This award in the Joint NSF/DARPA Initiative on Image Understanding and Speech Recognition is for development of sensing and navigational algorithms for service robots. The ultimate goal is to develop robots for servicing vehicles, loading munitions, scraping paint on shipboard, scrubbing surfaces, etc. Indoor robotics will be emphasized, although the studied techniques of passive stereo vision and continuous- contact tactile sensing should also be of use for outdoor robotics. The multidisciplinary team (including ties with several industrial groups) will also study problem-solving techniques in machine learning, planning, geometric reasoning, and robot control.
