Broad Area Colloquium For AI-Geometry-Graphics-Robotics-Vision
(CS 528)
Motion Planning for Underactuated Mechanical Systems
Kevin Lynch
Mechanical Engineering Department
Northwestern University
Monday, Nov. 24, 2003, 4:15PM
TCSeq 200
http://graphics.stanford.edu/ba-colloquium/
Abstract
We are studying "underactuated" robot systems --- robot systems with fewer
actuators than degrees-of-freedom to be controlled. Examples include
ground, space, and underwater vehicles, robot arms with flexibility or
passive joints, and many robot manipulation tasks.
This talk will focus on our recent work on trajectory planning for a
class of underactuated mechanical systems called "kinematically
controllable" systems. I will describe this new notion of
controllability for second-order mechanical control systems,
demonstrate how this property simplifies the motion planning problem,
and present implementations of the theory on an underactuated robot
arm and an underactuated ground vehicle.
About the Speaker
Kevin Lynch received a BSE in electrical engineering from Princeton University
in 1989 and a Ph.D. in robotics from Carnegie Mellon in 1996. He then spent a
year and a half as a postdoctoral fellow at the Mechanical Engineering
Laboratory in Tsukuba, Japan, where he also taught at the University
of Tsukuba. Since 1997 he has been with the Mechanical Engineering
Department at Northwestern University. He is the founder of the
Midwest Mechanical Motion Meeting (M4) and the recipient of the 2001
IEEE Early Academic Career Award in Robotics and Automation.
Contact: bac-coordinators@cs.stanford.edu
Back to the Colloquium Page