The GRASP Lab Home Holiday Video
Image: Turner Topping, Kod*lab PhD researcher,
operating Minitaur at National Robotics Week, Museum of Science & Industry, April 2017.
Kod*lab PhD researchers Turner Topping and Sonia Roberts, and Research Assistant Mitch Fogelson walked and bounded Minitaur for hundreds of visitors during National Robotics Week, April 14th and 15th, 2017 at MSI, Chicago
Robot Zoo, Robot Revolution, The Franklin Institute, March 11, 2017
Kod*lab participated in Robot Zoo, a one day event at
the Franklin Institute coinciding with the exhibition Robot Revolution. Minitaur and a hopper
leg were on site to interact with visitors. Researchers gave insights about our
legged robots use for desert research. See the poster here
for more information.
Kod*lab helped host “Be a Pennovator” at Pennovation on Sunday, April 23rd with robot demos, talks and a Trashbot workshop.
Jessa Lingel “A sociotechnical approach to code and workspaces
Jessa Lingel, Assistant Professor of Communication at
the Annenberg School for Communication, presented her talk “A sociotechnical
approach to code and workspaces” at Kod*lab’s Research Group in December 2016. There
was lively discussion around the culture of tools in lab and stirring up of
ideas about researchers’ relationships to their robots. For instance did you
know about rubber duck debugging? As a result, Kod*lab intends to pursue
further engagement in teaching and research with Jessa and her colleagues.
Kod*lab family of robots portrait
Back row, left to right: Penn Jerboa, Delta Hopper, RHex. Front row, left to right: Minitaur, Inu.
Jerboa is a 2.5Kg tailed bipedal robot with two passive-compliant underactuated legs, and a tail that can pitch as well as yaw. Jerboa can sit, stand, walk, hop, run, turn, leap, and more. Delta Hopper is a power-autonomous one-legged robot that uses direct drive motors to power hopping in three dimensions. RHex is a biologically inspired hexapod small enough for a human to carry in a backpack (10kg). Ghost Minitaur™ has high-torque brushless outrunner motors and specialized leg design that let this machine run and jump over difficult terrain. Inu is a quadrupedal robot equipped with a parallel elastic-actuated spine mechanism, allowing its back to bend in a similar manner to many animals such as squirrels and dogs.
Kod*lab at the Robot Zoo for Robot Revolution
Join us Saturday, March 11th, 2017 at the Robot Zoo for Robot Revolution exhibition at The Franklin Institute! What affects springiness of animal legs? Why would robots want springy legs? Springy legs let legged robots get back some of the energy they put into every step, making it easier to run. Learn how Kod*lab uses ideas about springiness from nature to make robots run better and how that’s important to our desert research.
(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXcsgwqO17A)
During the summer of 2016, the GRASP Lab at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences hosted 10 middle school math and science teachers from the School District of Philadelphia. The teachers spent 6+ weeks learning about and conducting research in the field of robotics while developing curriculum that could be applied in their classrooms in order to inspire and develop engineering and computer science skills in their students. Three of those teachers and their experiences in the program, are represented in this video. Funding for the Robotics Research Experience for Teachers program comes from the National Science Foundation (#1542301). For more information, visit: https://www.grasp.upenn.edu/programs/research-experience-teachers-ret.
Special thanks to Dan Ueda, Ashley Viechweg, Cashonna Thomas and Danelle Ross.
(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzmcN9MGgIA) The springiness of RHex’s legs is due to their mechanical design. In every step, the legs store energy during compression in the first part of stance and then release some of that energy during the second part of stance. While the specific design of the legs has changed through the years, every iteration of RHex has included mechanically springy legs.http://kodlab.seas.upenn.edu/Haldunk/ISER2000
Kod*lab post-doc, Paul Reverdy has a series of papers
1) “Parameter estimation in softmax decision-making models with linear objective functions”
This paper studies the parameter estimation problem for a model of human decision making.
2) “Gaussian multi-armed bandit problems with multiple objectives”
3) “Mobile robots as remote sensors for spatial point process models”
This paper develops control schemes to help robots develop statistically-rigorous measurements of the density of objects in space, for example the density of plants in a domain.