Uploaded January 2020 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Sam Burden
Assistant Professor
Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Washington
Friday, January 17, 2020
Toward telelocomotion: human sensorimotor control of contact-rich robot dynamics
Abstract: Human interaction with the physical world is increasingly mediated by automation — planes assist pilots, cars assist drivers, and robots assist surgeons. Such semi-autonomous machines will eventually pervade our world, doing dull and dirty work, assisting the elderly and disabled, and responding to disasters. Recent results (e.g. from the DARPA Robotics Challenge) demonstrate that, once a robot reaches a task area and grasps the necessary tool, handle, or wheel, they are able to plan and execute whole-body motions to accomplish complex goals. However, robots frequently lose their balance and fall en route to tasks, necessitating human supervision and intervention. Integrating legged machines in daily life will require safe and stable telelocomotion, that is, robot ambulation guided by humans. This talk presents our efforts to tackle the telelocomotion problem from the bottom-up and top-down, analyzing contact-rich robot dynamics to derive design principles for intrinsically-stable terradynamics, and leveraging the theory of human sensorimotor learning and control to design provably-safe interfaces for nonlinear control systems including legged robots.
https://www.ri.cmu.edu/event/ri-seminar-sam-burden-university-of-washington-assistant-professor-2020-01-17/
Sam Burden
Assistant Professor
Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Washington
Friday, January 17, 2020
Toward telelocomotion: human sensorimotor control of contact-rich robot dynamics
Abstract: Human interaction with the physical world is increasingly mediated by automation — planes assist pilots, cars assist drivers, and robots assist surgeons. Such semi-autonomous machines will eventually pervade our world, doing dull and dirty work, assisting the elderly and disabled, and responding to disasters. Recent results (e.g. from the DARPA Robotics Challenge) demonstrate that, once a robot reaches a task area and grasps the necessary tool, handle, or wheel, they are able to plan and execute whole-body motions to accomplish complex goals. However, robots frequently lose their balance and fall en route to tasks, necessitating human supervision and intervention. Integrating legged machines in daily life will require safe and stable telelocomotion, that is, robot ambulation guided by humans. This talk presents our efforts to tackle the telelocomotion problem from the bottom-up and top-down, analyzing contact-rich robot dynamics to derive design principles for intrinsically-stable terradynamics, and leveraging the theory of human sensorimotor learning and control to design provably-safe interfaces for nonlinear control systems including legged robots.
https://www.ri.cmu.edu/event/ri-seminar-sam-burden-university-of-washington-assistant-professor-2020-01-17/
