Mechanisms for
Manipulation: From Humans to Robots and Back
Professor Matei Ciocarlie, Associate Professor of Mechanical
Engineering at Columbia University
ABSTRACT
What is the key to success in
dexterous manipulation: the mechanical structure of the hand, the rich tactile
and proprioceptive data it can collect, analysis and planning in the brain, or
perhaps all of these? Believing these areas are deeply intertwined, we are
pursuing them simultaneously, and this talk will present an overview of our
recent results in both autonomous robots and wearable hand orthoses. From a
mechanism design perspective, I will present our work on optimizing the
transmission mechanism for highly underactuated robot hands, aiming to build
compact yet versatile manipulators for NASA’s Astrobee robots. In recent work,
we jointly optimize the hardware of the hand and its control policy using
policy search algorithms, an approach we refer to as “Hardware as Policy”. From
a sensing perspective, I will present our optics-based tactile finger,
providing accurate touch information over a multi-curved three-dimensional
surface with no blind spots. Returning to the human hand, I will also present
our work on a wearable hand orthosis for stroke patients, focusing on
mechanical design as well as intent inferral methods for intuitive user
control.
BIOGRAPHY
Matei Ciocarlie is an Associate
Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Columbia University. His current work
focuses on robot motor control, mechanism and sensor design, planning and
learning, all aiming to demonstrate complex motor skills such as dexterous
manipulation. Matei completed his Ph.D. at Columbia University in New York;
before joining the faculty at Columbia, he was a Research Scientist and Group
Manager at Willow Garage, Inc., a privately funded Silicon Valley robotics
research lab, and then a Senior Research Scientist at Google, Inc. In
recognition of his work, Matei has been awarded the Early Career Award by the
IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, a Young Investigator Award by the Office
of Naval Research, a CAREER Award by the National Science Foundation, and a Sloan
Research Fellowship by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.