Title: Towards Human–AI SafetySpeaker: Prof. Andrea Bajcsy at CMU 2/20/24 – 2pm in WEB L102 Abstract:As generative artificial intelligence (AI) interacts with people at an unprecedented scale—from behavior predictors that guide autonomous cars’ decision-making to language models that converse with millions of end-users—the problem of human–AI safety has exploded in interest. However, the safety consequences of an AI model’s outputs cannot be determined in an isolated context: they are tightly coupled with the responses and behavior of human users over time. My group has been formalizing this research challenge by unifying ideas from machine learning with control theory, which rigorously...
Read MoreSeminar: Smart and Autonomous Robots for Surgery
Axel Krieger, PhD Assistant Professor Department of Mechanical Engineering Johns Hopkins University Date: Feb 13 Time: 2-2:50pm Room: WEB L102 Abstract: Robotic assisted surgery (RAS) systems, incorporate highly dexterous tools, hand tremor filtering, and motion scaling to enable a minimally invasive surgical approach, reducing collateral damage and patient recovery times. However, current state-of-the-art telerobotic surgery requires a surgeon operating every motion of the robot, resulting in long procedure times and inconsistent results. The advantages of autonomous robotic functionality have been demonstrated in applications outside of medicine, such as manufacturing and aviation. A limited form of autonomous RAS with pre-planned...
Read MoreSeminar: Interactive Policy Summarization: Explaining Robot Behavior to Human Users
Date: Feb 6 Time: 2-2:50pm Room: WEB L102 Title: Interactive Policy Summarization: Explaining Robot Behavior to Human Users Abstract: We are steadily moving towards a future where humans work with robotic assistants, robotic teammates, and even robotic tutors. Yet, human users often have little knowledge of how robots work or will respond in a new situation. To ensure safe and effective use of robots, training human users regarding the robots that they work with is imperative. In pursuit of this imperative, this talk will introduce AI Teacher: an explainable AI algorithm that summarizes robot policies via demonstrations, aiming to improve...
Read MoreSeminar: Anatomics: Co-engineering Body and Machine to Improve Bionic Performance
Date: Jan 30 Time: 2-2:50pm Room: WEB L102 Title: Anatomics: Co-engineering Body and Machine to Improve Bionic Performance Abstract: Bionic systems are no longer the stuff of science fiction. Exoskeletons and prostheses restore mobility to people with physical disabilities, and augment able-bodied performance. Although a complete bionic system is made up of biological structures (“the body”) and robotic mechanisms (“the machine”), the traditional development approach focuses solely on engineering the machine. As a result, even the most advanced bionic systems are subject to fundamental limitations of the human body. In this seminar, Prof. Clites will discuss his research in the nascent...
Read MoreLenzi Named U Presidential Scholar
Congratulations to University of Utah mechanical engineering associate professor Tommaso Lenzi, who was one of four faculty members names as Presidential Scholars at the University of Utah for 2023. This award recognizes excellence and achievement for faculty members at the assistant or associate professor level and comes with $10,000 in annual funding for three years to support their scholarship and enrich their research activities. Dr. Lenzi is among the top researchers of prosthetics in the country and is well known as the designer of the Utah Bionic Leg, which was selected as one of the Best Inventions of 2023 by Time...
Read MoreRobotics Seminar: Human–Robot Empowerment: Human Neuromusculoskeletal Modeling For Improved Collaborative & Rehabilitative Robots
Date: Jan 23rd Time: 2-2:50pm Room: WEB L102 Title: Human–Robot Empowerment: Human Neuromusculoskeletal Modeling For Improved Collaborative & Rehabilitative Robots Abstract: Robotic systems are a promising assistive technology to augment the capabilities of both healthy users and those with motor disabilities. At the same time, those systems often fail to model important aspects of the human user, and thus act in ways that are dangerous or simply not consistent with the user’s intent. In this talk, I will give an overview of my new lab’s plans to address this challenge from multiple avenues, leveraging sensing and modeling technologies — drawn...
Read MoreZhang and Brown Receive NIH Trailblazer Award
University of Utah mechanical engineering assistant professor Haohan Zhang and Kahlert School of Computing assistant professor Daniel Brown have received a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Trailblazer Award in a multi-PI proposal. This 3-year project will develop a new neck brace for patients with dropped head syndrome that use gaze tracking to help restore head-neck mobility. The Trailblazer Awards program is a prestigious opportunity for new and early-stage faculty to pursue research programs that “integrate engineering and the physical sciences with the life and/or biomedical sciences.” Dropped head syndrome is a condition most commonly associated with neuromuscular disorders where...
Read MoreFall Robotics Seminar – Jenna Burnett
Jenna Burnett, a postdoc here at the U in the Department of Health and Kinesiology who does exciting work on biomechanics, bringing together hardware and data-driven modeling with a deep knowledge of kinesiology. Thursday, December 7th at 1pm WEB 1250 Bio: Jenna Burnett is a post-doc in the Department of Health and Kinesiology. She received a BS in Physics and Mathematics at Purdue University in 2015, before completing her MS in Kinesiology, with a focus on Biomechanics, at Iowa State University in 2017. Her master’s thesis investigated bone strain before and after a long distance run to exhaustion using...
Read MoreSeminar – Designing Exoskeletons to Enhance Human Mobility
Steve Collins, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering Director, Stanford Biomechatronics Laboratory Friday, Dec. 1st at 3:00pm MEK 3550 ABSTRACT: Exoskeletons and active prosthetic limbs could improve mobility for hundreds of millions of people, but two serious challenges must first be overcome: we need ways of identifying what a device should do to benefit an individual user, and we need cheap, efficient hardware that can do it. In this talk, we will describe an approach to the design of wearable robots based on versatile emulator systems and algorithms that automatically customize assistance, which we call human-in-the-loop optimization. We will...
Read MoreAbbott’s Space Junk Cleanup Research on Fox13
Local news outlet Fox 13 featured a story on mechanical engineering professor Jake Abbott's work on building robots to clean up space junk. Abbott has been working on this problem for several years and has developed a technology dubbed "Omnimagnet" for interacting with metallic, non-magnetized objects in space without touching them. In addition to the video below, you can view the Tossed in Space article highlighting this project....
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