Copyright

Back to Table of Contents


[6] What University Programs are there?

[6.1] Graduate Programs in Robotics
[6.2] Student Who's Who
Any good four-year school undoubtedly offers robotics courses within engineering programs. Departments of mechanical and electrical engineering and computer science are all good candidates for coursework in Robotics. However, a number of schools have established track records with a focus on robotics and those are listed here.


[6.1] Graduate Programs in Robotics

This list is grouped by countries including the United States, Australia, Canada, Japan, United Kingdom, Sweden and Switzerland. Many European and Asian universities are not represented and should be. Please drop me a line if you have information on those that should be included.

Australia

  • University of Western Australia
  • Canada

  • McGill University
  • University of Alberta
  • Finland

  • Helsinki University of Technology
  • France

  • University of Paris
  • Japan

  • Waseda University
  • Sweden

  • Lulea University of Technology
  • Switzerland

  • Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
  • United Kingdom

  • Bristol University
  • Edinburgh University (UK)
  • Hull University, UK
  • Reading University, UK
  • Salford University
  • University of Birmingham
  • University of Essex (UK)
  • University of Manchester
  • University of Oxford
  • University of Surrey
  • University of the West of England at Bristol, U.K.
  • United States

  • Boston University
  • Brandeis University
  • California Institute of Technology (Caltech)
  • Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)
  • Colorado School of Mines
  • Clemson University
  • Cornell
  • Georgia Institute of Technology
  • Harvard
  • Iowa State University
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
  • New York University (NYU)
  • North Carolina State University
  • Northeastern University
  • Purdue
  • Rennsalear Polytechnic Institute (RPI)
  • Stanford University
  • University of California at Berkeley
  • University of Kansas
  • University of Kentucky
  • University of Massachusetts
  • University of Michigan
  • University of Pennsylvania.
  • University of Rochester
  • University of Southern California (USC)
  • University of Maryland
  • The University of Texas at Arlington
  • University of Wisconsin-Madison
  • University of Utah
  • Yale University
  • Wilkes University

  • Australia

    University of Western Australia

    Some neat telerobotic work can be found at http://telerobot.mech.uwa.edu.au

    Canada

    McGill University

    Center for Intelligent Machines
    McGill University
    McConnell Engineering Building, Room 420
    3480 University Street
    Montreal, Que, Canada H3A 2A7

    School of Computer Science
    McGill University
    McConnell Engineering Building, Room 420
    3480 University Street
    Montreal, Que, Canada H3A 2A7
    There is a web page and ftp archive at http://www.cim.mcgill.ca

    The McGill Centre for Intelligent Machines, CIM, was founded in 1985 to provide researchers in robotics, computer vision, speech recognition, and systems and control with a context in which to pursue their common goal: the understanding and creation of systems which exhibit intelligent behaviour. The three main research foci are perception, robotics and control theory. The Centre now includes faculty members and graduate students from five departments: Electrical, Mechanical, Biomedical, and Mining and Metallurgical Engineering, and the School of Computer Science.

    The center itself does not have a degree program, rather students enroll in one of the associated departments and gain access by being supervised a faculty member who is also a CIM member. There are research programs directly related to computer vision, robot mechanical systems, walking machines, mobile robotics, etc.

    CIM Members: J. Angeles, P.R. Belanger, M. Buehler, P.E. Caines, L. Daneshmend, R. De Mori, G. Dudek, F. Ferrie, J. Hollerbach, V. Hayward, D. Levanony, M.D. Levine, A. Malowany, H. Michalska, J. Owen, E. Papadopoulos, M. Verma, S. Whitesides, G. Zames, P.J. Zsombor-Murray, S.W. Zucker


    University of Alberta

    Edmontom, Alberta
    Canada T6H 2H1
    Center for Machine Intelligence and Robotics
    Robotics Research Laboratory, Department of Computing Science Faculty
    Ron Kube

    Finland


    Helsinki University of Technology

    Research includes outdoor walking machines, all-terrain autonomous vehicle and many other projects. See Automation Home Page and Research Home page

    France


    University of Paris

    INRIA (Nice) recently started a Phd program in Robotics.

    Japan

    Waseda University Tokyo, Japan

    Humanoid Research Laboratory (HUREL), Advanced Research Center for Science and Engineering

    Humanoid Project

    Sweden

    Lulea University of Technology

    Department of Robotics and Automation
    S-971 87 LULEE

    WWW: http://www.sm.luth.se/csee/er/sm-roa/


    Switzerland

    Swiss Federal Institute of Technology

    The Institute of Robotics
    ETH offers a Postgrad diploma in Mechatronics.

    The Institute of Robotics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) constitutes about 40 members of staff (including Ph.D. students). The main research theme is Intelligent Interactive Mechines. That is to say developing intelligent robots that in cooperation with man solves difficult tasks. The institute takes its students from the departments of Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science. Robotics lectures and project work is offered to undergraduate students. In addition there is the "Nachdiplom" in mechatronics (somewhere near a M.Sc.) where robotics is a central theme. For further details on the "Nachdiplom" see below. Finally there are about 30 Ph.D. students curently registered working on a variety of themes and projects. Institute facilities include: several different robot arms including the in house developed modular robot arm (MODRO), mobile vehicles including the in house developed modular mobile robot, walking machines, supercomputing facilities, dedicated vision and signal processing hardware, etc.

    The head of the group is Professor G. Schweitzer.

    Institute of Robotics
    ETH-Center, LEO,
    8092 Zurich
    Switzerland
    tel: (01) 256 35 84 (secretary)
    fax: (01) 252 02 76.
    The "Nachdiplom" in mechatronics runs over two semesters plus three months project/thesis work. The lectures covers: robotics, mobile robotics, micro robots, computer based kinematics and dynamics of multibody systems, control theory, magnetic bearings, real time software techniques, information processing with neural networks, computer vision, and artificial intelligence. The fees are 2400,- Swiss Franks, founding is available.

    Contact:

    H.-K. Scherrer
    Mechatronics postgraduate course
    ETH-Centre, LEO B3
    8092 Zurich
    Switzerland
    net:

    United Kingdom


    Edinburgh University

    Department of Artificial Intelligence,
    5, Forrest Hill,
    Edinburgh
    EH1 2QL
    Scotland

    The Department of Artificial Intelligence has robot and vision groups within it.

    Main interests of the robotics group include:

    As well as PhDs by research, the Department offers a one-year, taught, modular, Masters course in Information Technology for Knowledge-based Systems where one of the possible specialisations is in robotics and vision. This course is designed for people without specific AI background. One module involves the Masters students building and programming their own robot out of Lego and supplied electronics. Another module gives hands-on experience with a simple robot arm.

    Contact the Admissions Secretary Judith Gordon for information about courses.

    Principal Researchers


    University of Birmingham

    Birmingham, England

    See School of Computer Science


    University of Essex

    Brooker Laboratory for Intelligent Embedded Systems
    email: robots@essex.ac.uk

    Main interests of the laboratory: Principal Researchers:
    In addition to PhDs by research, there is a one-year, taught, Masters course in Computer Science where it is possible to undertake robotics, AI or vision.

    Contact csdept@essex.ac.uk for further details of courses or robots@essex.ac.uk for information on research. In addition some useful information on the laboratory can be obtained at ftp://ftp.essex.ac.uk/pub/robots/SXlab.ps.Z


    University of the West of England at Bristol

    (used to be Bristol Polytechnic)
    Undergraduate Robotics is taught as part of undergraduate programs in engineering courses and as part of a real time computing course. The engineering department has in its teaching labs Puma, Adept, IBM, Cincinatti-Milacron and Funac robots.

    Intelligent Autonomous Systems group

    Intelligent Flexible Assembly Technology (InFACT/ALASCA Group):
    Eureka/FAMOS Projects (EC colaborative project - academic and Industry) The group has a large gantry based robot designed and built by the group.

    Bristol University

    Faculty
    Mr Khodlebandelhoo

    Hull University

    Faculty
    Prof Alan Pugh

    University of Manchester

    Department of Computer Science
    The web page below describes research in mobile robotics in the areas of autonomous competence acquisition, learning by tuition and navigation. Papers are also available at this site.

    http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/robotics


    University of Oxford

    Robotics Research Group
    The Robotics Group currently comprises about seventy academics, postdoctoral research staff, overseas visitors, and graduate students. A broad range of topics in advanced robotics is studied in collaboration with industry and government establishments throughout Europe.


    Reading University

    Faculty

    Salford University

    http://WWW.salford.ac.uk/ or robotics work more directly at: http://WWW.salford.ac.uk/docs/depts/eee/homepage.html Faculty
    Tele-presence. Possible studies at PhD and MSc and courses at undergraduate level.
  • Dr Francis Nagy
    Speech Control of a Puma-560, Control of an 'Inverted Pendulum', Miniature tactile sensors Advanced Robotics Research Centre
    • Ultrasonic wrist sensor for collision avoidance
    • Controller design
    • Stereo Vision

    University of Surrey

    Mechatronic Systems and Robotics Research Group Faculty
    • Prof G A Parker (g.parker@surrey.ac.uk)
    • John Pretlove (j.pretlove@surrey.ac.uk)
      Primary Areas of Research activity:
    • 3D co-ordinate tracking system for robot metrology
    • Neural networks and expert systems for vision and inspection
    • Active stereo vision for real-time robot arm guidance
    • Design of controllable stereo vision systems.
    • Open architecture Puma controller
    • Mobile robots
    • We also offer MSc courses and undergraduate courses in automation,
    • control, mechanical engineering and CIM.

    United States


    Boston University

    Dept. of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
    People
    John Baillieul
    Control of Mechanical Systems and Mathematical System Theory
    Pierre Dupont
    Robot Kinematics and Dynamics, Friction Compensation in Robotics.
    Ann Stokes
    Theoretical Dynamics and Control
    Matt Berkemeier
    Legged Robots, Robot Control


    Brandeis University>

    Waltham, MA

    Brandeis has a program in autonomous agents, focusing on multi--agent and multi--robot systems and machine learning, headed by Maja Mataric For details on research directions and a photo of the available robot herd see: http://www.cs.brandeis.edu/dept/faculty/mataric

    For graduate admission information see: http://www.cs.brandeis.edu/dept/grad-info/application.html

    To get more information about the Volen Center for Complex Systems, about the Computer Science Department, and about other faculty, see: http://www.cs.brandeis.edu/dept. For more information about the cognitive science and cognitive neuroscience programs at Brandeis see: http://fechner.ccs.brandeis.edu/cogsci.html


    California Institute of Technology

    Pasadena, CA
    Joel Burdick
    serpentine manipulation, control
    Richard Murray
    control of nonholonomic systems, grasping
    Pietro Perona
    biological and machine vision
    For more detailed information on robotics research at Caltech see http://robby.caltech.edu/

    Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)

    Graduate program contact:

    Graduate Admissions Coordinator
    The Robotics Institute
    Carnegie Mellon University
    5000 Forbes Avenue
    Pittsburgh, PA 15213
    The Robotics Institute is the world's largest academic organization devoted to robotics. The Robotics Institute (RI) has over 45 full-time faculty, over 100 technical staff, 150 graduate students (90 in the RI program) and 25 visitors and post-docs. The Robotics Institute is part of CMU's School of Computer Science

    The Robotics Institute also offers a Robotics PhD and students from other programs (e.g. engineering and computer science) also do research in the Institute. Institute development spans the spectrum from fundamental and basic research to development and integration of complete systems for specific applications. Research includes many aspects of mobile robots, computer integrated manufacturing, rapid prototyping, sensors, vision, navigation, learning and architectures. The RI PhD program is comprised of a set of qualifiers and a program of research leading to a thesis and the degree.

    The many centers and laboratories include the National Robotics Engineering Consortium (NREC), a facility and organization devoted to technology transfer between laboratory and companies.

    Facilities include about a dozen mobile systems with more under design and construction. Facilities include over 2000m^2 of offices and over 15,000 m^2 of laboratory and highbay space. Facilities available include many mobile robots, manipulator systems and lots of computer cycles/person.

    People

    Takeo Kanade
    Vision and Autonomous Systems Center
    Pradeep Khosla
    Advanced Manipulator Laboartory
    Matt Mason
    Manipulation Laboratory
    Tom Mitchell
    Learning Robots Lab
    Hans Moravec
    Mobile Robots Lab
    Mel Seigel
    Sensors Laboratory (non vision)
    Red Whittaker
    Field Robotics Center
    and many others.....

    Case Western Reserve University

    Department of Electrical Engineering and Applied Physics
    Glennan Building
    10900 Euclid Avenue
    Cleveland, Ohio 44106
    Phone (216)368-4088
    Fax (216)368-2668
    See file://alpha.ces.cwru.edu/pub/agents/home.html

    Electrical engineering at CWRU is a broad, dynamic field offering a great diversity of career opportunities in areas such as microwave and rf communications, microprocessor-based digital control systems, robotics, solid state microelectronics, signal processing, and intelligent systems. The Department of Electrical Engineering and Applied Physics offers Bachelor of Science in Engineering, Master of Science in Electrical Engineering, Master of Engineering, and Doctor of Philosophy degree programs which provide preparation for work in these areas. The department offers a minor in electrical engineering for bachelor's degree students in other engineering disciplines as well as a minor in electronics for bachelor's degree students enrolled in the College of Arts and Science.


    Colorado School of Mines

    Mobile Robotics/Machine Perception Laboratory
    Department of Mathematical and Computer Sciences
    The Colorado School of Mines is a state university, internationally renowned in the energy, materials, and resource fields, attracting outstanding students in a broad range of science and engineering disciplines. The School of Mines is strongly committed to quality teaching and research. CSM provides an attractive campus environment, a collegial atmosphere, relatively small size (3000 students, about 30% in graduate programs), and an ideal location in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains 13 miles from downtown Denver and an hour from most ski areas.

    The Dept. of Mathematical and Computer Sciences offers BS, MS, and PhD degrees under the department title. With a faculty of 18 tenured and tenure track members, the department annually receives roughly a million dollars in grants; 116 undergraduate students and 70 graduate students are currently enrolled in ou r degree programs. The computer science group within the department has a strong focus in AI (symbolic and neural nets) and database and parallel processing syst ems. The Mobile Robotics/Machine Perception Laboratory is a facility devoted to basic and interdisciplinary research, technology transfer, and hands-on education in artificial intelligence through robotics. Research and technology transfer efforts concentrate on the reduction of human risk in hazardous situations, stewardship of the environment, and/or improvement of the quality of life throug h better manufacturing processes. Research in the MR/MP laboratory is supported by NSF, ARPA, NASA, and local industries.

    For more information, please send email to Dr. Robin R. Murphy, rmurphy@mines.colorado.edu. Include a brief summary of your educational (with GPA) and work experience, what your research interests are, and GRE scores.


    Clemson University (CU)

    Graduate program contact:

    Robotics and Mechatronics (RAM) Laboratory
    Center for Advanced Manufacturing
    Clemson University
    Clemson SC 29634
    Lab Phone: 864-656-6988
    Fax: 864-656-7220

    For more information browse our web site at http://crb.eng.clemson.edu or contact:
    Dr. Darren Dawson (ECE) ddawson@eng.clemson.edu
    Tel: (864) 656-5924
    Fax: (864) 656-7220
    http://crb.eng.clemson. edu/advisor/dawson.htm
    Dr. Chris Rahn (ME) cdrahn@eng.clemson.edu
    Tel: (864) 656-5261
    Fax: (864) 656-4435
    http://www.eng.clemson .edu/~cdrahn/resume.html

    Summary of Laboratory Activities

    • Research and Development
    • Education
    • Technology Transfer
    • Classroom/Laboratory Workshops
    • Faculty/Student Summer Interns

    Electrical and Computer Engineering RAM Personnel

    • Darren Dawson, Professor
    • John Luh, McQueen Quattlebaum Professor

    Mechanical Engineering RAM Personnel

    • Chris Rahn, Assistant Professor
    • Frank Paul, McQueen Quattlebaum Professor

    Approximately 25 Ph.D and Masters Thesis Students from both ECE and ME departments.

    RAM Research Facilities

    • Robotics Lab: Seven Robot Stations Including a Dual Robot Arm Workcell and two Direct Drive Robot Manipulators
    • Computational Lab: Cluster of Personal Computers and Workstations
    • Union Camp Lab: Motor Drive Equipment, a Magnetic Bearing, and Real Time Workstations
    • Environmental Restoration Lab: Virtual Reality Based Equipment and Software
    • Rapid Isothermal Processing Lab: Three Chemical Vapor Deposition Testbeds
    • Square D Lab: Three Vibration Control Testbeds

    RAM Research Thrust Areas

    • Advanced Computer-Based Software Interfaces and Position/force Control Systems for Robot Manipulator Systems
    • Dynamic Modeling Techniques and Tension Controllers for High Speed Transport of Fibers and Webs
    • High Precision Position Controllers for Electric Motors and Magnetic Bearings
    • Control Algorithms for Payload Swing Reduction for Overhead Cranes
    • Vibration Control Techniques for Flexible Beams and Cables
    • Closed-Loop Modeling, Control, Measurement, Techniques for Semiconductor Manufacturing (Chemical Vapor Deposition)


    Cornell

    Ithaca, NY Mechanical Engineering Bruce Donald

    Georgia Institute of Technology

    Atlanta, GA
    Georgia Institute of Technology Robotics Activities
    See also: MRLHome.html Application study areas include:
    • Servo control and low level coordination
    • Machine intelligence and high level control
    • Design, sensors and actuators
    • Human/machine interface
    Robot applications are in areas such as manufacturing {K. Lee} poultry processing {W. Daley, G. McMurray, J.C. Thompson} and nuclear waste inspection and cleanup {R. Arkin, W. Book, S. Dickerson, T. Collins, A. Henshaw} are underway.

    Several robotics researchers are regularly involved in a student aerial robot design competition in which concurrent engineering concepts are being used to tailor the characteristics of the system.{D. Schrage} This competition, held at Georgia Tech and sponsored by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems, has been won by Georgia Tech entries for two of the three years it has been held.

    Current research topics and researchers:

    • Long arm control
      W. Book
    • Parallel actuation of manipulators
      K. Lee
    • 3DOF direct drive actuator
      K. Lee
    • Special purpose end-effectors
      R. Bohlander, H. Lipk
    • Parallel processing computer architectures for robot sensing and control.
      R. Bohlander, C. Alford, T. Collins, A. Henshaw
    • Laser generated ultrasound to sense structure of materials
      C. Ume
    • Gallium arsenide based rad-hard electronics.
      W. Hunt
    • Autonmous vehicles positioning
      S. Dickerson
    • Collision avoidance techniques
      R. Arkin, W. Book
    • Flexible arm control
      W. Book
    • Two arm coordinated motion.
      Alford, Vachtsevanos
    • Advanced feedback control, learning control, bounded uncertainty approach, applications to rigid and flexible manipulators, force control .
      N Sadegh, Y Chen, W. Book
    • Architectures, Framework for reactive control and hierarchical planning, vision feedback, fuzzy logic application
      Arkin, D. Lawton, G Vachtsevanos
    • Human Computer Interaction
      M Kelly, H. Lipkin

    Harvard

    Roger Brockett

    Iowa State University

    Iowa Center for Emerging Manufacturing Technology
    Ames, Iowa 50011
    See also: http:// www.vislab.iastate.edu

    Iowa State University has one of the better visualization labs in the country. The lab consists of mainly mechanical engineers and computer scientists.


    Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

    Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science both have strong robotics efforts. Asada, Slotine, Brooks, Raibert and others are known and respected for their work in direct-drive arm, control techniques, architectures, running machines etc.


    New York University (NYU)

    NYU's Department of Computer Science home page is at: http://cs.nyu.edu/ Degrees:
    We offer Ph.D. and MS in computer science. Ph.D. students may work thesis research in robotics. MS students may work on a thesis (as a substitute for one course). All graduate students are eligible to enroll in Advaned Laboratory and work on a project in robotics. Qualified undergraduates may take Independent Study.

    The Department of Computer Science offers graduate and undergraduate courses in robotics, computer vision, AI and neural computation. There is also a weekly robotics colloquim For admissions information, contact karmen@cs.nyu.edu

    Research (1994):

    • Multimedia (Schwartz, Wallace, Perlin) See Below
    • 3-D target recognition (Hummel)
    • Grasp Metrics (Mishra, Yap)
    • Reactive Robotics (Mishra)
    • Wavelets and Compression (Mallat)
    • Human Body Animation (Perlin)
    Faculty:
    • Ken Perlin (Computer Graphics, Multimedia)
    • Jacob T. Schwartz (Robotics, Multimedia, Computational Logic)
    • Bud Mishra (Robotics, Theory of Computation)
    • Chee Yap (Robotics, Computational Geometry)
    • Stephane Mallat (Wavelets, Computer Vision)
    • Robert Hummel (Computer Vision)
    What is Multimedia Robotics?
    "Multimedia Robotics" is a new area of computer science concerning new markets for robotics technology, emphasizing the emerging areas of virtual reality and telepresence, animation and entertainment, and bioscience material processing.

    Wrench Displays
    Force and Torque input/output devices for user interfaces, also called "haptic displays".
    Bioscience Applications
    Microrobots in DNA micromanipulation,
    Wrench displays for surgical VR training applications,
    Microsurgical instruments
    Advanced actuators for VR and Multimedia
    Scaling theory and dynamics of piezeoelectrics, shape memory metals, electromagnetics and other new actuator technolgies.
    Telepresence
    Robotics and the WWW, Video Telephony, Telesensuality
    Research underway at NYU represents each of these four areas.


    North Carolina State Univerisity

    Raleigh, NC Professor Ren Luo tel: 919.515.5199
    Northeastern University> Boston, MA 02115 The Marine Systems Engineering Laboratory (MSEL) of Northeastern University is pleased to announce its presence on the World Wide Web at MSEL Home Page MSEL is a small, internationally-known lab that focuses on research in ocean engineering, in particular autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). AUVs are unmanned, untethered submersibles that are capable of carrying out missions autonomously. MSEL developed one of the first AUVs, EAVE-EAST. Currently, the EAVE AUVs are in their third generation, the EAVE-III vehicles. The lab maintains two EAVE-III vehicles for both single-agent and multiagent research. The lab is also developing a long-range AUV (LRAUV) for extended full-ocean depth missions. We have active research programs focusing on intelligent AUV control, AUV control architectural issues, long-range AUV development for ocean science applications, and multiple AUV systems and cooperative distributed problem solving.

    Purdue University

    West Lafayette, Indiana 47907

    Here's a pointer to Purdue's Robot Vision Lab

    Faculty

    • Avi Kak: Vision and mobile robots
    • Antti Koivo: Manipulation
    • Mirek Skibiniewski: Construction Robotics
    • Anthony Maciejewski: Kinematics of redundant robotic arms, computer graphic techniques for animation, visualization
    • George Lee: Robot Control, Fuzzy Logic, Neural Networks
    • Akio Kosaka Vision-based navigation for mobile robots

    Rennsalear Polytechnic Institute (RPI)

    Faculty
    • George Saridis
    • Arthur Sanderson
    • Jon Wenn
    About 20 PhD and 30 MS students. Path planning and multi-arm control are current focus.


    Stanford University

    Palo Alto, CA
    http://www.stanford.edu/

    Mechanical Engineering:

    • Bernard Roth (kinematics of manipulators)
    • Mark Cutkosky: destrous manipulation and concurrent manufacturing
    • Larry Liefer (rehabilitation, user interfaces)
    CS Department:
    • Nils Nilsson
    • Mike Genesereth
    • Jean-Claude Latombe (path planning and geometric reasoning)
    • Leo Guibas (geometric reasoning)
    • Tom Binford (vision)
    • Yoav Shoham (agents)
    • Oussama Khatib
    Aerospace Robotics Laboratory:
    • Bob Cannon
      teleoperation, free flyers, space robotics, flexible manipulators

    University of California at Berkeley

    Faculty:
    Deparment of EE&CS
    • Prof. J. Canny
      motion planning
    • Prof. R. Fearing
      tactile sensing, dextrous manipulation
    • Prof. J. Malik
      computer vision
    • Prof. S. Sastry
      multi-fingered hands, control
    Dept. of Optometry/EE&CS
    • Prof. L. Stark
      telerobotics
    Dept. of Mechanical Engineering
    • Prof. R. Horowitz
      control of robotic manipulators
    • Prof. H. Kazerooni
      man-robotic systems
    • Prof. M. Tomizuka
      control of robotic manipulators
    • Richard Muller
      micro mechanisms

    University of Kansas

    Space Technology Center (Telerobotics)

    University of Kentucky

    Center for Robotics and Manufacturing Systems (founded 1990)

    University of Massachusetts

    Laboratory for Perceptual Robotics
    Computer Science Department
    www: http://piglet.cs.umass.edu:4321/lpr.html

    Faculty:

    Rod Grupen
    Robin Popplestone
    The lab is equipped with two General Electric P-50 robots, two GE A4s, a Zebra Zero, and a Denning mobile platform. In addition, the P-50s are fitted with a 4-fingered Utah/MIT and a 3-fingered Stanford/JPL* dexterous hand, respectively. The lab includes VxWorks distributed VME controllers and an experimental real-time kernel (Spring kernel). Research conducted at the lab includes:

    • controller composition for coordinating multiple robots
    • grasp planning
    • geometric reasoning for robust assembly & fine motion control
    • learning for admittance control & path optimization
    • biological models of motor planning
    • proprioceptive, tactile, & visual model acquisition
    • trajectory planning, coarse reaching
    • state-space decomposition
    The laboratory also engages in collaborative research with the Computer Vision (A. Hanson, E. Riseman, directors) and Adaptive Networks (A. Barto, director) groups within the department.


    University of Michigan

    Ann Arbor, MI
    Departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science are relevant to robotics research. Research includes includes machine vision, systems and control, multiple cooperating agents (arms and mobile), and application of SOAR to robots (arms and mobile) in conjunction with SOAR groups at CMU and elsewhere.

    Umich robotics work can be found at Umich Robotics Contacts


    University of Pennsylvania.

    UPenn offers Masters and PhD programs in Robotics and Robotics related fields of study. These programs are offered through the Departments of Computer and Information Science, Systems Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics. The bulk of the robotics research is conducted in the inter-disciplinary General Robotics and Active Sensory Perception (GRASP) laboratory. GRASP Web SiteActive areas of research are Telerobotics, Multiple Arm Control, Robotic Vision, Learning Control, Multi-agent Robotics and Mechanical Design.

    Faculty

    • R. Bajcsy
    • R.P. Paul
    • Vijay Kumar
    • Max Mintz
    • Jim Ostrowski
    • Eero Simoncelli

    University of Rochester

    Computer Science Department
    Well known Computer Vision group. See the following web pages:
    http://www.cs.rochester.edu/u/jag/PercAct/dvfb.html
    http://www.cs.rochester.edu/u/jag

    University of Southern California (USC)

    USC has a new MS Program called: Master of Science in Computer Science with specialization in Robotics & Automation

    This Master of Science program prepares graduates for the future of manufacturing engineering. Emphasized areas include manufacturing as an international enterprise, and information engineering, with concentrations in specialties including multimedia, CAD for rapid prototyping, electronic packaging, magnetic recording, and manufacturing management. Classroom teaching is transferred into a practical format and weekly seminars. A nine month internship is a key part of the practical track for this Program. Students have been placed in internships with companies such as Sony, Hewlett-Packard, Qualcomm, Alcoa Electronic Packaging, Kyocera America, Maxtor Corporation, Spectragraphics, StorageTek, and Valor Electronics.

    Financial aid is available. Preferential assistance will be given to displaced defense industry professionals.

    For information on applying to the Program, or accessing an intern for your company, e-mail PAM@ece.ucsd.edu or contact Vivian Shinmoto at 619-534-7398. MS program seeks to prepare students for a career in the application of Computer Science to design, manufacturing, and robotics. It also serves as an introduction to this area for students who wish to pursue advanced studies and research leading to a Ph.D. A major goal is to produce a steady stream of graduates who are qualified to tackle challenging problems in the development of software for CAD/CAM (Computer-Aided Design and Manufacturing) and robotics.

    There is a strong focus on designing and building within the program Exposure to the practical aspects (and difficulties) of robotics and automation is strongly encouraged through laboratory work, and an optional thesis, conducted in collaboration with industry and research laboratories.

    See also http://cwis.usc.edu/dept/robotics/home.html

    For additional information, a complete set of degree requirements, and application materials, contact our Student Coordinator:

    Ms. Amy Yung
    Computer Science Department
    University of Southern California
    Los Angeles, CA 90089-0781
    tel: 213.740.4499
    net:
    Faculty
    • George Bekey
      Assembly planning, design for assembly, neural nets for robot control, autonomous robots.
    • Ken Goldberg
      Motion planning, grasping, machine learning.
    • Sukhan Lee
      Assembly planning, sensor-based manipulation.
    • Gerard Medioni
      Computer vision.
    • Ramakant Nevatia
      Computer vision.
    • Keith Price
      Computer vision.
    • Aristides Requicha
      Geometric modeling, geometric uncertainty, planning for manufacture and inspection
    About twenty other faculty member associated with the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Systems and many others associated with USC's Information Sciences Institute (ISI).

    A Brochure can be obtained from:

    Ken Goldberg, Asst Professor
    IRIS, Dept of Computer Science
    Powell Hall Room 204
    University of Southern California
    Los Angeles, CA 90089-0273
    Internet: goldberg@usc.edu

    University of Maryland

    Faculty
    • Dave Akin
      Director, Space Systems Laboratory.
    Facilties include a large neutral bouyancy tank, and a number of free-flying teleoperators used underwater in the NBT. Much teleoperations research. Dave has flown shuttle experiments and his research is in the areas of teleoperation, control, man-machine interaction and is one of the very few in the robotics community to fly hardware in space.


    University of Notre Dame

    South Bend, Indiana

    The Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Notre Dame offers several courses which are directed toward an fundamental understanding of the mechanics, kinematics, estimation and control theory, and computer programming which are important considerations in the design of robotic systems. Of special interest is a novel approach for achieving robust and precise vision-based control of manipulators - "camera-space manipulation". Doctoral recipients >from this program are teaching and doing research in tenure-track positions at US universities. For more information, see, on the World-Wide Web: Skaar Home.html AME HomePage.html or contact Prof. Steven B. Skaar, Director of Graduate Studies, steven.b.skaar.1@ND.EDU Research in Vision-Based Robotics Using Estimation

    The multimedia monograph discusses recent experimental and theoretical work conducted at the University of Notre Dame aimed at using methods of estimation to achieve accurate, robust and reliable vision-based guidance of various kinds of mechanisms, including typical holonomic robots, fork-lifts and other vehicles. The monograph is divided into two parts: Part 1 discusses the method of "camera-space manipulation" and is in the early stages of development. Part 2 discusses vision-based navigation of a vehicle. Both parts include several QuickTime movie illustrations of existing experiments, and part 2 includes 3-D animations for illustration of principles.


    The University of Texas at Arlington

    F.L. Lewis
    Automation and Robotics Research Institute
    University of Texas at Arlington
    7300 Jack Newell Blvd S
    Ft. Worth, TX 76118
    tel: 817.794.5972
    fax: 817.794.5952

    UT Arlington is located in the heart of the Dallas / Ft. Worth metroplex. The EE department current has 33 faculty and the CSE department has 20 faculty. Participating students will also be able to conduct research at the Automation and Robotics Research Institute located in Ft. Worth.


    University of Wisconsin-Madison

    Mechanical Engineering & Electrical Engineering
    Faculty
    • Roland Chin
      machine vision, pattern recognition
    • Neil Duffie
      teleoperation, autonomous systems, sensors
    • Robert Lorenz
      actuators and sensors, robot control algorithms
    • Vladimir Lumelsky
      motion planning, real-time sensing and navigation
    Computer Science:
    • Charles Dyer
      machine vision
    Wisconsin Center for Space Robotics and Automation (WCSAR)
    Interdepartmental NASA center: work is done on various applications of robotic systems for space.


    University of Utah

    Salt Lake City, Utah 84112
    Steve Jacobsen
    Center for Engineering Design
    3176 MEB

    Hands, manipulators, biomedical applications, teleoperation. Micro electro-mechanical systems design.


    Yale University

    There is a broad spectrum of research activities in vision and robotics at Yale. The members of this group include faculty from Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Psychology, Neuroscience, and the Yale Medical School. Active areas of research include machine vision, humanand computer object recognition, geometric reasoning, mobile robotics, sensor-based manipulation, control of highly dynamic nonlinear systems, planning, and learning. There is also a wide spectrum of interdisciplinary work integrating robotics and machine vision.

    Faculty

    • James S. Duncan
      Geometric/physical models for analysing biomedical images.
    • Gregory D. Hager
      Sensor-based/task-directed decision-making and planning.
    • David J. Kriegman
      Model-based object recognition, mobile robot navigation.
    • Drew McDermott
      Planning and scheduling reactive behavior, knowledge representation, cognitive mapping.
    • Eric Mjolsness
      Neural network approaches to vision and visual memory.
    • Pat Sharpe
      Computational models of hippocampal spatial learning.
    • Michael J. Tarr
      Behavioral and computational approaches to visual cognition.
    • Kenneth Yip Automated reasoning about complex dynamical systems.

    Wilkes University

    Wilkes-Barre, PA

    Wilkes University is a small, private university located in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Despite its size, Wilkes is well equipped with robotics laboratories and has two faculty ( Dr. C.R. Mirman Ph.D. in Robotics from the University of Illinois at Chicago and Dr. M.R. Stein, Ph.D. in Robotics from the University of Pennsylvania) to sponsor graduate robotics research. Robotics is an integral part of the undergraduate Mechanical Engineering curriculum, and may be a topic for graduate study in Electrical Engineering. Wilkes offers a BS in Mechanical Engineering and an MS and Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering. See also their Robotics and Automation page.



    [6.2] Student Who's Who

    An useful additional source of information is the graduate student guide compiled by Ron Kube . It is a list of graduate students, their universities, and areas of research. The list is updated monthly and can be found at

    ftp://ftp.cs.ualberta.ca/pub/kube/whosWho and is also available on the Web as: http://www.sm.luth.se/csee/ra/sm-roa/Robotics/WhoSWho.html

    The list is a good starting point for those interested in graduate programs and for those looking for individuals with similar research interests.


    Last-Modified: Sun Nov 10 12:20:57 1996
    Kevin Dowling <nivek@cmu.edu>