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SPOTLIGHT
GT Ph.D. Student Wins Best Paper at ICRA 2024
Since humans often associate objects in a home with the room they are in, Naoki Yokoyama thinks robots that navigate human environments to perform assistive tasks should mimic that reasoning.
Roboticists have employed natural language models to help robots mimic human reasoning over the past few years. However, Yokoyama, a Ph.D. student in robotics, said these models create a “bottleneck” that prevents agents from picking up on visual cues such as room type, size, décor, and lighting.
Yokoyama presented a new framework for semantic reasoning at the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) last month in Yokohama, Japan. ICRA is the world’s largest robotics conference.
Yokoyama earned a best paper award in the Cognitive Robotics category with his Vision-Language Frontier Maps (VLFM) proposal.
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Worms Inspire Wiggly Robots That Navigate All Landscapes
Worms and snakes seem to wiggle their way across varying environments without needing to learn the terrain. In more complex landscapes, they move even faster, using obstacles to propel themselves forward like a person pulling themselves up a ladder.
“They don’t alter their body-bending pattern no matter how dense the obstacles are,” said Tianyu Wang, a robotics Ph.D. student in the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines and the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering. “We were curious if this process was passively controlled, meaning they don’t have to ‘think’ about how to deal with obstacles — we consider this a kind of ‘mechanical intelligence.’”
To determine if this passive control hypothesis was correct, a team of roboticists, physicists, and engineers led by Daniel Goldman, the Dunn Family Professor in the School of Physics, and Hang Lu, professor and Cecil J. “Pete” Silas Chair in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, developed a limbless robot. This robot helped them better understand the biology that makes worms and snakes so agile. The result is a robot that could be vital for missions in which humans and wheeled robots are limited, such as search and rescue, industrial maintenance, and planetary exploration.
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IRIM Overview
Robotics Research
The depth and breadth of IRIM breaks through disciplinary boundaries and allows for transformative research that transitions from theory to robustly deployed systems featuring next-generation robots. Fundamental research includes expertise in mechanics, control, perception, artificial intelligence and cognition, interaction, and systems.
Robotics Education
Georgia Tech offers an interdisciplinary path to an M.S. and Ph.D. in Robotics to students enrolled in a participating school within either the Colleges of Computing or Engineering. A fully integrated, multidisciplinary experience, the M.S. & Ph.D. programs include both coursework and research with faculty members in various units across campus.
Core Research Facilities
The Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines at Georgia Tech supports and facilitates the operation of several core research facilities on campus allowing our faculty, students and collaborators to advance the boundaries of robotics research.
IRIM & Industry
Our Industry Affiliates Program allows members to explore opportunities for research collaboration, facilities and services, consulting, student hiring, and other interactions. Whether you join as a strategic partner, an affiliate, or as a member of one of our customized consortia, your company will be supported through our work as a interdisciplinary group of robotics leaders.
IRIM & Outreach
The Institute for Robotics & Intelligent Machines (IRIM) participates in numerous K-12 STEM and community outreach activities related to robotics. Additionally, IRIM hosts tours throughout the year, and our student group, RoboGrads, participates in activities to raise awareness of the importance of robotics technology and stimulate interest in the field
New Faculty Spotlight
Matthew Hale | Associate Professor - Schools of Electrical & Computer Engineering
Matthew Hale joined the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech as an Associate Professor in the spring of 2024. His research interests include multi-agent control and optimization, deceptive decision-making, and applications of these methods to drones and other robots. He has received the NSF CAREER Award, ONR YIP, and AFOSR YIP. Prior to joining Georgia Tech, Matthew was Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Florida. He received his BSE from the University of Pennsylvania, and he received his MS and PhD from Georgia Tech.
Research Focus Areas:
- Algorithms & Optimization
- Asynchronous network coordination
- Autonomy
- Graph theory in multi-agent systems
- Privacy in control
- Robotics
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