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GRASP Seminar Series: Fall 2009
October 30th, 11:00 a.m., Wu & Chen Auditorium, Levine Hall (3330 Walnut Street)
Martin Buehler
iRobot Corporation
"Mobile robots that make a difference - on the ground, under water, and in the research lab"
Abstract: Mobile robots are becoming widely deployed, thanks to their increasing utility and affordability. They have started to carve out niches where there is a value proposition for users in the home, the military, and industry. This presentation will describe some of the current iRobot systems that have benefited from these trends. With thousands of ground robots deployed for tasks like IED neutralization, where they save lives every day, the question from the users is no longer whether there is a need for robots, but when more capabilities will be available. This presentation will illustrate our research efforts to develop tomorrow's platforms and capabilities, ranging from throwbots to shape-shifting soft robots, and from efforts to increase autonomy to projects in multi-robot control, collaborative robots, HRI and manipulation.
Biography: Dr. Martin Buehler is the Chief Roboticist and a Research Principal Investigator in the research group at iRobot Corporation. From 2003-2008, he was the Director of Robotics at Boston Dynamics, and Chief Engineer for the BigDog project. From 1991 to 2003, he was an Assistant, then an Associate Professor with tenure at McGill University. His research focused on legged robots, sensor based dynamic grasping, and direct drive motor control.
Buehler grew up in the rural Black Forest region of southern Germany, and studied electrical engineering at the University of Karlsruhe. He received the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Yale University in 1985 and 1990. After a PostDoc at MIT's leglab, he joined McGill University in 1991 as an NSERC Junior Industrial Research Chair and a Scholar of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. Buehler has served as an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation and on the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Robotics Research. Currently he is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Field Robotics, and serves on the Advisory Board of the International Journal of Robotics Research. He has over 100 publications on mobile robots, manipulation and motor control, co-edited the 2007 Springer book on the DARPA Grand Challenge, and the upcoming 2009 Springer book on the DARPA Urban Challenge.
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