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GRASP Special Seminar: Fall 2008
November 19th , 12:00 p.m., 307 Levine Hall (3330 Walnut Street)
Andrew Ng
Stanford University
"STAIR: The STanford Artificial Intelligence Robot project"
Abstract: This talk will describe the STAIR home assistant robot project, and
the satellite projects that led to key STAIR components such
as (i) robotic grasping of previously unknown objects, (ii) depth
perception from a single still image, and (iii) multi-modal robotic
perception.
Since its birth in 1956, the AI dream has been to build systems that exhibit
broad-spectrum competence and intelligence. STAIR revisits this dream, and
seeks to integrate onto a single robot platform tools drawn from all areas
of AI including learning, vision, navigation, manipulation, planning,
and speech/NLP. This is in distinct contrast to, and also represents an
attempt to reverse, the 30 year old trend of working on fragmented AI
sub-fields. STAIR's goal is a useful home assistant robot, and over
the long term, we envision a single robot that can perform tasks such as
tidying up a room, using a dishwasher, fetching and delivering items, and
preparing meals.
In this talk, I'll describe our progress on having the STAIR robot fetch
items from around the office, and on having STAIR take inventory of office
items. Specifically, I'll describe: (i) learning to grasp previously unseen
objects (including unloading items from a dishwasher); (ii) probabilistic
multi-resolution maps, which enable the robot to open/use doors; (iii) a
robotic foveal+peripheral vision system for object recognition and tracking.
I'll also outline some of the main technical ideas---such as learning 3-d
reconstructions from a single still image, and reinforcement learning
algorithms for robotic control---that played key roles in enabling these STAIR
components.
Biography: Andrew Ng is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Stanford
University. His research interests include machine learning, reinforcement
learning/control, and broad-competence AI. His group has won best paper/best
student paper awards at ACL, CEAS, 3DRR and ICML. He is also a recipient
of the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship.
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