensen, KUKA chair of Robotics for the College of Computing at Georgia Tech and principal investigator for Sting Racing. “With support from Georgia Tech, SAIC, and the local community, we are ready to compete among the world’s best robotics programs and drive our way into the Urban Challenge finals.”

For more than a year the members of the Sting Racing team have been working to prepare and program Sting 1, a Porsche Cayenne, to compete autonomously in this high-profile, national challenge. Combining the leadership and broad technological expertise in robotics at Georgia Tech and complemented by SAIC’s capabilities in robot vision and sensor fusion, the team has risen to the challenge of programming the vehicle to operate without a driver, stay on course, and deal with obstacles in its way, such as fellow cars, while maintaining realistic speeds.

 “Sting 1 illustrates the seamless collaboration the Georgia Tech-SAIC team members have demonstrated in preparing for the Urban Challenge this past year,” said Karl Kluge, SAIC senior scientist – perception researcher.  “With Georgia Tech as one of the nation’s foremost robotics research institutions and SAIC as a seasoned, two-time DARPA Grand Challenge contender, the Sting Racing entry is a strong contender in this Challenge.”

The Urban Challenge is the third in a series of DARPA-sponsored competitions to foster the development of robotic ground vehicle technology without a human operator, designed for use on the battlefield. The Urban Challenge will feature autonomous ground vehicles executing simulated military supply missions safely and effectively in a mock urban area. DARPA will award $2 million, $1 million and $500,000 awards to the top three finishers that complete the course within the six-hour time limit.

For more information, visit www.sting-racing.org.

About SAIC
SAIC is a leading provider of scientific, engineering, systems integration and technical services and solutions to all branches of the U.S. military, agencies of the Department of Defense, the intelligence community, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and other U.S. Government civil agencies, as well as to customers in selected commercial markets.  With more than 44,000 employees in over 150 cities worldwide, SAIC engineers and scientists solve complex technical challenges requiring innovative solutions for customers’ mission-critical functions.  SAIC had annual revenues of $8.3 billion for its fiscal year ended January 31, 2007. 

About the College of Computing at Georgia Tech
The College of Computing at Georgia Tech is a national leader in the creation of real-world computing breakthroughs that drive social and scientific progress. With its graduate program ranked 11th 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 College of Computing at Georgia Tech, its academic divisions and research centers, please visit www.cc.gatech.edu.

For more information, contact:

Stefany Wilson

College of Computing at Georgia Tech

404.894.7253

stefany@cc.gatech.edu

www.cc.gatech.edu

With an eye towards building robots that can balance like humans, researchers at Georgia Tech and Emory University have created a computer simulation that sheds new light on how the nervous system reinvents its communication with muscles after sensory loss. The findings could someday be used to better diagnose and rehabilitate patients with balance problems (through normal aging or diseases such as Multiple Sclerosis or Parkinson's) by retraining their muscles and improving overall balance. The research will be published in the October issue of Nature Neuroscience.

"The ultimate goal of rehabilitation is for patients to find the best way to adapt to their particular deficit. This system may help predict what the optimum combination of muscle and nerve activity looks like for each patient, helping patients and doctors set realistic goals and speeding recovery," said Lena Ting, lead researcher on the project and an assistant professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University.

In a body without balance impairment, the nervous system collects sensory information from all over the body (skin, ears, feet, arms, eyes, etc.) and transmits this information to the muscles that control balance. When that information changes through the introduction of something like a strong wind, a raised crack in the pavement or an accidental bump from a nearby stranger, the nervous system sends the new information to the muscles and they adjust accordingly to maintain the body's balance.

Impairments and injuries to the nervous system or the senses that report to the nervous system (experienced with a loss of vision or touch and problems in the inner ear) lead to balance problems. Experts traditionally have had little understanding of how the nervous system's communication with the muscles associated with balance changes when one or several pieces of necessary sensory information are missing.

Georgia Tech and Emory researchers set out to create an effective way to interpret how commands from the nervous system to muscles (measured through electrical signals in the muscles) are changed by sensory impairment - similar to the numbing of feet experienced by diabetes patients - and how these changes affect balance control. The team started with data sets from animals. They were able to determine that, after a period of rehabilitation, subjects with some sensory damage were able to regain their balance despite the loss of some sensory information. So how do the nervous system and muscles fill in the information gaps?

The Georgia Tech and Emory team hypothesized that the nervous system relies on the relationship between the body's center of gravity and its environment to control balance. They reasoned that the best predictor of how muscles would be activated when the subject experienced a balance threat was not the motion of the individual body parts, but the horizontal motion of the body's center of gravity.

To test their theory, the researchers created a computer simulation that could accurately simulate standing balance and muscle reactions to balance disturbances by focusing on the relation of the subject's center of gravity to the ground. Rather than predicting neural control patterns for the multitude of sensory information processed by the body to maintain balance, the team instead tracked a small set of signals related to the body's control of its center of gravity.

The Georgia Tech and Emory team determined that subjects who had impaired sensory information were slowly using new sensory pathways to track the motion of the body's center of gravity, compensating for the loss of information from the damaged sensory pathways. In effect, the subjects' muscles were using different neural information to perform the same balance tasks, resulting in muscle activity patterns that looked 'abnormal,' but that were actually similar to the predicted optimum.

The research team is now testing its center of gravity simulation with human subjects and a small robot with simulated muscles. They predict that the simulation could recognize impairment and pinpoint the optimum recovery points for each sensory-impaired subject - all based on the body's reliance on center of gravity information. When applied to a robot, these neural communication patterns allowed the robot to successfully move fluidly like an animal, in contrast to what its gears and motors might suggest. The robot demonstrates all of the different strategies that could be used by normal and sensory-loss patients.

"This finding will change the way we approach rehabilitation," Ting said. "We can't expect patients to mimic normal balance performance when they're using a different set of sensory information. Instead, our work can help identify the best performance possible given a patient's level and type of sensory impairment."

As with most public universities, resources are limited and tackling such a project in-house creates additional challenges. However, Georgia Tech's communications and marketing team approached the project like most Tech students and faculty - by applying a creative approach with the latest technology.

From the start, the team was determined to avoid typical images found in university promotional spots often featuring idyllic campus scenes, students studying and labs brimming with test tubes. Instead, the team selected imagery that exemplifies one of the Institute's many flagship technologies - robotics. Georgia Tech's Center for Robotics and Intelligent Machines, for example, is helping to position the university as a global leader within these promising, revolutionary new technologies.

The next challenge was figuring out how to use robotics to capture the spirit and legacy of Georgia Tech. With one of the country's most recognized fight songs, the communications team knew that including, 'The Ramblin' Wreck from Georgia Tech,' would do just that. The idea was to introduce the fight song by showing a robotic arm and hand tapping out ringtones on a phone which eventually transitioned to a traditional recording of the fight song sung by the Georgia Tech Glee Club.

"We designed this spot to capture the viewers by opening with dramatic music and imagery, then hold them with the 'Ramblin' Wreck' song for the message," said James Fetig, associate vice president for Georgia Tech's Institute Communications and Public Affairs.
"While there are several robotic arms in research labs on campus, none have the dexterity to play the song on the phone like we were envisioning," Fetig explained. "To improvise, one of our Web developers created a computer-generated version of a robotic arm. Though the final version of the spot may make the robotic arm seem simplistic, development took more than 90 hours to render."
The spot does not feature people and immediately captures attention with compelling music and close-up imagery of the robotic arm - so close that the viewer might not initially know what the object is. With such a captivating opening, viewers are easily drawn into a futuristic environment. There are no voiceovers, just concise text at the end of the spot displaying the message, 'Legendary Heritage, Limitless Future,' along with the Georgia Institute of Technology logo.

To add a hint of humor, the spot cleverly ends with the robotic arm gesturing the 'No. 1' with its index finger and 'dancing' to the tune of the fight song. "The humorous ending helps illustrate how much fun students can have at Tech," said Fetig.

The spot, which debuted during the Georgia Tech-Notre Dame game, will be used to promote Georgia Tech during the football and basketball seasons.

"As a first year competitor in the Urban Challenge, qualifying for the semi-final round is a major accomplishment and testament to the passion and dedication of our team," said Dr. Henrik Christensen, KUKA Chair of Robotics for the College of Computing at Georgia Tech and Principal Investigator for Sting Racing. "Our robotics program at Georgia Tech is relatively new, but the progress we have shown over a short period of time has positioned us among the best in the nation."

During the visit, DARPA personnel assessed the ability of the autonomous vehicle to perform tasks and operate safely. Sting was evaluated on its ability to navigate a test course that included a four-way intersection, and moving traffic. This evaluation cover a subset of the challenges that the robotic vehicles will face on the final Urban Challenge course, including merging into moving traffic, navigating traffic circles, negotiating busy intersections and avoiding obstacles.

Sting Racing, a joint collaboration between Georgia Tech's College of Computing, College of Engineering, the Georgia Tech Research Institute and SAIC, selected a Porsche Cayenne, designated Sting 1, as the base vehicle for its entry in the Urban Design Challenge. For nearly a year the members of the Sting Racing team have been working to program the robot to drive autonomously by staying on course and recognizing obstacles in its way, such as other cars.
"We have put in a lot of long hours over the past year preparing Sting 1 for this site visit - the first major trial in the Urban Grand Challenge," noted Matt Powers, a student at Georgia Tech and member of the Sting Racing team. "So passing all four tests during the site visit was extremely rewarding. We look forward now to making it all the way to the finals."

DARPA uses the site visit evaluation to select the competition's semi-finalists - the top 36 teams that will participate in the National Qualification Event (NQE), an exercise to demonstrate the safety of the vehicles on October 21-31. Earlier this afternoon, DARPA announced the other semi-finalists as well as the location of the NQE and Urban Challenge - the former George Air Force Base in Victorville, California.

The Urban Challenge is the third in a series of DARPA-sponsored competitions to foster the development of robotic ground vehicle technology without a human operator, designed for use on the battlefield. The Urban Challenge, set for November 3, 2007, will feature autonomous ground vehicles executing simulated military supply missions safely and effectively in a mock urban area. Safe operation in traffic is essential to U.S. military plans to use autonomous ground vehicles to conduct important missions and keep American personnel out of harm's way. DARPA will award $2 million, $1 million and $500,000 awards to the top three finishers that complete the course within the six-hour time limit.

The Sting 1 Porsche Cayenne is available for media demonstrations. For more information, visit www.sting-racing.org.

"As an emerging global leader in robotics research and innovation, Georgia Tech is pleased to host RoboCup 2007," said Tucker Balch, Georgia Tech College of Computing associate professor and RoboCup 2007 Atlanta general chair. "We welcome the international robotics community to our campus and look forward to the exciting competition."

RoboCup 2007 Atlanta invites interested media to register online to attend and receive updates at www.robocup-us.org/press/ .

Other major sponsors include CITIZEN, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft and the National Science Foundation.

This summer is Robot Summer at Georgia Tech. In addition to RoboCup 2007 Atlanta, Georgia Tech will also host several other robotics-related events, including the Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS) conference and an International Aerial Robotics Competition.

RoboCup 2007 Atlanta Schedule:
July 3: RoboCup Opening Ceremony
July 3-6: RoboCup Qualifying Competitions
July 7-8: RoboCup Finals
July 9-10: RoboCup Symposium

About RoboCup:
RoboCup is an international research and education initiative. Its goal is to foster artificial intelligence and robotics research by providing a standard problem where a wide range of technologies can be examined and integrated. The concept of soccer-playing robots was first introduced in 1993. In July 1997, the first official conference and games were held in Nagoya, Japan, followed by Paris, Stockholm, Melbourne, Seattle, Fukuoka/Busan, Padua, Lisbon, Osaka and Bremen. This year, the 11th anniversary of RoboCup, the competition and symposium are being held in Atlanta, Georgia. For more details about RoboCup 2007 including participants and updated schedule, visit http://www.robocup-us.org/.

ATLANTA (June 13, 2006) – The College of Computing and College of Engineering at Georgia Tech today announced the establishment of the Robotics and Intelligent Machines center (RIM@Georgia Tech), a new interdisciplinary research center that will draw on the strengths and knowledge of robotics experts from both colleges. According to robotics industry associations in North America and Japan, the global robotics market is expected to significantly expand over the next five years, including gains in both the service and personal robotics fields. Leveraging the strengths of the College of Computing and the College of Engineering, and with support from the Georgia Tech Research Institute and the Office of Research, RIM@Georgia Tech will make a significant and immediate impact on growth and innovation within this burgeoning industry.

“RIM@Georgia Tech will serve as the flagship for Georgia Tech’s robotics efforts, coordinating the university’s capabilities in this field under one roof and facilitating the transfer of research results to the industry,” said Dr. Henrik Christensen, KUKA Chair of Robotics and distinguished professor in the College of Computing, who will direct the new research center. “This new center allows Georgia Tech to maximize its established relationships with industry leaders and its strengths in interactive and intelligent computing, control, and mechanical engineering.”

With a focus on personal and everyday robotics, as well as the future of automation, faculty involved with RIM@Georgia Tech will develop both undergraduate and doctoral degree programs tailored to best enable students to understand and drive the future role of robotics in society and industry.

“The College of Computing identified robotics as one of our critical areas for educational growth and further research development,” says Richard A. DeMillo, John P. Imlay, Jr. Dean of the College of Computing. “With Henrik’s leadership and the establishment of RIM@Georgia Tech, we’re well on our way to achieving eminence as a true leader in this growing field.”

Currently, Georgia Tech boasts 31 faculty members involved in robotics research, 15 robotics-related laboratories and approximately 44 courses in robotics. The center is expected to grow significantly over the next few years.

“Georgia Tech has a strong capacity and a rich history in the field of robotics, and we’ve just scratched the surface in this high-growth market,” said Dr. Charles L. Liotta, vice provost for research and dean of graduate studies at Georgia Tech. “Through shared resources and a growing synergy among Georgia Tech faculty in this field, the possibilities for breakthroughs in robotics are limitless.”

Under the direction of Dr. Christensen, a global leader in robotics research and innovation, RIM@Georgia Tech will be positioned as a national leader in the research and development of tomorrow’s cutting-edge robotics breakthroughs. As one of the center’s first projects, researchers from RIM@Georgia Tech will enter the 2007 DARPA Grand Challenge, a United States government-sponsored competition that will feature autonomous ground vehicles executing simulated military supply missions safely and effectively in a mock urban area.The 2007 Grand Challenge is part of the annual robotics Grand Challenge series that began in 2004 and is sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the U.S. Department of Defense.

“Academic and research excellence is the focus of this new center; but developing technologies that can be adopted by industry and applied to the real-world will be a top priority,” said Dr. Don Giddens, dean of the College of Engineering at Georgia Tech. “RIM@Georgia Tech will follow the Institute’s model of bringing technology from the lab to the market.”

About the College of Computing at Georgia Tech
The College of Computing at Georgia Tech is a national leader in the creation of real-world computing breakthroughs that drive social and scientific progress. With its graduate program ranked 11th 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 College of Computing at Georgia Tech, its academic divisions and research centers, please visit www.cc.gatech.edu.

About the College of Engineering at Georgia Tech
The College of Engineering at Georgia Tech is the largest engineering program in the U.S. and ranked 4th among the country’s best graduate programs by U.S. News and World Report. A respected leader in interdisciplinary research and education, the College of Engineering grants the highest number of engineering degrees in the nation across nine fields of study. For more information about the programs in the College of Engineering, please visit www.coe.gatech.edu.

For more information, contact:

Stefany Wilson
College of Computing at Georgia Tech
404.894.7253
stefany@cc.gatech.edu
www.cc.gatech.edu

ATLANTA (April 4, 2006) – The College of Computing at Georgia Tech, a national leader in the creation of real-world computing breakthroughs that drive social and scientific progress, today announced that it has appointed international robotics expert Dr. Henrik Christensen to the newly endowed KUKA Chair of Robotics. With Dr. Christensen’s appointment as the KUKA Chair of Robotics, a position endowed by a $1.5 million grant from KUKA Robotics, the North American subsidiary of KUKA Roboter GmbH and a global leader in robot manufacturing, the College of Computing further solidifies its position as a national academic leader in robotics.

“The addition of a globally respected robotics expert such as Henrik Christensen to our already distinguished faculty enables the College of Computing to make a significant and immediate impact on growth in the robotics arena,” said Richard A. DeMillo, the John P. Imlay Jr. Dean of the College of Computing at Georgia Tech. “With the generous support from our friends at KUKA Robotics, the faculty and students of the College of Computing will lead our nation’s charge to invent tomorrow’s cutting-edge robotics breakthroughs.”

"KUKA is proud to support the College of Computing at Georgia Tech in their continued pursuit of advanced robotic solutions," noted Leroy Rodgers II, president of KUKA Robotics Corporation. "KUKA's products are an excellent platform for innovation, and we expect the College of Computing’s faculty and students will lead the industry for years to come."

Dr. Christensen brings to the College of Computing an impeccable pedigree in robotics research and innovation. As the founding chairman of the European Robotics Research Network, Dr. Christensen will work with existing faculty to further enrich the robotics curriculum within the Interactive and Intelligent Computing (IIC) division at the College of Computing. With a focus on personal and everyday robotics, as well as the future of automation, the College of Computing robotics program will offer both undergraduate and doctoral programs tailored to best enable students to understand and drive the future role of robotics in society and industry.

"I am very excited about joining the College of Computing at Georgia Tech as its KUKA Chair of Robotics,” said Dr. Christensen. “My mission will be to strengthen the College of Computing’s already impressive robotics program and make it the leading robotics effort in the world in terms of human-centered robotics and intelligent machines.”

About the College of Computing at Georgia Tech
The College of Computing at Georgia Tech is a national leader in the creation of real-world computing breakthroughs that drive social and scientific progress. With its graduate program ranked 11th nationally by U.S. News and World Report, the College’s unconventional approach to education is pioneering the new era 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 College of Computing at Georgia Tech, its academic divisions and research centers, please visit www.cc.gatech.edu.

About KUKA Robotics
KUKA Robotics Corporation, with its parent company KUKA Roboter GmbH, Augsburg, Germany, is one of the world's leading manufacturers of industrial robots, with an annual production volume approaching 10,000 units, and an installed base of over 60,000 units.  The company’s 5 and 6 axis robots range from 3kg to 570kg payloads, and 635mm to 3700mm reach, all controlled from a common PC based controller platform. KUKA robots are utilized in a diverse range of industries including the appliance, automotive, aerospace, consumer goods, logistics, food, pharmaceutical, medical, foundry and plastics industries. KUKA robots are found in a multitude of applications including: material handling, machine loading, assembly, packaging, palletizing, welding, bending, joining, and surface finishing. For more information contact KUKA Robotics at 866-873-5852 or visit their website at www.kukarobotics.com.

Contact:
For College of Computing at Georgia Tech
Stefany Wilson
404.894.7253
stefany@cc.gatech.edu
www.cc.gatech.edu

For KUKA Robotics Corporation
Kevin Kozuszek                                 
Marketing Manager              
248.819.0230 (voice)                       
866.329.5852 (fax)                           
kevinkozuszek@kukarobotics.com