Programming Machines That Work
Dan
Koditschek
Department
of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Abstract:
Robotics is a
fledgling discipline concerned with programming work: that is, specifying and
controlling the exchange of energy between a machine and its environment.
Because our understanding of how to do this is still quite rudimentary, the
best progress in the field has come from a mix of inspired building and formal
analysis. For more than a decade, my
students and I have pursued such an agenda,
building robots whose controllers drive the coupled robot-environment
state toward a goal set and away from obstacles. The talk reviews our progress
to date: what sort of “programs” do we know to build, with what theoretical
guarantees, and with what empirical success?
Because animals
exhibit so many of the capabilities we would wish to imbue in our robots, it
seems plausible that useful inspiration may be gained from biology. A second
theme of the talk concerns the benefits we have enjoyed from a close
collaboration with biomechanists over the last few
years. In particular, our hexapod, RHex, built to
embody the essential biomechanical principles of animal runners, exhibits
mobility superior to any previously documented autonomous programmable machine.
The example of RHex serves well to illustrate some of
the important concepts from biology that hold significant promise for the
future of robotics, among these being the confluence of form and function; the
tradeoffs between central and peripheral and between feedback and feedforward control implementations; and the allure and
present limitations of “evolutionary” thinking.
Short Biography:
Daniel Koditschek received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering
from
Koditschek's
research interests include robotics and, generally, the application of
dynamical systems theory to intelligent mechanisms. For over a decade, he and his students have
pursued the general problem of programming work & commanding the exchange
of energy between a machine and its environment so as to achieve a novel goal
expressed in some abstract terms. They attempt to integrate tools and concepts
from dynamical systems theory with ideas from computer science in building
physical robots and mechanisms that illustrate fundamental challenges and
opportunities.
A continuing gulf
between the aspirations and achievements of robotics suggests the potential
value of borrowing from biological solutions to this problem, and Koditschek's recent research incorporates a growing
involvement with the life sciences. His archival papers have been published in
a broad spectrum of journals ranging from the Transactions of the American
Mathematical Society through the Journal of Experimental Biology, with a
concentration in several of the IEEE and ASME Transactions. Various aspects of
this work have received mention in general scientific publications such as
Scientific American and Science as well as in the popular and lay press such as
The New York Times and Discover Magazine. Koditschek
is a member of the AAAS, AMS, ACM, IEEE,