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Dimitrios Apostolopoulos
Senior Systems Scientist

Associated centers: SRI, NREC, and FRC

Email address: da1v@cs.cmu.edu

Mailing address:
Carnegie Mellon University
Robotics Institute
5000 Forbes Ave
Pittsburgh, PA 15213

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Research interests

My primary goal is to enable robotics as a technology of choice for hazardous applications and in inhospitable environments. I pursue this goal through persistent robotic systems research and development, technology advancements, field testing, and breakthrough demonstrations. I focus on the science, research, and engineering of mobile robots for outdoor environments and especially on issues of robotic mobility. I am also interested in the methods and practice for successful robot prototyping. The fundamental questions of my research are how to design better robots for mobility, robustness, and reliability, and what are the practical methods and tools to predict, quantify, and verify robot performance.

My objective is to create and deliver significant robotic systems in a sustained pace. A “significant” system is one that introduces a new way to solve a problem or leads to measurable improvements over the existing state-of-art. Naturally, such a system would also entail some innovation. Another measure of significance is the degree to which others adapt and use a system’s technologies and development lessons. Those would include mobility, control, configuration design, and hardware architecture among others. The ultimate measure of significance is a system’s acceptability and use by the customer. By virtue of meeting these success metrics I aspire to make a measurable impact on robotics.

Two major themes distinguish my research: robotic mobility and robot prototyping. Mobility is the cornerstone of performance of any field robot. Robotic mobility goes far beyond traditional locomotion as defined by the ability to drive, steer, and climb over obstacles. Robotic mobility relates to the ability to enable real-time locomotion control; position the robot and precisely follow navigation paths; smooth motions induced to onboard sensors and computers; and effectively deploy and position payloads or work tools. I investigate methods for analyzing and quantifying robotic mobility, and the essential relationships between robot mechanics and control. I pursue this line of work for wheeled, legged and unconventional robotic locomotion systems such as multi-pod hoppers and hybrid locomotors.

Robot prototyping captures the complete process from robot concept creation to field validation. At the highest level, I am interested in the systematization of the configuration (i.e. geometric or preliminary design) and the design processes which are common to any system prototyping effort. I develop practical methodologies for creating and evaluating robot configuration topologies, and the methods for analytical predictions of ground performance. Of key significance are relationships between classical mobility and robotic functionalities such as sensing and control as they affect robot design. I also research methods for improving the design engineering of robotic systems to achieve higher robustness and reliability. Lastly, I research metrics that would improve any phase of robot prototyping and I leverage on development and testing lessons to extrapolate on the applicability of such metrics in the design of future robotic systems.

This section last updated - June 2006.

Research interest keywords

artificial intelligence, control, design, field robotics, hazardous environments, human-computer interaction, legged locomotion, mechanisms, mechatronics, mobile robots, sensors, space robotics, systems engineering, and teleoperation

Current Projects [Past projects]

Recent publications [View all 31 publications]

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