This project, supporting existing and developing research in robotic manipulators, aims to provide an infrastructure where faculty and students can work towards synergistic advances in robot manipulation and in the design of low-cost manipulation platforms. The work develops both new, low-cost hardware designs characterized by simplicity and predictability and stable and robust planning and control algorithms that will use sensing and learning to adapt to the different (non-ideal) capabilities of manipulators. The equipment will foster tight integration between different research programs such that algorithmic advances can be rapidly deployed on new hardware, and new hardware capabilities can drive new algorithmic development. Addressing both the algorithmic and device-level challenges that enable robots to interact adaptively with the physical world and with humans in unstructured dynamic environments, the project responds to the current lack of rigorous and practical scientific foundation for manipulation. The combination of algorithmic solutions to modeling, control, planning, and adaptation, and a robotic manipulation platform is expected to lead to new low-cost manipulation platforms within a few years. The designs include compliant and capable robot manipulators, as well as modular cooperative, neuromimetic, and underwater manipulators.
Broader Impacts: Affordable, teachable, mobile manipulators should enable in-home assistants for the elderly and/or incapacitated. The next-generation of robot manipulators is likely to support new levels of factory automation, in which robots will work synergistically with humans to reduce manufacturing cost. This diverse interdisciplinary group will continue the training of solid students and participate in broad outreach activities through the Boston Museum of Science and the Boston Aquarium. Education outreach includes Robotic Education Workshops.
