CSAIL Event Calendar: Previous Series

Modular Robots and their Control

Speaker: Kasper Stoy, PhD , Maersk McKinney Moller Institute, University of Southern Denmark (USD)
Date: February 25 2010
Time: 11:00AM to 12:00PM
Location: Star Conference Rm. - 32-D463
Host: Daniela Rus, MIT-CSAIL

Abstract:
The main goal of our work is to reduce the complexity of developing
robots and at the same time extend the range of potential applications
for them. Our approach is based on the concept of modularity: in
software as well as hardware, modularity can be used to encapsulate
complexity and as a result make a modular system more tractable to use
as well as making it easier to extend. A fundamental question is how the
concept of modularity best is applied to the mechanics and electronics
of robots. In this talk I will give an overview of our work to this end
and and also present our work on programming and control of modular robots.

Biography:
Kasper Stoy (KS) is an associate professor at the Maersk McKinney Moller
Institute, University of Southern Denmark (USD), and a co-director of
USD’s Modular Robotics Lab. KS received his MSc in computer science and
physics from the University of Aarhus, Denmark and his PhD in computer
systems engineering from USD in 2003. He spent a year of his PhD studies
at USC’s Information Sciences Institute, CA, USA. KS is the author of
the book "Self-Reconfigurable Robots: An Introduction" (MIT Press,
2010), has published more than forty papers of which three first-author
papers received awards. He organizes international workshops on modular
robots, serves as reviewer for IEEE conferences and journals,
International Journal of Advanced Robotics, Journal of Autonomous
Robots, and Journal of Simulation of Adaptive behaviour and several
more. KS also developed the first version of the Player component of the
multi-robot simulation tool Player/Stage, which is the most widely used
simulation in this field world-wide, and co-founded the company
Universal Robots. He currently manages the ``Morphing Production Lines''
research project funded by the Danish Research Council for Technology
and Production and is USD's PI on the EU project Locomorph.

This is part of the Robotics Seminar Series 2010.

See other events that are part of Robotics Seminar Series 2009/2010

See other events happening in February 2010