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| RI | RI in the News | |
Carnegie Mellon, NASA, Google Team receives Honor for Software that Aids Natural Disaster Responders
Boris Sofman receives Inaugural Sandia National Laboratories / Carnegie Mellon University Excellence in Computing Fellowship
Carnegie Mellon, General Motors will compete in 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge
Robotics Academy develops new curriculum for LEGO Education's popular MINDSTORMS robot-building set
Illah Nourbakhsh to direct Center for Innovative Robotics [ Press Release ] [ Post-Gazette ]
Doug James wins the highly competitive (and prestigious) Sloan Research Fellowship
Crusher (successor to Spinner) had its rollout last month
Manuela Veloso named Herbert Simon Professor of Computer Science
Raj Reddy wins the Vannevar Bush Award
AIBO, SCARA, David, Gort, & Maria to be inducted into the 3rd Robot Hall of Fame [ Press Release ] [ Pittsburgh Tribune-Review ]
Howie Choset on CNN.com
Sanjiv Singh named editor of Journal of Field Robotics
The 2005 Allen Newell Research Excellence Award winners:
John Bares, Chris Fromme, Bill Ross, Steve Smith, & David Stager
Tank featured on NPR
George Stetten elected a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE)
Derek Hoiem won a Microsoft Fellowship
Alexei Efros won an NSF Career Award
Dave Wettergreen's team and Zoe featured in the February issue of Popular Science
Andrew Moore named inaugural director of the Pittsburgh Google R&D facility
Metin Sitti elected Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society for 2006 - 2008
Katia Sycara awarded the Sixth Century Chair in Computing Science at the University of Aberdeen
David Wettergreen receives Breakthrough Award from Popular Mechanics
Flexible robot can crawl through gas lines, searching for problems
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Article (19 Jul 2004)
MSNBC Article (24 May 2004)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Article (4 Apr 2004)
Just ask Valerie: New roboreceptionist greets visitors at CMU's computer science department
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Article (19 Feb 2004)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Article (5 Jan 2004)
RoboCup / ASIMO movies, pictures, and articles
RoboCup / ASIMO movies, pictures, and articles (5 May 2003)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Article (18 Feb 2003)
CMU's Ferret robot comes up a success
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Article (26 Jan 2003)
SCS / RI Press Release (7 Aug 2002)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Article (2 Aug 2002)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Article (25 Jul 2002)
CMU center gives a boost to biomed
The newly formed Medical Robotics and Information Technology (MERIT) interdisciplinary center focuses on creating new robotic technologies to benefit the healthcare industry, such as computer-based tools to assist surgeons in minimizing invasive medical procedures and improving patient outcomes. See the most recent Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Article, the MERIT Center homepage, and the Robotics Institute's MERIT webpage for more details.
Overwhelmed by the amount of information to process, U.S. military and intelligence agencies are turning to computer software known as the Control of Agent-Based Systems (CoABS) to do some preliminary sorting and identify useful information, according to an Associated Press (AP) article published last week. CoABS uses artificial intelligent agents designed by teams of defense contractors and university researchers, such as Carnegie Mellon's Intelligent Software Agents Group led by Katia Sycara. The group has been working with DARPA on a $5 million, five-year project to develop different aspects of multiagent systems, such as scalability, robustness, service discovery, and semantic interoperation. In the process they have devised a mock evacuation plan of the U.S. embassy in Kuwait in which software agents design a route map to the airport avoiding rebel roadblocks by monitoring intelligence reports related to the crisis.
"All these agents coordinate depending on the particular task," said Sycara, a Principal Research Scientist in the Robotics Institute. "You can view them as teams of specialists that assemble to solve your problem, whatever it happens to be at the time. The problem could be changing."
Read the AP story about military and intelligence agencies use of software agents. Learn more about the Intelligent Software Agents Group (RI official page).
FBI Asks Robotics Institute For Autonomous Helicopter
Researchers at the university's Robotics Institute were asked by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to bring one of its experimental autonomous helicopters to inspect and assess the site of downed United Airlines Flight 93 that crashed Tuesday morning, September 11, near Shankville, Somerset County, Pa., 86 miles east of Pittsburgh. It was one of four commercial planes that were sent on an unprecedented terroristic attack Tuesday against the United States.
The 14-foot-long, 160-pound helicopter is a vision-guided robot that can carry out functions applicable to search and rescue, surveillance, aerial cinematography, mapping, and more. According to Omead Amidi, systems scientist at the Robotics Institute and director of the project, the National Transportation Safety Board has expressed interest in having the autonomous helicopter build an accurate three dimensional map of the crash site.
The autonomous helicopter project began in 1991 and by 1995 a machine was developed that could fly autonomously. In 1998, the helicopter was taken to Devon Island in the Canadian Arctic to explore and map the Haughton Impact Crater as part of a NASA research project. Learn more about the helicopter (RI official page).