Topic: On Shapes, Robots, and Sensor-Based Controls

Speaker: David Navarro-Alarcon, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU)

Time: Friday, September 27, 2024, 10:00-12:00

Venue: Conference Room 1818, Baiyan Building

Tencent Conference ID: 116-353-373

Abstract:

The goal of this talk is to share recent research results from my group at PolyU on the development of sensor-based methods to guide the motion of various robotic systems. I will begin by presenting our work on visual shape servoing of deformable objects, a problem that has become one of the most active topics in robot manipulation in recent years. I will then show how we used our work with variable morphologies to develop a new class of soft-rigid mobile agents with the capability to actively change its morphology. Other applications of our shape-based control methodology will also be discussed, e.g., new curve-based formation controls for multi-agent systems, non-prehensile strategies to transport objects with soft-rigid mobile robots, vision-based controls for cosmetic dermatology robots, among others. The performance of these methods will be illustrated with several experimental videos.

About the Speaker:

David Navarro-Alarcon is an Associate Professor with the Department of Mechanical Engineering of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), and the Principal Investigator of the Robotics and Machine Intelligence Laboratory (ROMI-Lab). His research mostly focuses on problems involving modelling and control of motion tasks in robots. He received his PhD degree in mechanical and automation engineering from The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) in 2014 under the supervision of Yun-Hui Liu. David is a Senior Member of the IEEE and currently serves as an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO).

School of Automation Science and Electrical Engineering