Georgia Tech Leads as Robotics World Converges on Atlanta for ICRA 2025

Georgia Tech Leads as Robotics World Converges on Atlanta for ICRA 2025

Georgia Tech Leads as Robotics World Converges on Atlanta for ICRA 2025

The IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) will be held Monday through Friday at the Georgia World Congress Center.

“This is the flagship robotics conference,” said Seth Hutchinson, a former Georgia Tech professor who served as one of two general chairs for this year’s event. “Most of the robotics researchers you want to hear from or see will be at this conference.”

This includes faculty from Georgia Tech's colleges of Computing, Engineering, and Sciences, as well as the Georgia Tech Research Institute, the Institute for People and Technology, and the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines.

ICRA will feature more than 2,000 presented research papers. Georgia Tech researchers authored or co-authored 57, including 18 written by faculty and students from the College of Computing.

In addition to the presented research, the conference will have demos, exhibitions, and robotics competitions throughout the week. The competitions include the Earth Rover Challenge for robot navigation over challenging terrain, the Quadruped Robot Challenges, and the Roboracer Autonomous Grand Prix.

More than 130 robotics companies and research institutes will showcase exhibitions. ICRA also hosts a career fair that Hutchinson said provides an excellent opportunity for Georgia Tech students interested in attending.

“We’re able to attract a lot of vendors. For researcher-oriented conferences, there’s no conference where you’ll see this many robotics companies showing up and showing off what they’re doing," he said.

"We have a massive career fair you don’t get at other conferences, so if you’re a student looking for work, this is a good place to be.”

Hutchinson, the former executive director of Tech’s Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines, said ICRA comes to Atlanta when worldwide interest in robotics is at an all-time high.

Read the full article posted at the College of Computing >>

Creativity and Innovation on Display at Spring 2025 TechMade Symposium

Creativity and Innovation on Display at Spring 2025 TechMade Symposium

The George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering's Spring 2025 TechMade Symposium: Elevating Georgia Tech's Maker Culture brought together students, faculty, and staff to explore research and activities conducted in makerspaces on campus and discuss strategies for elevating the maker culture across Georgia Tech.

TechMade is an initiative across the colleges of engineering, business, and design. Supported by the college's deans, it gives students hands-on exposure to product realization, from design to manufacturing, regardless of their major. The goal is to unify the widespread design and creation opportunities on campus while building a collaborative design community for students and researchers across the Institute.

The event featured lightning presentations from several speakers, including Amit Jariwala, Director of Design and Innovation in the Woodruff School; Julie Linsey, professor in the Woodruff School; Mohsen Moghaddam, Gary C. Butler Family Associate Professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering and the Woodruff School; Noah Posner, research scientist in the School of Industrial Design; Abigale Stangl, assistant professor in the School of Industrial Design, and Tim Trent, research technologist II in the Institute for People and Technology (IPaT).

Noah Posner and Tim Trent are faculty members in IPaT.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE >>

INNS Executive Director Search Vision Talk: Candidate 3

Three finalists have been chosen for the role of Executive Director of the Institute for Neuroscience, Neurotechnology, and Society (INNS). Each finalist will meet with Georgia Tech faculty, staff, and IRI leadership and give a seminar on their vision for the INNS.

Finalist 2: Michelle LaPlaca
Date: June 9th, 2025
Time: 11a.m. - Noon 
Location: Callaway Manufacturing Research Building (GT Manufacturing Institute)
813 Ferst Drive NW, Atlanta, GA 30332,  seminar room 114

INNS Executive Director Search Vision Talk: Candidate 2

Three finalists have been chosen for the role of Executive Director of the Institute for Neuroscience, Neurotechnology, and Society (INNS). Each finalist will meet with Georgia Tech faculty, staff, and IRI leadership and give a seminar on their vision for the INNS.

Finalist 2: Chris Rozell
Date: June 3rd, 2025
Time: 11a.m. - Noon 
Location: Callaway Manufacturing Research Building (GT Manufacturing Institute)
813 Ferst Drive NW, Atlanta, GA 30332,  seminar room 114

INNS Executive Director Search Vision Talk: Candidate 1

Three finalists have been chosen for the role of Executive Director of the Institute for Neuroscience, Neurotechnology, and Society (INNS). Each finalist will meet with Georgia Tech faculty, staff, and IRI leadership and give a seminar on their vision for the INNS.

Finalist 1: Lewis Wheaton
Date: May 28th, 2025
Time: 11a.m. - Noon 
Location: Callaway Manufacturing Research Building (GT Manufacturing Institute)
813 Ferst Drive NW, Atlanta, GA 30332,  seminar room 114

AI Chatbots Aren’t Experts on Psych Medication Reactions — Yet

 Mohit Chandra, a third-year computer science Ph.D. student.

Pictured: Mohit Chandra, a third-year computer science Ph.D. student.

Asking artificial intelligence (AI) for advice can be tempting. Powered by large language models (LLMs), AI chatbots are available 24/7, are often free to use, and draw on troves of data to answer questions. Now, people with mental health conditions are asking AI for advice when experiencing potential side effects of psychiatric medicines — a decidedly higher-risk situation than asking it to summarize a report.

One question puzzling the AI research community is how AI performs when asked about mental health emergencies. Globally, including in the U.S., there is a significant gap in mental health treatment, with many individuals having limited to no access to mental healthcare. It’s no surprise that people have started turning to AI chatbots with urgent health-related questions.

Now, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a new framework to evaluate how well AI chatbots can detect potential adverse drug reactions in chat conversations, and how closely their advice aligns with human experts. The study was led by Institute for People and Technology (IPaT) faculty member Munmun De Choudhury, J.Z. Liang Associate Professor in the School of Interactive Computing, and Mohit Chandra, a third-year computer science Ph.D. student.

“People use AI chatbots for anything and everything,” said Chandra, the study’s first author. “When people have limited access to healthcare providers, they are increasingly likely to turn to AI agents to make sense of what’s happening to them and what they can do to address their problem. We were curious how these tools would fare, given that mental health scenarios can be very subjective and nuanced.”

De Choudhury, Chandra, and their colleagues will introduce their new framework at the 2025 Annual Conference of the Nations of the Americas Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, April 29–May 4.

Read more about this research here >>

AR/VR Researchers Bring Immersive Experience to News Stories

Tao Lu, a Ph.D. student at the School of Interactive Computing, with Assistant Professor Yalong Yang

Pictured: Tao Lu, a Ph.D. student in the School of Interactive Computing, with Assistant Professor Yalong Yang

It may not be long before augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR) headsets cause them to keep their phones in their pockets when they want to read The New York Times or The Washington Post.

Data visualization and AR/VR researchers at Georgia Tech are exploring how users can interact with news stories through AR/VR headsets and are determining which stories are best suited for virtual presentation.

Tao Lu, a Ph.D. student at the School of Interactive Computing, Assistant Professor Yalong Yang, and Associate Professor Alex Endert led a recent study that they say is among the first to explore user preference in virtually designed news stories. Yang and Endert are also faculty members in the Institute for People and Technology at Georgia Tech.

The researchers will present a paper they authored based on the study at the 2025 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems this week in Yokohama, Japan.

Digital platforms have elevated explanatory journalism, which provides greater context for a subject through data, images, and in-depth analysis. These platforms also allow stories to be more visually appealing through graphic design and animation.

Lu said AR/VR can further elevate explanatory journalism through 3D, interactive spatial environments. He added that media organizations should think about how the stories they produce will appear in AR/VR as much as they think about how they will appear on mobile devices.

“We’re giving users another option to experience the story and for designers and developers to show their stories in another modality,” Lu said.

“A screen-based story on a smartphone is easy to use and cost-effective. However, some stories are better presented in AR/VR, which will become more popular as technology gets cheaper. AR/VR can provide 3D spatial information that would be hard to understand on a phone or desktop screen.”

Read more about this research here >>

Exploring Diabetes Care Challenges in India

Pictured are faculty members from  IIT Madras, Emory University, Georgia Tech's Institute for People and Technology, and other members of the diabetes expert group

Pictured are faculty members from IIT Madras, Emory University, Georgia Tech's Institute for People and Technology, and other members of the diabetes expert group.

Georgia Tech researchers help identify the top 10 most pressing challenges to improving diabetes care in India.

With more than 200 million people suffering from or at high risk for diabetes, India is referred to as the diabetes capital of the world. And the complex challenges faced by people living with the disease suggest the need for a diverse range of technological solutions. 

So, engineers and clinicians from both India and the U.S., including Georgia Tech researchers, met recently at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) in Chennai to identify 10 priority diabetes-related challenges faced by both patients and caregivers in India — challenges that technology could solve in the next decade. The event was organized by IIT Madras’ Shankar Center of Excellence in Diabetes Research (SCoEDR), Emory Global Diabetes Research Center (EGDRC), and Georgia Tech’s Institute for People and Technology (IPaT).

The goal of developing the top 10 list was to incorporate insights from diabetes patients, healthcare professionals, and supportive family members to guide engineers and technologists in identifying key challenges that disproportionately affect people with diabetes and their caregivers. The approach aims to accelerate innovation and entrepreneurship, reducing the time needed to create affordable technological solutions that can help alleviate the burden of diabetes.

Anubama Rajan, co-head of SCoEDR, assistant professor at IIT Madras, and a member of the expert group, said that “clearly defining the problems faced by patients, their caregivers, and doctors is among the most crucial steps in developing technological solutions.”

The Top 10 Problems for Diabetes in India can now be found at stopncd.org. Jithin Sam Varghese, co-director of the EGDRC Diabetes Translational Accelerator, and member of the expert group, encourages anyone interested in developing solutions to work together. 

“There is a great need for engineers and doctors to collaborate at the very initial stages of product development to clearly define the problem a technology aims to solve,” says Varghese. “By fostering these early partnerships, we can accelerate the development of impactful solutions.” 

As a first step in generating solutions, three of the problems identified — inaccessible diabetes education; delayed detection of asymptomatic diabetic foot disease; and the lack of affordable, protective diabetic footwear — were chosen as problem statements for the DiaTech 10X – Diabetes in India Hackathon. The hackathon, which ended April 13 and had over 170 participants from India and the U.S., invited students to collaborate on innovative solutions for diabetes care. The winning teams proposed artificial intelligence-enabled solutions for diagnosing and monitoring diabetic foot disease using noninvasive approaches.

StopNCD.org strives to bridge the gap between problems, research, and real-world translation of solutions, ensuring that the most innovative solutions reach the communities that need them.

“This diabetes top 10 challenge and DiaTech 10X India hackathon were a perfect opportunity to combine the world-class expertise of Emory and IIT Madras with IPaT’s people-centered approach to technical innovations,” noted Michael Best, executive director of IPaT. “This initiative represents our shared commitment to global health and wellbeing, from Atlanta to India and beyond.”

Professor's CNBC Course Highlights College’s Leadership in Expanding AI Literacy

Interactive Computing Professor Mark Riedl co-organized the 2024 Summit on Responsible Computing, AI, and Society, where AI literacy was a key topic. Photo by Terence Rushon/College of Computing

Interactive Computing Professor Mark Riedl co-organized the 2024 Summit on Responsible Computing, AI, and Society, where AI literacy was a key topic. Photo by Terence Rushon/College of Computing

If you’re worried about artificial intelligence (AI) taking your job, Georgia Tech’s Mark Riedl says that probably won’t happen. However, losing your job to someone who knows how to leverage AI tools in the workplace is something to be concerned about.

To help people beyond campus understand what AI tools are available and how to use them effectively, Riedl recently co-taught an online course by CNBC Make It titled How to Use AI to Be More Successful at Work.

“The running joke right now is that AI will not replace people, but people who use AI will replace people who do not use AI,” said Riedl, professor in the School of Interactive Computing

The 90-minute course offers tips and hacks to users who are:

  • Inexperienced in using AI tools in the workplace and are looking to grow in professional development
  • Small business owners who are overwhelmed with administrative tasks, marketing, industry research, and data analysis
  • Job seekers looking to stand out from the crowd
  • People seeking to improve their work-life balance

Riedl, whose research focuses on human-centered and explainable AI, taught sections of the course on the foundation of AI. One of the biggest sections of the course covers large-language models (LLMs). 

“When large language models were put forward as chatbots, this was the first time that any person out in the world could naturally interact with an AI system without having to learn to program or write code,” Riedl said.

For less than $100, the on-demand course includes a detailed workbook that helps users consider each aspect of their jobs and daily lives and how AI can improve them.

The Big Picture

CNBC’s use of Riedl’s expertise is one of many examples of how College of Computing faculty are leading the way in teaching AI literacy.

David Joyner, executive director of online education, said Georgia Tech’s Online Master of Science in Computer Science (OMSCS) program continues to innovate with AI literacy in mind.

[RELATED: Experts Say Life-long Learning is a Must to Keep Pace with Generative AI]

He said companies and employees alike are learning to navigate AI. Companies are considering AI from a general perspective, focusing on how it can make their businesses more efficient, while employees are using it to become more versatile and valuable workers.

“It’s an interesting dichotomy,” Joyner said. “If companies are trying to figure out how to operate more efficiently, and you have people using these tools to be more productive, at what point does the company need to prioritize using these tools instead of letting their use be organic? We’re still in this experimental phase.”

In a conversation with former College of Computing interim dean Alex Orso, Joyner discusses how OMSCS is staying at the forefront in equipping students with the latest technology skills they need to be successful in a fluctuating industry.

“We must figure out what generative AI can do well and properly leverage it so we’re not cutting out the foundation of a building and replacing it with sticks,” Joyner said.

The complete conversation between Joyner and Orso is available on the College's Youtube channel.

News Contact


Nathan Deen, Communications Officer
Georgia Tech School of Interactive Computing
nathan.deen@cc.gatech.edu

Transforming Aircraft Maintenance With Augmented Reality

RepĀR aircraft maintenance system being used with a tablet. The system uses a combination of augmented reality, computer vision, and artificial intelligence.

RepĀR aircraft maintenance system being used with a tablet. The system uses a combination of augmented reality, computer vision, and artificial intelligence.

An IPaT translational research team is working to advance aircraft maintenance.
 

In the dynamic world of aviation maintenance, precision, quickness, and meticulous documentation are essential. Maribeth Gandy Coleman, director of research and a Regents’ Researcher in Georgia Tech’s Institute for People and Technology (IPaT), has been leading an IPaT translational research team working to advance aircraft maintenance with PartWorks, an Atlanta-based aerospace engineering firm dedicated to extending the life and improving the operational efficiency and availability of commercial and military aircraft and spacecraft.

Coleman, a recognized augmented reality expert at Georgia Tech, has been working with the PartWorks’ engineering team to solve aircraft maintenance challenges, leading to measurable improvements in labor costs, training, repair quality, turnaround time, and maintenance process validation. This research partnership has led to the development of several patented and patent-pending solutions related to aircraft maintenance.

“I could not have hired anybody with the diverse skill sets that both Maribeth and the Georgia Tech team brought to bear,” said Scott Geller, CEO of PartWorks. “We’ve utilized different and complicated skill sets, sometimes in small quantities, that have made our project work very cost-effective. We’ve used an iterative research and development process that hasn’t had a shocking cost or huge surprises. And the Georgia Tech team has been both easy and fun to work with, too.”

This collaboration has led to PartWorks launching a new aircraft maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) augmented reality solution called RepĀR™. Designed for both military and commercial aviation, RepĀR’s augmented reality overlay transforms structural repairs by ensuring accuracy, reducing labor costs, minimizing human error, and accelerating return-to-service timelines. 

RepĀR rapidly captures structural repair data, embedding spatial awareness and real-time validation into maintenance workflows. Novice technicians can achieve results beyond their operational experience, while seasoned technicians experience measurable productivity gains.

“RepĀR exemplifies how targeted computer vision applications can deliver immediate value in aerospace manufacturing and maintenance,” said Shelley Peterson, CEO of Wizard Wells. “By precisely identifying fastener locations and validating tool placement, it reduces rework, minimizes human error, and ensures tasks are performed right the first time.”

PartWorks demonstrated RepĀR at the Aviation Week Network’s MRO Americas, which took place April 8 – 10 at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta.

“This collaborative research with industry demonstrates why Georgia Tech has interdisciplinary research institutes such as IPaT, and why you have research faculty,” said Coleman. “You’re probably not going to be able to get some Ph.D. students to do this work. The focus here with PartWorks is on translation. It’s cross-disciplinary collaboration and translation built on augmented reality work we’ve been doing for 25 years and implementing cutting-edge technology crafted to the right context to support aircraft maintenance.”

“This Georgia Tech collaboration and augmented reality MRO research and development are in conjunction with a multiyear contract we’re working on with the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) in Dayton, Ohio,” said Geller. “We’re appreciative of their partnership and excited to be getting commercial interest in RepĀR from both military and commercial aviation OEMs and MROs as well as space industry companies.”

News Contact

Walter Rich, Research Communications