Grants and Contributions:
Grant or Award spanning more than one fiscal year. (2017-2018 to 2022-2023)
Our research focuses on developing a level of spatial competency, motion safety, grasping and manipulation capability in autonomous mobile manipulators (AMM) that is well beyond that of any existing robotic systems. Such capabilities include navigating in indoor and dynamic environments with humans walking around, carrying out basic manipulation tasks and interacting with humans in tasks such as transfer of objects from robot to human. The target application for these fundamental capabilities is service robotics, e.g., a helper robot that can assist frail or disabled persons (called Assisted Persons or APs) in independent living, helping in tasks such as finding and retrieving objects from around the home (e.g. a bottle of pills) and handing them to the AP (hand over task), etc. to ultimately improve the quality of life in daytoday functioning of an AP living independently.