"Modular Reconfigurable Robotics at PARC"

4/30/2003: 10:30am - 12:00pm
11th Floor SMALL Conference Room

Abstract: Modular Reconfigurable Robots are robots built from many copies of a few simple module types (similar to Lego bricks, or cells in mammals). A modular robot that can reconfigure itself -- change its shape by moving its modules around -- can remove failing modules and reconfigure to meet the demands of changing tasks and environments. As the number of modules increases from tens to hundreds to thousands, these systems show promise of great versatility, robustness and low cost. However, to make this realizable there are many computational and manufacturing issues that must be addressed. We will show progress on several modular reconfigurable robot systems developed at the Palo Alto Research center with videos of a variety of locomotion and manipulation tasks and present some of the issues in applying them to urban search and rescue and shape configuration. These tasks are rich in interesting problems including: distributed computation and control, modular design, reconfiguration planning, motion planning, and others. http://www.parc.com/modrobots

About Mark Yim: Mark Yim is a senior member of the research staff, manager of the Smart Electro-Mechanical Systems Area at the Palo Alto Research Center (formerly Xerox PARC). This group focuses on creating novel capabilities by tightly coupling actuation, sensing and intelligence in modular reconfigurable systems. The study of how to build and control this type of machine is part of PARC's research on ``Smart Matter'', which is at the intersection of the fields of Computer Science, small electro-mechanical systems and distributed control among others. He received his PhD in mechanical engineering from Stanford University in 1994 and has published in the areas of planning, distributed robotics, robots for search and rescue, optimal control, robotics in education, virtual reality and haptics. Dr. Yim has authored over 40 patents and in 1999 was chosen for the TR100 by Technology Review Magazine. His work on MEMS and robotics has been featured in a variety of popular press (New York Times, MSNBC, ABC and CBS News, USA Today, and various other local and international news media and strangely enough, a woman's fashion magazine.)

Last updated: Mon Jun 19 17:44:06 2006