Robotics

• Robots have to deal with sensors (like vision) and with actuators like motors.
• Honda does good work here in what we typically consider robots (things that look like people).
• There has been work for years in factory robots. E.g. a lot of welding on cars is done robotically.
• Actuators work well with wheels, but there are issues of degrees of freedom for joints.
• Touch is surprisingly difficult.
• There are also a lot of robots like toy robots, and robotic farming equipment.
• Google (and others) are making good progress on self-driving cars.
• You can get production cars that park themselves.
• These often take advantage of sensors we don't have (e.g. radar, GPS).
• Drone aircraft though often remote control have fly alone support, and a lot of aircraft are frequently flown autopilot (robotically).
• Robocup.
• Cognitive robotics. Function along side people.
• Robotics people at MDX: Zhijun Yang, Martin Smith and many in PDE.