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Topic Name: Spot the robot: CS prof trains robotic dogs

Category: Robotics

Research persons: Chad Jenkins

Location: Box 1910 , Brown University , Providence, RI 02912, United States

Details

Using Nintendo Wii remotes and a ball, members of the Brown Robotics Group are "teaching" robotic dogs to play soccer. The robots learn behavioral patterns that they will eventually be able to perform on their own, and data from the study could lead to the design of more intuitive and autonomous robots.

Since 2005, Assistant Professor of Computer Science Chad Jenkins has been working on the project, which tests the premise that robots can learn human behavior through direct interaction with humans better than by being explicitly programmed.

"The thing that really makes robotics useful, more than just having a computer that can move around, is the ability to manipulate the world," Jenkins said. He said he believes robots will eventually be able to do more complicated tasks - such as repair a car - but that robots first have to learn what people want them to do.

"It's really about how do we do something with this robot. I don't think we have a good hold on what people actually want to do with robots," Jenkins said.

The dogs are directed by Wii remotes - a new development this year that has allowed for more interaction between the humans and robots.

"We're getting closer and closer to getting the system online. It should be done in the next year or so," Jenkins said, adding that he would like to expose the program to the wider public so that it can "experience the robots firsthand."

"Maybe it (will) inspire new people to get into the field," he said.

About Researcher:

Chad JenkinsAssistant Professor of Computer Science
Contact Information
Box 1910
Brown University
Providence, RI 02912
Email: cjenkins at cs.brown.edu

Personal home page: http://www.cs.brown.edu/~cjenkins/

Research Areas

Research Topics or Projects

Courses Taught

Research Interests

Chad Jenkins is primarily interested in the development of methods for autonomous control and perception through leveraging human performance from the real world. His work furthers the idea that robot control and computational perception are better learned from human demonstration rather than explicit computer programming.

Prof. Jenkins’ work strives to address three basic questions. First, how can we capture data from the world that is representative of human performance? Second, how can machine learning and data analysis be used to extract dynamical structure from performance data? Lastly, how can we utilize learned dynamics for building autonomous robot controllers and perception mechanisms?

His previous efforts were mostly geared towards humanoid robotics with respect to learning primitive behaviors for robot control through imitation. More generally, he addresses perception, control, and learning issues at the intersection of robotics, computer vision, computer animation, machine learning and interactive systems.

About Robotics:

Robotics is the science and technology of robots, their design, manufacture, and application. Robotics requires a working knowledge of electronics, mechanics, and software, and is usually accompanied by a large working knowledge of many subjects. A person working in the field is a roboticist.

The word robotics was first used in print by Isaac Asimov, in his science fiction short story "Liar!", published in May 1941 in Astounding Science Fiction.[3] Before the coining of the term, however, there was interest in ideas similar to robotics (namely automata and androids) dating as far back as 400 BC, with the work of Archytas of Tarentum and his mechanical Pigeon.[4] Robotics are used in industrial, military, exploration, home making, and academic and research applications.

Although the appearance and capabilities of robots vary vastly, all robots share the features of a mechanical, movable structure under some form of autonomous control. The structure of a robot is usually mostly mechanical and can be called a kinematic chain (its functionality being akin to the skeleton of the human body). The chain is formed of links (its bones), actuators (its muscles) and joints which can allow one or more degrees of freedom. Most contemporary robots use open serial chains in which each link connects the one before to the one after it. These robots are called serial robots and often resemble the human arm. Some robots, such as the Stewart platform, use closed parallel kinematic chains. Other structures, such as those that mimic the mechanical structure of humans, various animals and insects, are comparatively rare. However, the development and use of such structures in robots is an active area of research (e.g. biomechanics). Robots used as manipulators have an end effector mounted on the last link. This end effector can be anything from a welding device to a mechanical hand used to manipulate the environment.