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Dynamic Manipulation
This project is no longer active.
Head: Matthew Mason
Mailing address:
Carnegie Mellon University
Robotics Institute
5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
Associated lab/group: Manipulation Lab
Robots typically use static and quasistatic methods to interact with the world. People, on the other hand, are adept with dynamic methods. Some scientists, notably Bill Calvin, have argued that the evolution of the human brain was driven by the challenges of accurate throwing. It is an interesting challenge to model-based robotics to develop robots that can exploit the dynamics of a task domain. Kevin Lynch's PhD thesis demonstrated several instances---a snatch, a throw, and a rolling throw. Each of them is planned automatically using information about the object such as its shape and mass, and also with a good model of the dynamic behavior of our arm.