Events
Past Event
Elizabeth Farrell Helbling, Taking Off: Autonomy for Insect-scale Robots
Center for Robotics and Biosystems (CRB)
12:00 PM
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ME B211, Technological Institute
Details
Speaker: Elizabeth Farrell Helbling, Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cornell University
Title: Taking Off: Autonomy for Insect-scale Robots
Location: IEMS C211. Room change to ME B211
Zoom Link: https://tinyurl.com/CRBSeminar
• NU-authenticated attendees will be automatically admitted. Others, please email amy.nedoss@northwestern.edu to be admitted from the waiting room.
Abstract: Countless science fiction works have set our expectations for small, mobile, autonomous robots for use in a broad range of applications. The ability to move through highly dynamic and complex environments can expand capabilities in search and rescue operations and safety inspection tasks. These robots can also form a diverse collective to provide more flexibility than a multifunctional robot. Advances in multi-scale manufacturing and the proliferation of small electronic devices have paved the way to realizing this vision with centimeter-scale robots. However, there remain significant challenges in making these highly-articulated mechanical devices fully autonomous due to the severe mass and power constraints. My research takes a holistic approach to navigating the inherent tradeoffs in each component in terms of their size, mass, power, and computation requirements. In this talk I will present strategies for creating an autonomous vehicle, the RoboBee – an insect-scale flapping-wing robot with unprecedented mass, power, and computation constraints. I will present my work on the analysis of control and power requirements for this vehicle, as well as results on the integration of onboard sensors. I also will discuss recent results that culminate nearly two decades of effort to create a power autonomous insect-scale vehicle. Lastly, I will outline how this design strategy can be readily applied to other micro and bioinspired autonomous robots.
Bio: Farrell Helbling is an assistant professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University, where she focuses on the systems-level design of insect-scale vehicles. Her graduate and post-doctoral work at the Harvard Microrobotics Lab focused on the Harvard RoboBee, an insect-scale flapping-wing robot, and HAMR, a bio-inspired crawling robot. Her research looks at the integration of the control system, sensors, and power electronics within the strict weight and power constraints of these vehicles. Her work on the first autonomous flight of a centimeter-scale vehicle was recently featured on the cover of Nature. She is a 2018 Rising Star in EECS, the recipient of a NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, and co-author on the IROS 2015 Best Student Paper for an insect-scale, hybrid aerial-aquatic vehicle. Her work on the RoboBee project can be seen at the Boston Museum of Science, World Economic Forum, London Science Museum, and the Smithsonian, as well as in the popular press (The New York Times, PBS NewsHour, Science Friday, and the BBC). She is interested in the codesign of mechanical and electrical systems for mass-, power-, and computation-constrained robots.
Time
Friday, April 5, 2024 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Location
ME B211, Technological Institute Map
Contact
Calendar
Center for Robotics and Biosystems (CRB)
ME Alumni Seminar Series- Apostolos Karafillis
McCormick - Mechanical Engineering (ME)
2:00 PM
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1.350, Ford Motor Company Engineering Design Center
Details
On the Design and Manufacture of Structures for Flightworthy Gas Turbines
by Apostolos Karafillis
Chief Consulting Engineer
Structures and Additive Design
GE Aerospace
Abstract
The design and manufacture of gas turbine components presents unique technical challenges that highlight the relevance and importance of the disciplines of mechanical and aerospace engineering. In this presentation, we will focus on describing the fundamental technical requirements for parts of flightworthy gas turbines and will then share examples of designs and innovations to meet these requirements. The talk will include the description of typical loading conditions and operating environments, and the description of how these requirements guide the selection of design features, materials, and manufacturing methods. We will discuss three specific examples: The selection of features and architecture of a bearing housing, the design of a turbine frame with a mix of metallic and composite materials, and the development of methods for characterizing the performance of components manufactured with non-traditional methods. Through these examples, it will be shown that successful hardware design requires the combination of robust design methods, rigorous implementation of the principles of mechanics of materials, and the development of design and manufacturing innovation.
Time
Tuesday, April 30, 2024 at 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM
Location
1.350, Ford Motor Company Engineering Design Center Map
Contact
Calendar
McCormick - Mechanical Engineering (ME)
Russ Tedrake, MIT and Toyota Research Institute, "Dexterous Manipulation with Diffusion Policies"
Center for Robotics and Biosystems (CRB)
11:30 AM
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M416, Technological Institute
Details
Speaker: Russ Tedrake, Toyota Professor of EECS, Aero/Astro, ME at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and VP of Research at Toyota Research Institute
Title: Dexterous Manipulation with Diffusion Policies
Date and Time: Friday, May 3 at 11:30 AM CT
Location: Tech ESAM M416 and Zoom
Zoom Link: https://tinyurl.com/CRBSeminar
• NU-authenticated attendees will be automatically admitted. Others, please email amy.nedoss@northwestern.edu to be admitted from the waiting room.
Abstract:
At the Toyota Research Institute (TRI), we've been working on behavior cloning for dexterous manipulation. Building on the Diffusion Policy framework that we've recently developed in collaboration with Shuran Song, we now have a very solid pipeline for taking ~50-100 bimanual haptic teleop demonstrations and turning that into a surprisingly effective visuomotor (+tactile) policy. Because there is no explicit state representation required, these skills work equally well manipulating deformable, liquid, or other difficult to model tasks as they do for more traditional rigid-object manipulation. We're actively scaling this up into the multi-task setting and now see a plausible path towards "Large Behavior Models". This behavior cloning pipeline is working incredibly well, and must be understood deeply in the broader context of output-feedback control. Time permitting, I'll also tell you a bit about some new results in optimization-based planning and control, and where they might fit in the age of foundation models.
Bio:
Russ Tedrake is the Toyota Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering, and Aero/Astro, and he is a member of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL). He is also the Vice President of Robotics Research at Toyota Research Institute (TRI). He received a B.S.E. in Computer Engineering from the University of Michigan in 1999, and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in 2004. Dr. Tedrake is the Director of the MIT CSAIL Center for Robotics and was the leader of MIT’s entry in the DARPA Robotics Challenge. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, the MIT Jerome Saltzer Award for undergraduate teaching, the DARPA Young Faculty Award in Mathematics, the 2012 Ruth and Joel Spira Teaching Award, and was named a Microsoft Research New Faculty Fellow. His research has been recognized with numerous conference best paper awards, including ICRA, Robotics: Science and Systems, Humanoids, Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control, as well as the inaugural best paper award from the IEEE RAS Technical Committee on Whole-Body Control.
Time
Friday, May 3, 2024 at 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM
Location
M416, Technological Institute Map
Contact
Calendar
Center for Robotics and Biosystems (CRB)