Colloquium Details
Shared Autonomy Interfaces for Mobile Manipulation Robots
| Author: | Bill Smart Washington University, St. Louis |
|---|---|
| Date: | April 29, 2011 |
| Time: | 15:00 |
| Location: | 220 Deschutes |
| Host: | Virginia Lo |
Abstract
One of the goals of robotics is to create completely autonomous systems, capable of performing useful work in the real world. However, achieving fully-autonomous behavior in realistic environments is hard, and relies of solving key problems in perception, high- and low-level planning, and a number of other areas. An alternative approach is to use human supervisory input, allowing the robot to ask for help when it is unsure of what to do. This shared autonomy control will allow us to deploy practically-useful systems sooner, without having to completely solve all of the hard underlying problems first.
In this talk, I will discuss how human supervisory input can be integrated into mostly-autonomous robot systems, and will give examples of a number of interfaces currently under development at Washington University and Willow Garage.
Biography
Bill Smart is an Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, where he co-directs the Media and Machines Laboratory. His research interests lie in the areas of mobile robotics, machine learning, human-robot interaction, and brain-computer interfaces. He is currently on sabbatical at Willow Garage, an unusual robotics company in the San Francisco Bay area.