CARIS Lab @ UBC

PWSI grant FEATHERS awarded

2012-01-28T17:44:00.000-08:00

FEATHERS: Functional Engagement in Assisted Therapy through Exercise Robotics

I am very pleased to announce that we have just (Jan. 1, 2012) been awarded a 3-year grant by the Peter Wall Solutions Initiative to deliver and evaluate a new type of therapy program that focuses on the return of function for persons who have lost partial use of their upper limbs due to CP or stroke. Working in collaboration with 2 rehabilitation clinics in the Vancouver area, we will use social media and online games to promote upper extremity return of function for activities of daily living using intensive and long-term exercises. This is a highly interdisciplinary study that also includes the UBC Department of Physical Therapy and School of Kinesiology. Please see the abstract below. We will post progress on this grant in the coming months.

--Mike Van der Loos, CARIS Lab Associate Director
===============

ABSTRACT
We have assembled an integrated knowledge/technology/client team to develop a novel robot-based home therapy program for children with hemiplegic cerebral palsy and older persons post-stroke. Our community partners are two large local rehabilitation services institutions.

Stroke rehabilitation professionals acknowledge that about half of upper limb functional recovery after stroke is spontaneous. Any remaining recovery results from intensive, repetitive therapy over months of time, stimulating neuroplastic changes in the brain’s motor control pathways. From a human perspective, this is painful, frustrating and hard work. Sustaining a treatment over months requires significant doses of motivation and funding. Health plans do not provide sufficient coverage; motivation is highly dependent on a person’s support network and inner drive, and is often not adequately tapped. High compliance with exercise regimens predicts significantly more functional return, yet lack of compliance is a problem for over half of recovering persons. Our society needs new approaches to improve the quality of life for millions of Canadians.

We propose to combine low-cost robotic devices, a bimanual training program, social media frameworks such as Facebook Games, and on-line performance sharing between therapy clients and with their therapists. This combination of components represents a best-practices approach to bidirectional knowledge transfer, development of technology and design of well-coordinated home-based therapy. We believe that together these approaches will yield interventions for people with stroke and children with hemiparetic cerebral palsy that significantly improve functional ability and lead to improved quality of life.

Characterization of the 3D Force Response to Vestibular Stimulation

2012-01-20T11:03:00.000-08:00

In the CARIS Lab next Wednesday at 11:30am, Eric will be presenting his work on vestibular stimulation, in preparation for his Mech 598 seminar. The title of his presentation is "Characterization of the 3D Force Response to Vestibular Stimulation"

His current study examines the 3D forces produced by a person in response to electrical vestibular stimulation. By examining each foot independantly, and expanding beyond the traditional 2D approach, Eric's study should help us to better understand the way our vestibular system works.

See you there!

Congratulations to Celebrated CARISians

2012-01-19T16:33:00.000-08:00

The CARIS lab grad students had an exceptionally strong showing at the Annual UBC Mechanical Engineering "Celebration of Achievements" event on January 17, 2012 picking up SIX leadership awards and announcing our latest Department Scholar, AJung Moon.

Leadership Award winners from CARIS are:

Ambrose Chan

AJung Moon

Matthew Pan

Eric Pospisil

Sina Radmard

Navid Shirzad

As well, past CARIS undergraduate student member Shalaleh Risimani was also recognized with a Leadership Award. Congratulations to all. Your outstanding efforts are a credit to our lab!

Constrained Manipulator Visual Servoing: Rapid Robot Programming in Cluttered Workspaces

2012-01-17T14:58:00.000-08:00

This Wednesday, Jan 18, Ambrose will give a practice talk on his research entitled "Constrained Manipulator Visual Servoing: Rapid Robot Programming in Cluttered Workspaces".

2012-01-13T10:58:00.000-08:00

New Year’s Greetings to CARIS alumni and friends!

It’s been another fabulous year for the CARIS Lab at UBC. Our group has grown in number (both in terms of robots and people) and we can celebrate many successes. We congratulate Jeswin Jeyasurya and Susana Zoghbi on their graduation and welcome new students Amir Haddadi (Postdoc), Jenny Sullivan (MASc Candidate) Aiden Misraeidi (M.Eng. Candidate). Undergraduate coop/project/visiting students Andrew Strang, Andrea Slade, Hina Shah, and Max Ittermann, Matthew Smale and Sara Sheikholeslami have all made great contributions to our group and we are pleased to have them be part of the CARIS crew. We have also been very pleased to welcome Charlie the PR2 to our group - joining Carla the WAM, Roger, Betty and Riser in a growing robot family.

CARIS Highlights for Elizabeth include the successful launch of the Collaborative, Human-focused, Assistive Robotics for Manufacturing (CHARM) research project in partnership with GM Canada, Laval and McGill, and (of course) the arrival of PR2. Visits to Laval (twice!), the road trips to the lab retreat in Hope and the Tech HVC mine in Logan Lake (and NOT hitting a deer), IROS and participation on the HRI program committee at Georgia Tech also loom large. Activities related to the NSERC Chair for Women in Science and Engineering have also required a fair amount of planes, trains and automobiles. The greatest satisfaction has been to see the development of CARISians – current and alum - into truly world-class researchers with interesting and exciting ideas about how people and robots can work and play together.

Highlights for Mike: The most rewarding aspect of being part of the lab is working with the people here. Not only is everyone making quick strides forward in their research, but it’s been with good spirits and a totally-UP dynamic all the way. Last academic year saw the arrival of real robot skin as part of an undergraduate project: now the WAM arm will not only know when to say “ow!”, but it can light itself up where it was hit. I had a chance to go to 4 conferences over the summer and fall of 2011: FICCDAT in Toronto (UT-Rehab Institute is awesome, especially the room-size 6-D motion platform that makes our MOOG look like a miniature), ICORR in Zurich, RO-MAN in Atlanta and IROS in San Francisco. I met up with many people in the rehab robotics and HRI arenas I hadn’t seen in several years, hopefully leading to new networking opportunities. It was also gratifying to see that the consulting work I did on PR1 at Stanford 5 years ago may have had a small part to play in making the Willow Garage PR2 the incredible research robot it is. We now have our very own PR2– the first in Canada – and we are looking forward to having it be the platform we count on for many of the individual projects we have on-going in the lab. It’s going to be a great 2012!

Amir

2011 was an amazing year for me. I successfully defended my Ph.D. dissertation which has opened a new chapter in my life. I have been very pleased to join the CARIS lab at UBC as a postdoc in October and to work on the CHARM project. Getting to know great students, postdocs, and professors, which are all very friendly and also hardworking, and visits to GM assembly site and Laval University have been the most exciting highlights for me since I joined the group. I hope that I can make valuable contributions to the goals of the CARIS lab in the coming year.

Sina

CARIS Highlights for Sina include one paper presentation in ROBIO conference and one paper submission to ACC conference in partnership with Dave Meger as a result of a PhD project to develop algorithms to search for a lost target visually. Initializing a 7-DoF WAM arm and controlling it under a real time operation system as a joint project with Dave Meger and Ambrose Chan also took a significant amount of time. Lunching UBC-ASME student section in the UBC Mechanical Engineering Department was also a successful achievement.

Best Regards,

Sina Radmard.

Thom

This past year Thom successfully completed his balance studies with the RISER robot platform. After months of shocking calf muscles, anaesthetizing nerves, and swinging people around on top of a robot, he finally knows everything there is to know about how we humans hold ourselves up. Well maybe not quite everything, but enough to complete his thesis and move on to new adventures in a new year!

Ajung

This year was filled with excitement for AJung. Her first set of conference papers were published at ITCH, CHI (a collaborative work with Matt Pan and others), and IROS. With a tremendous amount of help from Mike and Dr. Danielson, her very first journal paper was published in IJSR. More interestingly, she realized the power of social media in academia. She gave roboethics related talks in an online virtual world, went to Europe to attend the Bridging the Robotics Gap conference with the help of philosophers on facebook whom she got to meet in person there, and collected over 50 participants for her second online survey through twitter and blogs. With the help of Elizabeth and IEEE Women in Engineering, she also had the chance to give talks in real life at a Café Scientifique event and fulfill her childhood dream of giving talks at a high school. But most memorable from this year, though, are the times she sat by Carla feeling defeated while trying to get the last thesis experiment running. The CARISians were always there to cheer her on, and pull her through until the very last subject had left the lab! With big hugs and thanks, she is looking forward to starting her PhD at CARIS in 2012.

Matt

Season’s Greetings to Everyone!

Over the past year, some of my colleagues and I have been busy working on several exciting projects in the lab. This year has been quite a busy one for all of us in the CARIS lab, especially those of us nearing the end of our degrees. Over the past year, I have been busy running experiments, writing papers, attending conferences, helping to run Mechanical Engineering Graduate Association events, and TAing. As busy as it was, however, the team at CARIS always seems to fit in some fun. Sometimes when we needed a break, we would try to get Charlie (our PR2 robot) to pose for some of our fantastic photo shoots (see photo) or even attempt some dance moves (as you would expect, Charlie’s pretty good at doing the ‘robot’!). It is on this note that I would like to announce that I will soon be finishing my master’s degree. At this time I wish to thank my supervisors, coworkers, friends and many others for all of the help and support they have given me over the past two years. I feel that I have gained much and hope that I have contributed much from the experience. With this being said, I like to wish that this holiday season and upcoming New Year brings you joy and good fortune.

Happy Holidays!

Matt

Eric

Eric has had a busy year of research, coursework, and TA’ing. He is currently the vice-president of the Mechanical Engineering Graduate Association, and is chairing the organizing committee for the 2012 Canadian Engineering Competition. Eric was a TA for Mech 221 Dynamics, and really enjoyed his role. Eric’s research is yielding promising results towards better understanding the coordinate transforms done by the human vestibular system; he hopes to submit for publication in January.

Ergun

For Ergun, 2011 was mostly about making decisions, in addition to grading piles of exams. Making up his mind to work on non-verbal human communication cues was the first major decision of the year, and it was followed by another important one that will affect the next four years of his life - going for a PhD! :) In 2011, CARIS became more and more home to him. In the last quarter of the year, the newest member of the lab PR2 a.k.a. Charlie, joined the team and having finished his required courses, Ergun had more time to working on a collaborative project to make PR2 be able to move autonomously between the two labs. Apart from the time he spent on his studies, 2011 was a year that was filled with lots of joy, friendship, music and photography!

Navid

Highlights of 2011 for Navid includes successful finishing of his Masters course work with high standings, putting the idea of “helping people as an engineer” into research on stroke rehabilitation robots, working on four different robots/platforms in the CARIS lab including PR2, WAM arm, phantom, and the manipulandum, my brother’s wedding and my sister’s engagement (although I didn’t get to be physically there), a thriving year with Mechanical Engineering Graduate Association as the Vice-president Finances, making lots and lots of friends, collaborating in ongoing research at the labs of Dr. Nicola Hodges and Dr. Lara Boyd, and getting published.

Wesley

It’s the end of the year and looking back at 2011, it has been a great year at CARIS with lots of fun. This year I got to run my first entire human subject experiment – everything from designing the experiment, doing BREB, building my own apparatus, recruiting volunteers, and running the actual experiments, to analyzing the data, and finally writing a paper. The best part of my year was having my first paper to be as one of the 25% accepted for HRI 2012 (spending most of my summer break working on the paper was worth it!).

For next year, I am looking forward to travelling to Boston for the HRI Conference and Teaching our PR2robot Charlie how to handover things to people.

Jenny

Greetings from 37,000 feet! As I'm flying back to Vancouver from vacationing with my family, I realized that it's actually somewhat appropriate to be reflecting on my year from an airplane, since I've spent an unusually large amount of time at this altitude over the course of 2011: after graduating from Rice in May, I took my last flight from Houston home to Philadelphia; add to that a handful of visits to Vancouver, a wedding, and a couple vacations, and you get about 24 plane rides around North America in the last 12 months!

I don't think I could have picked two more different places to go to school than Houston and Vancouver: arriving in Houston, I was used to being greeted by Tex-Mex restaurants, palm trees, and taxi drivers navigating 12-lane highway structures. In Vancouver, on the other hand, I step off the plane and walk through the "pacific passage," a Native art display complete with a canoe in a miniature pond, animal sounds, and a 20-foot thunderbird hanging from the ceiling. Actually, one thing that the two cities do have in common is that once you get outside, your chances of staying dry decrease significantly - whether it's humidity or rain, be prepared to feel a bit damp! Still, the transition to Canadian life has been interesting: I've learned words like "keener" and "invigilate", and that college is different from university; I'm slowly getting used to using Celsius, centimeters, and colorful money; and eventually, I'll learn all the rules of hockey.

Anyway, I can't believe it's already the end of the year and I've finished my first semester of grad school. It doesn't feel like 12 months have passed since I was getting my transcripts together and sending in my application… time flies, eh?

Happy holidays and New Year!

Picture: going through the Panama Canal! View from the side of the boat

We hope you have enjoyed reading our letter and we wish you all the best for the holidays and for a great 2012.

Very best regards

The Collaborative Advanced Robotics and Intelligent Systems Lab

Lab Presentation on Jan 11th

2012-01-10T14:00:00.000-08:00

This week Navid will be giving a practice talk for his upcoming 598 presentation. Title of the talk will be "Towards an Understanding Robot Therapist: Use of Physiological Signals in Making Stroke Therapy Robots More Interactive". All are welcome!

Weekly lab talk: AWK for Data Processing

2012-01-03T21:44:00.001-08:00

Welcome back, all. This week, Chris will give a talk on how to use the AWK programming language to make data processing a lot easier. The talk will be motivated around the development of a command-line script for computing basic statistics for experimental data, as well as how AWK can be very useful for "quick-and-dirty" data processing.

(Further) Experimental Evaluation of Human Balance Controllers

2011-12-06T09:51:00.000-08:00

This Wednesday December 7th, Tom Huryn will present results from his recent experiments in closed-loop-model-driven, muscle-stimulating human balance control.

Survey-Based Discussions on Morally Contentious Applications of Interactive Robotics

2011-12-01T18:59:00.001-08:00

We have many robots here at the CARIS lab.

From Betty and Roger (our CRS robots) to the latest addition to our lab, Charlie (PR2 from Willow Garage), these robotic platforms are here for us to test out new things, explore our ideas, and help answer our research questions.

But there are questions within robotics that cannot be easily answered by looking at robots alone.

One such question involves the ethics of robotics. With the help of Dr. Peter Danielson from the W. Maurice Young Centre for Applied Ethics at UBC, two researchers from the lab (AJung Moon and Dr. Mike van der Loos) took on a quest to explore what the public thinks about robots being used for the military and eldercare.

Using a novel survey instrument that allows participants to not only choose Yes, Neutral, No answers, but also type in, or vote for, particular reasons for their answers, Dr. Danielson's group had collected expert and lay opinions about different applications of robots from over 250 survey participants.

We were particularly interested in whether and why people would reject or accept using a robot for military or eldercare purposes.

In the first question we analysed, the participants discussed upon the following question: "Should remote controlled Predators be armed with lethal weapons in combat?". A short description of Predators, unmanned aerial vehicle used in battlefields today, were given to the participants in a short paragraph. More people answered No (53%) to this question, than Yes (35%).

The use of Predators were, somewhat unsurprisingly, much more rejected when we asked "Should fully autonomous lethally armed Predators be developed?". Over 80% of the participants answered No to this question. But why is this a somewhat unsurprising result when a fully autonomous Predator robot can provide the same (or maybe even more) advantages?

Then we presented them with a paragraph describing a bathing robot for seniors. We asekd "Should
robots replace humans for some tasks in the physical care of the old?" According to the survey, 66% of the participants said Yes, while only 7% answered No. Why?

More thorough look at the participants' reasons for choosing particular answers shed some light onto the questions of why.

Our study tells us that people's decisions may be based on whether the level of the robot's autonomy is acceptable for the particular application in question. Only then, do people talk about the pros and cons of the technology itself. For example, principle based reasoning ("robots should never be used to kill people") outweighed the benefits of the technology ("robots can be effective combat weapons that can be used at a safe distance from combat") in the discussion of Predators.

This work, titled "Survey-Based Discussions on Morally Contentious Applications of Interactive Robotics", outlines what people said to the three abovementioned questions and why.
For more information about what the public has to say about the military and eldercare robots, please take a look at our recent publication on the International Journal of Social Robotics. It can be found as an OnlineFirst article here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/d2up524805805354/

Impedance Control: An Approach to Manipulation

2011-11-29T17:54:00.000-08:00

In this week's lab meeting, Navid will present a paper from Neville Hogan on Impedance control covering theory, implementation, and applications. A copy of this paper is posted in USB-A/Lab_meetings/2011.

Where did it go? Regaining a lost target for visual servoing.

2011-11-21T12:16:00.000-08:00

This Wednesday, Nov. 23rd, Sina will give a practice talk on his thesis work at CARIS Lab entitled "Where did it go? Regaining a lost target for visual servoing".

Vestibular Stimulation Balance Responses

2011-11-15T09:37:00.001-08:00

This Wednesday, Eric will be reviewing a paper entitled "Determining the direction of vestibular-evoked balance responses using stochastic vestibular stimulation," by Omar Mian and Brian Day, and will be placing it in the context of his current research.

The paper can be accessed through the following link: http://jp.physoc.org/content/587/12/2869.abstract

His talk will include a fair bit of background to give everyone some context, so do not despair if you try to read the paper and find you are lacking some physiological knowledge. He will bring you up to speed on the basics before delving into the details.

Have you met my father? I mean... have you met my therapist?!

2011-11-14T17:57:00.000-08:00

If you are a CARISian, I think you are to some extent familiar with the pitch of my thesis. I am working on rehabilitation robots and I can count quite a few advantages rehab. robots have over human therapists. However, the fact that a robot lacks the ability to "love" and "respond" to patient's physical and emotional state, makes patients to lean toward human therapists. After all, robots are machines made out of cold metal!

In the CARIS lab, we advocate the idea of independent (from human therapist) therapy robots. It is vital that such robots be able to plan a therapy session based on patient's performance and learning, while being responsive to the patient's feelings and motivation. To build toward our vision, I am currently exploring the use of patient's physiological signals to assess motivation in the context of robotic stroke rehabilitation.

Contrary to our view in the CARIS lab, there are research groups that think a robot shall be used only to leverage a therapist's skills. A therapist's role can not be reduced or eliminated as nothing can replace that benovelont smile that therapists give to their patients upon completion of a task.

You may think that these two schools of thought are sufficient to categorize everyone interested in motor rehabilitation machines. That was the case for me up to yesterday morning, when through scrolling in BBC's website I found the third group; fathers. You didn't expect this, eh!

Jorge Cardile, a car mechanic living outside Buenos Aires, did not gave up hope on his son, Ivo, when doctors told his son will never walk. Ivo was born with brain damage that limited his ability to use his limbs. Hope and love joined hands and helped Jorge to build a rehab walker for his son in a month, a machine that helped little Ivo to learn walking. Jorge has developed four prototypes of this machine, making the design better by opening doors of his house to other kids with motor deficits to train with the machines. He believes the reason these kids are improving so fast is due to the fact that they are having fun practicing with this device (motivation...).

You can see BBC's Liliet Heredero reporting this story here.

[Call for Volunteers] Sorting Hearts and Circles with a Robot – A Human-Robot Collaboration Study

2011-11-01T00:25:00.000-07:00

At the CARIS Lab (ICICS building, x015), we are conducting an exciting human-robot interaction experiment to investigate whether a robot that uses humanlike gestures can work as a better teammate than robots that don’t when humans and robots collaborate with each other.

We would like to invite you to participate in our study. It will take no more than 45 minutes of your time, and you will be asked to interact with a robot at our lab. The study will involve you wearing a cable-based sensor on your finger while sorting a number of small objects in collaboration with a robot. Prior to the experiment and between the sessions of sorting task, you will be asked to fill out a questionnaire. At the very end of the experiment, we will ask you for your feedback on the robot’s behaviours. The experiment will be video recorded as part of the experiment as well as for analysis purposes. However, the recordings will not be made public without your consent.

We believe that the results of our study will contribute to creating a friendly human-robot shared workspace environment.

A consent form will be available on site, as well as prior to the experiment. You will be required to complete the form in order to participate in the study.

To participate in the study, or have concerns about the study, please contact:

AJung Moon
ajmoon@interchange.ubc.ca
(604)822-3147

Thank you very much for your help.

AJung Moon, Masters Candidate, UBC Mechanical Engineering ajmoon@interchange.ubc.ca
Mike Van der Loos, Associate Professor, UBC Mechanical Engineering vdl@mech.ubc.ca
Elizabeth Croft, Professor, UBC Mechanical Engineering, ecroft@mech.ubc.ca

Visual servoing for human-assisted robots

2011-10-26T10:45:00.000-07:00

Next Wednesday (November 2), Ambrose will be presenting a paper he is reviewing for the ICRA 2012, exploring visual servoing for human-assisted robots. The paper is currently under review so please DO NOT distribute it and keep it within our lab.

The paper can be found on our local machine: Matheusela
/home/caris/ICRA_2012_Review_AC.pdf

Cheers,
--
Ambrose Chan
Ph.D. Candidate, Collaborative Advanced Robotics Lab (CARIS)
President, the Mechanical Engineering Graduate Association (MEGA)
Office: 604-822-3147
email: ambrose.chan.82@gmail.com

Position of Research Engineer now available

2011-10-25T17:53:00.000-07:00

We are pleased to announce a new opening for a RESEARCH ENGINEER to support two labs on UBC campus involved in robotics and biomechanics. The staff position reports to the Directors of the CARIS Lab and the Sensorimotor Systems Lab in the ICICS Building.
The research engineer will be responsible for the installation, maintenance, testing, and integration of new mechatronic equipment, such as robots, grippers, automated wheelchairs and haptic input devices, as well as the design, specification, acquisition and implementation of electromechanical components such as sensors and motors. The position also entails the technical supervision of undergraduates, graduate student and post-doctoral fellows.
The applicant will have at least 5 years of education+experience with demonstrated mechanical, electrical and electronic expertise, as well as programming expertise in computer-aided design, instrumentation software such as LabVIEW and analysis software such as Matlab.
To see more information and to apply, please consult number #11327 at this site.
The deadline to receive applications is Nov. 15, 2011.
----------------------------------------------------
Prof. Elizabeth Croft, Director, CARIS Lab;
Prof. Dinesh Pai, Director, Sensorimotor Systems Lab
----------------------------------------------------

Understanding Nonverbal Turn-taking Cues

2011-10-18T15:43:00.000-07:00

On wednesday October 19th Ergun is going to talk about his work on nonverbal turn taking cues for 598 seminar presentation and discuss the recent results.

HRI paper review

2011-10-11T09:26:00.000-07:00

This Wednesday Wesley will be presenting a paper he is reviewing for the HRI conference.

Teaching Robots how to Share: Grip Forces and Load Forces in Handovers

2011-09-30T16:06:00.000-07:00

Want to know how you can program your robot assistant to handover a cup of coffee without spilling it all over you? This coming Wednesday Wesley will be talking about the grip force control strategy used by humans in handovers and how we can program robots to recognize it for safer and more intuitive human-robot interactions.
\\MATHUSELA\caris\USB-A\Wesley\Teaching Robots How to Share.pdf

Error Augmentation; Rising Star of Stroke Rehabilitation

2011-09-19T08:10:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday September 21st, Navid will present a recent paper (ICORR 2011) by Dr. James Patton's group in University of Illinois at Chicago. This paper, "Arm Control Recovery Enhanced by Error Augmentation", discusses benefits of using haptics and visual error augmentation in stroke rehabilitation. This presentation will be followed by a discussion on how Navid is going to use patton's findings in his research.

A copy of the paper can be found here:

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=05975504

Did you see it hesitate? - Empirically Grounded Design of Hesitation Trajectories for Collaborative Robots

2011-09-12T14:40:00.001-07:00

Most members of the CARIS lab are probably used to AJung's elevator talk on her thesis project - making robots hesitate.

It goes something like this:

When two people inadvertently reach for the same last piece of chocolate at the same time they tend to hesitate before verbally or non-verbally deciding who should get the chocolate. That is to say, their hands exhibit a short jerky motion that makes their state of hesitation transparent to each other (or any observer for that matter). What if the same situation were to arise between a human and a robot? With the goal of making a robot's intentions transparent to human users, we have observed and characterised human hesitation gestures, which are now being implemented onto a 7-DoF Barrett WAM arm.

But what does she really mean by the last sentence? What's involved in making robots hesitate?

On Wednesday September 14th (lab meeting time), AJung will present the first part of her thesis project: observing human hesitation gestures and identifying hesitation trajectory characteristics.

This presentation is based on her paper to be presented at IROS 2011, "Did you see it hesitate? - Empirically Grounded Design of Hesitation Trajectories for Collaborative Robots" authored by AJung Moon, Chris A. C. Parker, Elizabeth A. Croft, and H. F. Machiel Van der Loos.

Just for laughs: Some say that hesitation is the #1 reason for roadkill.

Human robot turn-taking

2011-09-06T08:53:00.000-07:00

This Wednesday Ergun will present a recent paper on human robot turn-taking.

C. Chao, J. Lee, M. Begum, and A.L. Thomaz. Simon plays Simon says: The timing of turn-taking in an imitation game. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN), 2011.

Link: http://www.cc.gatech.edu/social-machines/papers/chao11_roman_turntaking.pdf

PR2 Training Session 1

2011-08-30T20:26:00.000-07:00

This Wednesday, Eric will be giving a training session for Charlie the PR2 robot. The purpose of the session is to ensure everyone is able to safely operate the robot, and make use of some basic functionality.

Items in tomorrow's talk include:

- Safe operation of the PR2, including a mandatory video from Willow Garage

- Methods of connecting to and logging into Charlie

- Basic teleoperation and functionality

- Data collection and visualization

See you there!

The PR2 arrives at the CARIS and LCI/CRL labs in ICICS!

2011-08-18T12:32:00.002-07:00

At around lunch time of August 9th 2011, Eric Pospisil of the CARIS lab received a phone call and put on a serious voice. "Ok, I will be right there," he said. The members of the CARIS lab excitedly looked at Eric as he hung up the phone and put on a huge smile. "Eric! Is it here? Is it really here?"

Just like that, all members of the lab rushed to the ICICS loading area, and met the newest robot to join the exciting adventures of robotics research at UBC.

The PR2 is a 20-degree-of-freedom mobile robot system from Willow Garage, Inc. This robot has two arms, can navigate indoors at walking speed, handle customary workplace and home obstacles, lift a 10kg load in each hand, and reach from the floor to a 2m high shelf... Phew! Quite the list for a robot to brag about. But don't be impressed yet, because here's more of why the CARISians, LCI/CRL lab members are really excited.

The central characteristic that distinguishes the PR2 from other mobile manipulators is the overall design philosophy to present a low mechanical impedance – a soft touch – to humans and the environment. Why is this important?

Well, PR2's physical capabilities with its biologically-inspired and inherently safe drivetrain design is unmatched on the market today. Unlike many of today’s humanoid robots, whose inherent instability and large mass deliver an excellent, but high-risk research platform, the PR2 delivers a solution for useful, applied research that will have a societal impact in the 2-7 year near term.

The PR2 is equipped with a real-time operating system (ROS), a set of functional modules for the key functional components of vision, mobility, manipulation, speech processing, and a unified communications protocol for inter-module data transfer. Oh, and did we mention that it's all open source?

With the purchase of the PR2, UBC is the first university in Canada to join the select community of developers working on this advanced research platform. Acquisition of the PR2 will allow our researchers to develop our own research modules, behaviours and other functional capabilities to enhance the robot’s safety and usability through software and interface design. Most importantly, we will be able to easily share our work with other PR2 users.

The PR2 robot at UBC, covered in white, grey, and UBC blue, is now named Charlie and has been roaming around the CARIS's robot island where Betty, Roger, CARLA, and the Phantom are located. Early projects for the PR2 at UBC will involve developing robot assistant behaviours for manufacturing assembly and for home healthcare assistance.

Welcome Charlie the PR2!

Muscle Actuation

2011-08-15T08:48:00.000-07:00

This Wednesday August 17th, Tom Huryn will be speaking on the actuation of human muscles. This talk will discuss topics of intrinsic and extrinsic muscle control including: How muscles work, how researchers observe and stimulate muscles with external hardware, and a few ways this impacts Tom's own research in standing balance.

For further reading see: Gerald Loeb's notes on What Roboticists Need to Know About NeuroMusculoSkeletal Systems, as well as Johnson's and Fuglevand's 2011 paper, "Mimicking muscle activity with electrical stimulation".

An Introduction to Bayesian Optimization.

2011-08-08T15:46:00.000-07:00

This Wednesday Sina will present an introduction to Bayesian optimization based on a paper by Eric Brochu et al.

"Eric Brochu, Vlad M. Cora and Nando de Freitas, A Tutorial on Bayesian Optimization of Expensive Cost Functions, with Application to Active User Modeling and Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning, Dec. 14, 2010".

Downloadable from here: http://haikufactory.com/files/bayopt.pdf

Robotics: Science and System (RSS 2011) and American Control Conference (ACC 2011)

2011-07-27T10:57:00.000-07:00

At our meeting today, Ambrose will be giving a whirlwind tour of Robotics Science and System (RSS 2011) and the American Control Conference (ACC 2011) - a selection of papers of interest to CARIS researchers.

ICORR 2011 and hosting ICORR 2013

2011-07-04T15:28:00.000-07:00

I just spent 3 days in Zurich at RehabWeek and attended the ICORR 2011 conference: International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics. It was an excellent venue for researchers interested in exactly the core domain of the conference: rehabilitation (assistive and therapy) robotics. One of the tasks of the Steering Committee (I am a member since I hosted ICORR at Stanford in 1999) is to make a decision on the venue for the next conference (ICORR is biennial). This year, there were 3 sites bidding to host ICORR 2013 in North America. I presented a bid to host ICORR 2013 in Seattle and Vancouver with co-chair Prof. Yoki Matsuoka of the University of Washington in Seattle. We were very honoured that the Steering Committee (minus, of course, the bidding members), chose us for 2013. Our bid was compelling (aside, we all know, from the fact that we live in a gorgeous corner of the world) for two reasons: 1) Yoki Matsuoka was just awarded an NSF Engineering Research Center (ERC) on Sensorimotor Neural Engineering for the next 5 (renewable to 10) years -- sort of the rehab robotics scientific mother ship, a grant of multiple millions per year; and 2) Alex Mihailidis, incoming president of RESNA and prof. at the University of Toronto, will be working with us to place RESNA in Seattle just before or after ICORR to make both conferences more attractive to prospective attendees (YOU!) than either one alone. These are powerful forces to make ICORR 2013 a compelling venue to bring together the researchers, clinicians, companies, users and stakeholders in rehab robotics. Attached a photo of the current Steering Committee.

Other items were also discussed: an industry society on rehabilitation robotics and the formation of an ICORR Society (done!)

OK, off for some vacation, while I'm in Europe anyway. More details forthcoming.

Model Predictive Control and Walking Robots by Dr. Pierre-Brice Wieber

2011-06-21T17:12:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday June 22nd, Dr. Pierre-Brice Wieber will be visiting the CARIS lab to discuss model predictive control and walking robots.

Dr. Pierre-Brice Wieber defended his PhD thesis in 2000 at the INRIA Grenoble, France, on the modeling and control of humanoid walking robots. After a brief Post-Doc at the Imperial College in London on the optimal control of systems with impacts, he returned to the INRIA Grenoble with a permanent researcher position. Since then, he has been developing tools from numerical optimization for the modeling and control of humanoid robots. He has also spent two years from mid 2008 to mid 2010 as a visiting researcher in the AIST in Tsukuba, Japan, to work more closely on the HRP-2 humanoid robot.

Abstract of the Talk:
Beginning with the physics of walking and a mathematical analysis of the "goal" of walking, I propose to briefly introduce how we aim at building a "mathematical theory of walking" and show how Model Predictive Control can be a very simple and yet very efficient and versatile option. I propose to briefly introduce also how we try to use these control schemes in order to help anticipate human motion.

Psychological States and Psychophysiological Responses in Stroke Therapy

2011-06-14T14:43:00.001-07:00

Hello everyone,

At this week's CARIS lab meeting, Navid will present a paper entitled "Psychophysiological Responses to Robotic Rehabilitation Tasks in Stroke" by Novak et al.

An electronic copy of the paper can be found here: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=5446390&tag=1

My apologies on the late posting of this week's talk. AJung (myself) was supposed to give a talk this week, but last minute changes have been made (thanks to Navid) to accommodate an upcoming statistics session at next week's lab meeting.

See you all tomorrow!

Experiment Design & Qualitative Research - A crash course for engineers!

2011-05-24T21:27:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow (Wednesday May 25th, 11:00 am), Navid and AJung will discuss a new world of research called qualitative analysis - dealing with things that are not numbers!

In conjunction with Intro to qualitative analysis, we will cover some basics of experiment design.

No readings are necessary.

See you at the CARIS lab at 11am for the talk.

Visit with the Governor General

2011-05-16T15:21:00.001-07:00

Photo by Martin Dee

His Excellency the Right Honourable David Johnston, Governor General of Canada visited the University of British Columbia on Thursday, May 12, 2011. CARIS Lab director Elizabeth Croft (top right) participated in a round-table discussion on innovation in Canada with the Governor General, presenting the innovative and interdisciplinary research work in the CARIS lab as well as the activities of the NSERC Chair for Women in Science and Engineering, BC Yukon.

Paper for May 18 Lab Meeting

2011-05-11T13:04:00.000-07:00

This coming Wednesday Wesley will be presenting a paper on how to make robots more human-friendly for cooperative carrying tasks. In addition, he will also present his results from replicating the experiment with Phantom. The original paper can be found here http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=825342.

CARIS Lab Video Film Fest

2011-05-10T23:46:00.000-07:00

Wednesday @11am Ergun will show car assembly line videos including GM's and Ford's legendary cars. Also there will be some "cool" videos of the robot that we have in the lab, Barrett WAM arm a.k.a Carla.

Your Leg is Twitching; Electrical Stimulation in Balance Research

2011-04-29T14:59:00.000-07:00

This Wednesday Tom Huryn will be presenting recent work involving electrical stimulation of people's calf muscles (mostly his own). The presentation will address such questions as: Why are you standing on that robot? Why is your leg twitching? and How does sending electricity through your leg help us understand balance control?

Congratulations AJung Moon, Jeswin Jeyasurya and Matthew Pan

2011-04-12T16:07:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to these distinguished CARISians:

AJung Moon for winning an UBC 4YF Fellowship for doctoral studies at UBC (funding for four years!)
Jeswin Jeyasurya for successfully defending his Masters Thesis on "Biomechanical Analysis of Assisted Sit to Stand".
Matthew Pan for winning the 2010/2011 Killam Graduate Teaching Assistant Award.

You do us all proud!
Elizabeth and Mike.

Birthday Brunch

2011-04-09T22:07:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

Remembering the fun from last summer's lab retreat to Point Roberts and sharing of the epic pictures by Dr. Mike Van der Loos that followed, I figured I should do my part and help capture some of the fun moments that happen outside the lab.

Celebrating Navid's birthday from earlier this week, a handful of us met at a restaurant called Bandidas Taqueria today for a delicious brunch get-together (?). The restaurant was chosen by the birthday boy after a rather large listing of recommended restaurants was compiled by our beloved postdoc, Dr. Chris Parker.

It turned out that the place is awesome for getting a handful of engineers obsessed about finding dolphins and needles and a lazy clothespin in the book "I Spy Treasure Hunt"....?!

So, here they are...!

The birthday boy.
Eric, overwhelmed (in a positive way, I think) by the quantity of his pineapple French toast.

Wesley, and the happily overflowing plate.

And Dane, ready to take a stab at it!

CARIS lab meetin rescheduled to 2pm & Jeswin's thesis presentation

2011-04-05T11:02:00.000-07:00

The CARIS lab meeting for this Wednesday has been rescheduled to 2pm. If you can sit in on this meeting, you will hear Jeswin present his thesis work on sit-to-stand, to help raise your level of understanding with regard to assistance with this important activity of daily living.

Café Scientifique Vancouver

2011-03-29T22:51:00.000-07:00

Hello CARISians and robot-enthusiasts of Vancouver! I came across a very cool local group that meets on a regular basis to discuss and debate science issues in downtown Vancouver. It's called Café Scientifique Vancouver.

Their events don't seem like the usual engineering seminars and workshops that engineering graduate students quickly get used to, but rather focus on casual/conversational discussions covering various topics and disciplines. I've totally signed up for their mailing list, and now relieving my itch to share. Below is a little bit about the group itself (copied straight from the Cafe's website), but they have much more to offer on their website (http://blogs.ubc.ca/cafesci/).

About the Cafe

Cafe Scientifique is a forum for discussing and debating science issues which are of concern to everyone. Our aim is to promote public engagement with science and to foster interesting, fact-based discussions in a fun and relaxed atmosphere. Our speakers are scientists or science journalists, ethicists, or related experts from the local community who donate their time to present and discuss their work with the public. We include a range of topics and disciplines. Cafe Scientifique started in France and Great Britain in the late 1990′s, and has now spread all over the world -including Vancouver!
FAQ
What is Cafe Scientifique? Cafe Scientifique is a forum for the discussion of important and interesting scientific issues. They are informal and accessible – much more so than a public lecture.
Who else will be there? Audiences consist of people who are interested in science but generally never have the opportunity to discuss their views with, and ask questions of, someone “in the know”. No scientific knowledge is assumed by the speakers, so anyone can participate.
What happens at a Cafe Scientifique? Cafes start with a short talk from the speaker, who is usually a scientist or a writer on science to introduce the topic. After this there is usually a short break to allow glasses to be refilled and conversations to start. This is followed by an hour or so of questions and answers and general discussion. Anyone can ask a question, and we positively welcome those which begin “This might be a stupid question, but …” These questions are invariably not stupid and often rather insightful.
Where and When? We will now be hosting the Vancouver Café the last Tuesday of the month at the Railway Club downtown (579 Dunsmuir St), at 7:30PM.

CARIS Meeting Presentation: Sustainable Robotic Therapy through Distorted Feedback and Affective State Recognition

2011-03-29T14:20:00.000-07:00

Another Wednesday, another lab meeting, another presentation!

This week's presentation is by Navid who is preparing for his 598 seminar. Title of the talk is "Sustainable Robotic Therapy through Distorted Feedback and Affective State Recognition".

Note: This week's lab meeting will start at 12:00 instead of 11:00.

Postdoctoral Fellow in Human Robot Interaction at CARIS and MUX

2011-03-18T15:16:00.000-07:00

Please circulate:

Postdoctoral Fellow in Human Robot Interaction at UBC

CARIS Lab – Department of Mechanical Engineering

Multimodal Experience – MUXLab – Department of Computer Science

University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

Professors Elizabeth Croft (Mech) and Karon MacLean (CS)

CARIS Lab and MUXLab are seeking applications for TWO ONE-YEAR (each renewable for a second year) postdoctoral fellowships at the University of British Columbia in Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science in Vancouver, CANADA, commencing May 1, 2011, or as soon as possible thereafter.

Background: This project exploits an emerging paradigm-shift for manufacturing systems, which relies on the use of intelligent robotic assistants that can collaborate both directly and physically with human co-workers in their tasks as part of the production team. Our advances will be driven by a primary understanding of the support needs of workers in advanced manufacturing plants, and implemented using new technologies and methods generated by both the research team and our industrial partner, a major user and innovator of large-scale industrial automation. Our results will be deployed, tested and evaluated on a unified platform for industry-identified representative challenge tasks.

Project Descriptions: The two individuals will work on two coordinated efforts: in topic 1 to assess, design and then integrate our new HRI techniques into the automation process, and in topic 2 to innovate and evaluate the novel low-level techniques themselves.

Topic 1: Robot-Assistant-in-Automation Task Design. The successful candidate will be responsible for user studies and evaluations validating the human-robot interaction in command/control, physical proximity of the robotic assistant, and situational awareness needs and adequacy. Working closely and often in-situ with the industry partner, this includes (a) Interaction specifications from a systems view of the robotic assistant - when is it useful, what is the context, and how does it affect the way people work? (b) Evaluation methodology choice and execution throughout the requirements, development and validation design cycle; and (c) research questions such as “appropriate-modality” communication: how do we use multiple modalities to effectively code a “message” in a given situation?

Topic 2: Communication Loop Design. The successful candidate will be responsible for the design, implementation and demonstration of the communication loop between a robot and human, utilizing observed human cues and robot feedback signals. They will also supervise student working on sub-projects related to cue recognition and transmission, robot teach-by-showing, and robot control architecture for implicit communication behaviour.

Both individuals will take a leadership role, and assist in the supervision of graduate and undergraduate students working on the project. The two individuals will collaborate closely with one another, as well as with certain offsite members of the larger team.

Application Criteria: Successful candidates will have completed Ph.D. research in Computer Science (HCI, HRI), Mechanical/ Mechatronics Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a comparable discipline(s). Both need at least a general background in HCI, experience in user study design and execution, evidence of independent work, strong team skills, and excellent communication abilities. In addition, he or she will have one and ideally more of the following skills or background experience, demonstrated by a corresponding publication record. The criteria will vary somewhat for the two roles (controls experience is weighted more heavily for topic 2, and deeper experience in HCI including qualitative methods more important for topic 1):

- Hands-on experience working with mechatronic/robotic systems

- Robotics and controls

- Machine learning

- Familiarity with industrial automation environments

- Task and workflow analysis methods

- Human attentional processing

- Iterative design and prototyping

To Apply: Please send the following information to mux-postdoc-recruiting@cs.ubc.ca:

- A brief letter of application, clarifying the projects area(s) of interest and fit to the area(s)

- A curriculum vitae which includes full contact information

- List of publications with links to pdf-versions of the three most relevant publications

- Three reference letters (sent separately)

Please use subject line “HRI postdoc: ” for all components. Complete applications that are received by April 1, 2011 will be given priority.

The University of British Columbia hires on the basis of merit and is committed to employment equity. All qualified persons are encouraged to apply.

For more information, please see:

- UBC's MUXLab: http://www.cs.ubc.ca/labs/imager/hci.php.

- UBC’s CARIS Lab: http://caris.mech.ubc.ca/

- UBC’s Department of Computer Science: http://www.cs.ubc.ca/.
- Vancouver, recognized as one of the most livable cities in the world: http://vancouver.ca/aboutvan.htm.

CARIS Meeting Presentation: Madness? THIS IS CHI MADNESS!!!

2011-03-18T09:51:00.000-07:00

At the next CARIS lab meeting (March 23), Matthew will be giving not one, but TWO presentations (time permitting of course).

The first presentation will be on a paper written by Jennifer Healey and Rosalind Picard entitled: Startle Cam - A Cybernetic Wearable Camera. The paper can be found here: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel4/5898/15725/00729528.pdf

Matthew will also be presenting a short video to appear at CHI 2011 for the CHI Madness event. He will be looking for feedback and ideas on how it could be improved.

Characterizing Vestibular Stimulation

2011-03-15T17:15:00.000-07:00

This Wednesday, Eric will be presenting his thesis work to date in a presentation entitled "Characterization of the Vector Response to Vestibular Stimulation" What happens when an electrical current is applied across your vestibular canals? Come to his presentation to find out!

Become the Expert - the Lazy Way: Using Web 2.0 for your Research

2011-03-08T13:51:00.001-08:00

Hello CARISians.

Tomorrow, at the CARIS weekly meeting, AJung will be giving a brief overview of how to use Web 2.0 tools (most of which are available for free) to easy up the process of doing research.

Some items for discussion include using reference tools (e.g., Mendeley), keeping an organized pile of annotated PDFs for your future thesis writing, and managing RSS feeds to keep you up to date with the latest publications and research activities related to your research topic.

Keeping up with the topic of using free web 2.0 tools for research, Prezi.com is currently hosting a sneak-peak of tomorrow's slides here: http://prezi.com/yh-nrwhwqcrx/doing-research-the-web-20-way/

It's All Very "Meta"

2011-02-25T15:24:00.001-08:00

An interesting high-level read about current research being done towards developing self-aware robots.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=automaton-robots-become-self-aware

New USRA Position!

2011-02-16T21:41:00.000-08:00

We are pleased to announce that we have a new posting for an undergraduate research position within the CARIS lab (see below). Responses to this posting should be directed to caris.ubc@gmail.com by Feb 22nd if possible. Students are welcome to apply directly. Please note that fourth year students who are graduating in May are also eligible for USRA positions.

Matthew Pan

Undergraduate Research Assistant, Collaborative Advanced Robotics and Intelligent Systems Lab.

All applicants must be eligible for the NSERC USRA program.

The deadline for Applications is February 22.Applications should include a cover letter indication the position of interest and reporting your GPA, resume, transcripts - copies or download from SIS is fine) Applications should be submitted by email to: caris.ubc@gmail.com with the subject line "CARIS Lab USRA". PDF format for attachment is preferred. Please, no compressed files or executables and no total attachment size over 1 MB. Interviews for selected applicants will be scheduled on Feb 24 & 25.

Project: Haptic-Affect Interaction ProjectAppropriate for MECH/MECHA, EECE, ENPH, CS students, any year.

Working with the CARIS lab (MECH) and the SPIN lab (CS), the successful applicant will be working on developing various haptic device prototypes and human-computer interaction technologies. Additionally, he/she will be assisting in the planning and execution of a human-computer interaction experiment based on these prototypes as part of a larger study on a novel interaction paradigm. Candidates with a mechatronics background and experience/knowledge in the following areas are strongly encouraged to apply:

Key Technologies:

- Arudino Microcontroller Platform

- C/C++

- MATLAB

Requirements:

- Data acquisition and signal processing

- the successful candidate will at times be tasked with processing data from a wide variety of sensors (i.e., encoders, biometric etc.)

- Experience in C/C++, MATLAB programming and hardware/software interfacing

- Knowledge and experience working with microcontroller systems

– prototype development will be based on the Arduino open-source electronics prototyping platform

- Knowledge and observation of best coding practices- Excellent communication skills for software and hardware documentation

- Knowledge of rapid prototyping techniques

- Excellent analysis and problem solving skills

- Demonstrated ability to work independently under minimum supervision

- Keen desire for continuous learning

Assets:
Knowledge of Human Computer Interaction and Human Factors, real time systems and control systems are considered assets for this position.

Backgrounder:
The Collaborative Advanced Robotics and Intelligent Systems Laboratory is an undertaking by researchers at the University of British Columbia interested in Human-Robot interaction and intelligent robotics. Our research theme is the study and implementation of safe, comfortable, and useful interactions between people and robots. Ongoing research involves the application of various robot platforms including two 6-axis human-scale robotic arms, a 6 axis motion platform, mobile robots, vision systems, and physiological sensor systems.

SPIN is an interdisciplinary group of students and faculty who design and build innovative user interfaces, and study human perception as it relates to them. We are particularly oriented towards physical and multimodal interfaces, and concentrate on embedded environments which leave the desktop behind. These are interfaces which will someday be found in clothing and on mobile devices, or in the furniture and walls of your home; for expressive applications which current interfaces fail, like computer music handlers and media control; and sensorially overloaded applications, like car interiors. We are concerned with what these interfaces will do, how they will work, the way they'll feel, sound and look; and how users will perceive them. This is multidisciplinary work: we come from many backgrounds, and tackle different aspects of the problems either individually or as teams. Student theses range in area from perceptual psychology to ultra-fast network protocols to mechatronic design, with traditional HCI methods in the middle.

Our labs are located in the Institute for Computing, Information and Cognitive Systems (ICICS) at the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, BC Canada. For more information please visit www.caris.mech.ubc.ca and www.cs.ubc.ca/labs/spin/

What is WAM and how to touch it session. ;-)

2011-02-08T09:50:00.000-08:00

If you want to know more about WAM, our new robotic arm, I mean more than that I just said, you are more than welcome to sit in the lab meeting this week. It is going to be a shared presentation of Ambrose and Sina.
Regards.

Paper for Feb. 2 lab meeting

2011-02-01T12:51:00.001-08:00

At this week's meeting, Chris will present the paper "Mimetic Communication with Impedance Control for Physical Human-Robot Interaction" by Lee, Ott and Nakamura (ICRA 2009). The paper can be found at IEEE Xplore, by clicking here.

Jan 19 Talk in CARIS lab.

2011-01-18T13:29:00.000-08:00

Mr. Mike Kayo will be presenting his work (as presented at ASME in November) on:

STRUCTURAL MODELING OF THE HUMAN MUSCULOSKELETAL SYSTEM FOR CLINICAL

TREATMENT BY APPLYING JOINT-CONNECTED MULTIBODY DYNAMICS AND SYSTEM

APPROACH

The paper can be accessed via mathusela\USB-A\Kayo\2_ASNE_Paper_2010_10_21.doc

Human-Robot Music Conference at SFU

2011-01-14T07:04:00.001-08:00

Friday, January 21 8 pm

World Art Studio @ SFU's Goldcorp Centre for the Arts

Human+Robot Music - with Special Guest Trimpin

Simon Fraser University's School for the Contemporary Arts presents an evening of live performances of compositions and improvisations for humans and robots and/or robotic musical instruments. The “Machine Orchestra” brings together custom-built robotic musical instruments and human performers with modified instruments, unique musical interfaces, and hemispherical speaker-pods. Trimpin, kinetic sculptor, sound artist, and MacArthur “genius” award winner, will present some of his newest inventions.

Featuring additional compositions by Andrew Schloss (UVic), Arne Eigenfeldt (SFU), Ajay Kapur (CalArts), and others.

Teach by Showing: Visual Servo Control of Manipulators in Constrained Workspaces

2011-01-11T22:42:00.000-08:00

Just a reminder about our first meeting of year tomorrow (Jan 12 @ 11am).

On January 12th, Ambrose will be presenting his research work entitled "Teach by Showing: Visual Servo Control of Manipulators in Constrained Workspaces".

Lab Meeting of Dec 7, 2010

2010-12-06T20:32:00.000-08:00

This week at lab meeting, Navid will talk about his findings on his MOOG project. His talk will cover his experiment data, his hypothesis and recommendations.

Where did it go? Regaining a lost target for visual servoing.

2010-11-28T18:44:00.000-08:00

This Tuesday, Nov. 30th, Sina will give a practice talk on his thesis work at CARIS Lab entitled "Where did it go? Regaining a lost target for visual servoing".

New book by a CARISIan: "Design and Use of Assistive Technology - Social, Technical, Ethical, and Economic Challenges"

2010-11-07T22:22:00.000-08:00

Dr. Mike Van der Loos, an associate director of the CARIS Lab, recently published a new book with Drs. Meeko Oishi (Electrical and Computer Engineering), and Ian Mitchell (Computer Science).

The book "Design and Use of Assistive Technology: Social, Technical, Ethical, and Economic Challenges" was recently published by Springer, and is the result of an interdisciplinary UBC workshop that was hosted by the Institute for Computing, Information and Cognitive Systems (ICICS) and the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies.

What is it about? Here is the description of the book from Springer:

Design and Use of Assistive Technology provides an interdisciplinary approach to assess some of the major hurdles in creating effective assistive technology. Assistive technology must be integrated with clinical needs, user requirements, ethical considerations, and the social context of the technology’s use. Gaps between engineering design, clinical evaluation, and actual use often derail potentially transformative technologies that would otherwise enable independence and facilitate social connectedness. This volume gathers recommendations that span engineering, computer science, rehabilitation sciences, and ethics.

This book:

• Addresses difficult problems such as the inherent heterogeneity of users, privacy concerns in data collection and analysis, and incorporation of user perspective into the design and evaluation process

• Discusses models for knowledge transfer of novel technologies, advantages and disadvantages of small markets, and regulations and standards to enable commercialization

• Presents a framework for ethics of “accessible” technologies that differs from frameworks for engineering or medical ethics.

Design and Use of Assistive Technology demonstrates how multidisciplinary process improvements in assistive technology deployment have the potential to empower businesses, researchers, and nonprofit organizations to create and bring to market new devices that incorporate ethical, social, and clinical concerns to enhance people’s lives.

Are you excited to find out more? Or simply excited to start reading? If so, please visit Springer: http://www.springerlink.com/content/q58145/#section=780572&page=1

Robot Path Planning in a Social Context

2010-11-01T13:00:00.000-07:00

On November 2nd, Ergun will be presenting "Robot Path Planning in a Social Context" which can be found here: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=5513126

Hesitation gestures - an ethics based human-robot interaction

2010-10-23T17:00:00.000-07:00

On October 26th, AJung will be presenting her thesis work at the CARIS Lab under the title "Hesitation gestures - an ethics based human-robot interaction".

Paper for Lab Meeting of Nov.19,2010

2010-10-17T11:50:00.000-07:00

This week, Navid will present "Affective State Recognition and Adaptation in Human-Robot Interaction: A Design Approach" by Liu, Rani, and Sarkar. The paper can be found online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=4058871 .

Developing and Modelling an Implicitly-Controlled Haptic Affect Loop

2010-10-08T10:14:00.000-07:00

This upcoming Tuesday (Oct 12 - after the long weekend), Matthew will be presenting his thesis research entitled "Developing and Modelling an Implicitly-Controlled Human Machine Interaction." This will be a practice run for Matthew's upcoming Mechatronics and Manufacturing seminar presentation at noon in CEME 1204 on Friday Oct 15.

This presentation will begin at 10:00 am (instead of the regular 10:30 am start time)!

Paper for Oct. 5, 2010 Lab Meeting

2010-09-30T10:10:00.000-07:00

How would you like to play a game of "rock, paper, scissors" with a robot that cheats? This coming Tuesday Wesley will present "No Fair!! An Interaction with a Cheating Robot". The paper can be found here: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=05453193.

An Experimental Evaluation of Human Balance Controllers

2010-09-24T16:12:00.000-07:00

This Tuesday, Tom Huryn will be discussing his MASc work in a presentation titled "An Experimental Evaluation of Human Balance Controllers". The presentation will combine robots, humans, electrical muscle stimulation, and engineering controls, oh my.

Paper for Sept. 21, 2010 Lab Meeting

2010-09-16T15:20:00.000-07:00

This week, Chris will present "Replicating Human-Human Physical Interaction" by Reed, Patton, and Peshkin. The paper can be found online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=4209650&tag=1 .

Da Vinci Robotic Surgery

2010-09-13T13:48:00.000-07:00

This Tuesday, Eric will be giving a presentation entitled "The Da Vinci Robotic Surgery System - A Case Study in Human-Robot Interaction and Ergonomics." He will provide some background on Intuitive Surgical Inc.'s Da Vinci system, discuss some of its features and drawbacks, and present some of the newest and most promising UBC research in the field.

Baklava Cake Recipe

2010-08-31T12:28:00.000-07:00

Hi CARISians :),
Here is the recipe for the Baklava cake for anyone who wants it.

For a 10 inch diameter cake which is about 2 inches thick (It serves about 12 people- depending on how much each person eats):
Ingredients:
5 eggs
1 cup of brown or white sugar or mixed
1 cup of canola oil
a hint of vanilla powder (less than quarter of a tsp)
3 cups of all-purpose flour
1.5 cups of milk
1 tsp of baking powder
1.5 cups of walnuts which are broken up into little pieces by hand
0.5 tsp of cardamom powder
1 tsp of cinnamon power
1 tbsp of brown or white sugar
Some Maple Syrup or Honey

Directions:
1. Mix all the eggs in a blender.
2. Once the eggs start becoming creamy and start to rise up, add the sugar to it while it is being mixed in the blender. Add a sugar slowly so that it all goes into the blender pot.
3. Add a hint of vanilla powder to the blender as well.
4. Once the eggs, sugar and vanilla mix becomes creamy and thick stop the blender.
5. Mix the baking powder with the flour.
6. Make sure you get a big enough bowl for mixing everything together.
7. Once you have the needed bowl, pour the egg mixture into that bowl.
8. Now you are going to add the flour and milk to it.
9. This has to be done slowly-- add 2 tbsp of flour and a bit of milk and then mix with a spatula- Repeat this step until you have run out of flour and milk.
10. Make sure that everything is well mixed.
The mixture for the inside:
11. Mix everything together.
Final preparation:
11. Preheat the over to 350 F.
12. Use small amount of butter and make the bottom and sides of your baking pan oily.
13. Pour half of the cake mixture into the pan. Make sure it covers the entire pan.
14. Pour the inside mixture over the cake mixture. Make sure to cover all.
15. Pour rest of the cake mixture on top of the inside mixture.
16. Put it into the oven for 45 mins.
17. After it is out of the oven, wait for it to cool down and then flip it out of the pan. Do not flip it out when the cake is warm. It will not look so great :P. Meanwhile you can warm up some Maple syrup or honey.
18. Depending the taste you want, pour some Maple syrup or honey on top the cake and let the cake soak in the syrup for a while (a longer while if you want it to be reaallly sweet) - The cake that made did not have a lot of syrup. I had just used a brush to slightly cover the cake with it.

Bon appetit,

If you have any questions about this recipe don't hesitate to e_mail me at rismani@interchange.ubc.ca.
Shalaleh

CARIS launches a new human-robot interaction survey!

2010-08-26T22:38:00.001-07:00

CARISians often work on projects that require us to understand how people perceive different things. AJung is working on one such project, where your participation can make an impact in the human-robot interaction research we do here at CARIS. Please take 5 to 10 minutes to participate in an online survey and support AJung's research in roboethics and human robot interaction!

Call for Survey Participants

We are offering you the opportunity to contribute to the advancement of human-robot relations. Increasing widespread implementation of robots has revealed that effective robot-human communication is a vital element to creating a friendly shared workspace environment.

We are investigating your perception of a human-human interaction (HHI) and/or human-robot interaction (HRI). Once the research is complete the data obtained will be used to attempt the development of a human-robot interaction in which the robot’s actions are perceived in the same manner as the HHI.

The study will be conducted via an online survey. It will consist of a short video of HHI and/or HRI, which will be followed by a few questions pertaining to the video. The survey should take no longer than 10 minutes. We need volunteers to participate in the study.

A consent form will be available as the first page of the survey. You will be required to complete the form in order to participate in the study.

Please follow the link to participate in the survey: http://bit.ly/CARISsurvey

Haptic Feedback in Human Robot Interaction

2010-08-24T06:12:00.000-07:00

Today, Shalaleh will be talking about designing haptic feedback for a robotic arm so that it communicates the stressed state of the robot to its user.

Human Balance Control With Electrical Stimulation

2010-08-17T00:31:00.000-07:00

This Tuesday Tom will present the "shocking" application of functional electrical stimulation (FES) in balance control, as discussed in the paper: "Implementation of a physiologically identified PD feedback controller for regulating the active ankle torque during quiet stance" by Vette, Masani, and Popovic.
The paper is available here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17601193

Learning by demonstration with critique from a human teacher

2010-08-06T16:39:00.000-07:00

Next week Sina will go over the paper entitled "Learning by demonstration with critique from a human teacher" written by B. Argall, B. Browning and M. Veloso, ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, 2007., available for download:
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1228725

CARIS Bots Make Popular Science

2010-08-03T09:27:00.000-07:00

Two CARIS robots are in the media spotlight with this August's issue of Popular Science. The human-interaction robots "Tamer" and "Riser" are profiled in PopSci's feature article "Rise of the Helpful Machines". Check out images #5 (Tamer) and #7 (Riser) here:
http://www.popsci.com/technology/gallery/2010-07/gallery-rise-helpful-machines

Valence Estimation using Physiological Responses to Music

2010-08-03T01:41:00.000-07:00

In this week's meeting, Susana will be presenting an analysis on physiological responses to music. The objective is to estimate the level of enjoyment a user experiences while listening to various songs.

Keepon Emotion Interaction Robot

2010-07-27T07:27:00.000-07:00

Today, Jacob will be presenting about the human interaction robot "Keepon", designed by Hideki Kozima, and its relation to the TAMER project.

The paper can be found here:
http://tilar.groups.et.byu.net/kozima.pdf

Probabilistic Assessment of User's Emotions in Educational Games

2010-07-06T11:13:00.000-07:00

Next Tuesday, Matthew will be presenting a talk on research that was conducted right here at ICICS! The paper being presented is entitled "Probabilistic Assessment of User's Emotions in Educational Games" by Cristina Conati, published in The Journal of Applied Artificial Intelligence.

The paper can be found here:

http://cs.ubc.ca/~conati/my-papers/jaai02.pdf

Designing Human-Subject Experiments

2010-06-24T22:41:00.000-07:00

More members of CARIS are beginning to design experiments involving human-subject experiments. That's because we always consider how our technical projects will affect human users when they interact with robots. But how can we really measure 'how' and 'whether' human users are actually affected?

With the help of the book Analyzing Social Science Data, by David de Vaus, AJung will outline what to keep in mind when designing human-subject experiments and what methods are available for analysis once you've collected data from your experiments.

Also mentioned at the lab seminar this Tuesday will be a recent work by Dr. Leila Takayama presented at the RSS2009 Workshop on Good Experimental Methodology in Robotics. (link)

2010-06-13T08:45:00.000-07:00

Photos from June 11 Pt. Roberts retreat. Enjoy!

Tide Pools

This is not what I meant by "Clean out the fridge!"

iPad, ShmiPad, check out my iClam PC!

Hmm, Gives me an idea of how to add desk space in the lab ...

Online Survey from the CARIS Lab - Perception of Human-Human Interaction #2

2010-06-03T13:47:00.000-07:00

One of the main questions we try to answer at the CARIS lab is "How should a robot collaborate with people?".

This time, we'd like to involve you in answering this question using an online survey.

Call for Survey Participants

We are investigating your perception of a human-human interaction (HHI). Once the research is complete the data obtained will be used to attempt the development of a human-robot interaction in which the robot’s actions are perceived in the same manner as the HHI.

This study is being conducted via an online survey. It includes a short video of HHI, followed by a few questions pertaining to the video. The survey should take no longer than 5 minutes. We need volunteers to participate in the study.

A consent form is presented on the first page of the survey. You will be required to complete the form in order to participate in the study.

Please follow the link to participate in the survey: http://bit.ly/avqipv

"Teach by Showing": Visual Servo Control of Manipulators in Constrained Workspaces

2010-05-31T00:03:00.000-07:00

Next Tuesday Ambrose will be giving a practice talk for his upcoming thesis proposal defense. The talk is entitled "Teach by Showing": Visual Servo Control of Manipulators in Constrained Workspaces

ICRA 2010: The Recappening

2010-05-17T19:57:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday May 18th the CARIS Lab comes to life with sights, tales, and fond memories of the 2010 International Conference on Robotics and Automation. From hotdogging autonomous cars to robot-powered warehouses, from build-a-block bots to intuitive HRI; prepare yourself for The Recappening.

Where did it go? Regaining a lost target for visual servoing

2010-05-07T16:48:00.000-07:00

Next Tuesday Sina will be giving a practice talk for his upcoming thesis proposal defense. The talk is entitled 'Where did it go? Regaining a lost target for visual servoing'.

Investigating the use of physiological signals to enhance human-robot interaction

2010-04-25T10:03:00.000-07:00

On Monday, Susana will be presenting her ICRA2010 conference poster entitled 'Enhancing human-robot interaction through physiological-signal based communication'.

Two CARISIANs win prestigious NSERC Fellowships

2010-04-16T16:45:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Dr. Chris Parker for winning an NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship and Susana Zoghbi for winning a NSERC post-graduate fellowship in the 2010 NSERC competition.

Chris is developing intuitive robot control strategies that will enable non-experts to cooperate with intelligent robotic assistants. In particular, Chris is interested in developing robots that can tailor their behaviours to the states of their users, and that can communicate aspects of their own state their users via anthropomorphic signals.

Susana is studying robot perception of human affective state using biometric signals - her goal is to improve the way that robots respond to human affective state.

The aim of this work is to make the use of robotic assistants practical in a variety of domains including factories, elder-care facilities, and the home.

Investigating Human Balance Using a Robotic Motion Platform

2010-04-16T14:07:00.000-07:00

This Monday, Tom Huryn will be presenting his MASc thesis work titled "Investigating Human Balance Using a Robotic Motion Platform". The talk will be a sneak-peek of his upcoming presentation at ICRA 2010 (May 6th). Prepare your postural control paradigm for a profound presentation.

More cool robot photos

2010-04-04T11:34:00.000-07:00

Boston.com's "The Big Picture" presents its latest photo collection of robotics endeavours from around the world:

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/03/robots_part_iii.html

So many applications, so many inspirations!

Learning for Control from Muliple Demonstrations

2010-03-23T19:07:00.000-07:00

Next week Sina will go over the paper entitled "Learning for Control from Multiple Demonstrations" written by Adam Coates, Pieter Abbeel and Andrew Y. Ng., in Proceedings of ICML, 2008., available for download:
http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~pabbeel/ or
http://heli.stanford.edu/papers/coatesabbeelng_icml2008.pdf

The Haptic Affect Loop: An Application of Emotion Recognition and Haptic Feedback for the Management of Information Flow

2010-03-17T10:53:00.000-07:00

This upcoming Monday, Matthew Pan will be presenting his M.A.Sc thesis work tentatively entitled "*The Haptic Affect Loop: An Application of Emotion Recognition and Haptic Feedback for the Management of Information Flow *" Look forward to it!

Safe and Ethical Human-Robot Interaction Using Hesitation Gestures

2010-03-13T15:40:00.000-08:00

This week AJung Moon will be presenting her M.A.Sc thesis work titled "Safe and Ethical Human-Robot Interaction Using Hesitation Gestures"

Analyzing Fundamental Kinesiological Motions of the Human Body Using Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) - Monday March 8, 11am

2010-03-07T07:30:00.000-08:00

At this weeks meeting (11am Monday in CARIS Lab) Mike Kayo (visiting Ph.D. candidate from the Graduate School of System Design and Management, Keio University) will give a talk on his research. The objectives of his research are:

- To extract a limited number of fundamental patterns from almost countless motions of human body
- To identify the interconnected relations among these motions
- To provide a practical approach to drive the kinesiology in finding and restoring imbalance and distortions of the human body

To achieve this work he is applying the system engineering method known as the Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) developed by Warfield (1973)

Undergraduate Student Research Positions Available - Deadline Feb 17, 2010

2010-02-12T07:28:00.000-08:00

Three positions are availalable in the CARIS Lab
1. Haptic-Affect Interaction Project
2. Human-Robot Interaction Project
3. Kinodynamic Head & Whole body motion modeling and control Project
All applicants must be eligible for the NSERC USRA program.

Deadline for Applications, February 17.

Applications should include a cover letter indication the position of interest and reporting your GPA, resume, transcripts - copies or download from SIS is fine) Applications should be submitted by email to: caris.ubc@gmail.com with the subject line CARIS Lab USRA. PDF format for attachment is preferred. Please, no compressed files or executables and no total attachment size over 1 MB.
Interviews for selected applicants will be scheduled for week of Feb 22.

Backgrounder:
The Collaborative Advanced Robotics and Intelligent Systems Laboratory is an undertaking by researchers at the University of British Columbia interested in Human-Robot interaction and intelligent robotics. Our research theme is the study and implementation of safe, comfortable, and useful interactions between people and robots

Ongoing research involves the application of various robot platforms including two 6-axis human-scale robotic arms, a 6 axis motion platform, mobile robots, vision systems, and physiological sensor systems.

Our lab is located in the Institute for Computing, Information and Cognitive Systems (ICICS) at the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, BC Canada. For more information please visit www.caris. mech.ubc.ca

1. Haptic-Affect Interaction Project
Appropriate for MECH/MECHA, EECE, ENPH, CS students, any year.

A summer undergraduate research assistant is sought for the Collaborative Advanced Robotics and Intelligent Systems Laboratory and the Sensory Perception and Interaction Research Group to assist with the development and testing of hand held and wearable devices for acquiring affective state data, touch and contact information, and controlling the haptic (touch sensed) output of the device.

The prospective candidate will have a background and strong interest in instrumentation, mechanical systems, actuators and controls, and interface programming. C/C++ programming and Matlab/Simulink programming are an asset, as well as an interest in psychology and physiology. Duties will include assisting graduate students with running experiments with the existing sensor suite, prototyping and testing wearable and hand held platforms for affect and touch sensing and haptic output, developing an integration board and computer programming to read, display and process the input and output data. Documentation and website development for the project will also be required.

2. Human Robot Interaction Project
Appropriate for MECH/MECHA, EECE, ENPH, CS, COGS students, any year.

A summer undergraduate research assistant is sought for the Collaborative Advanced Robotics and Intelligent Systems Laboratory to assist with the development and running of robotics experiments for our human-robot interaction project.

The prospective candidate will have a background and interest in C/C++ programming, statistics, and psychology/physiology. Experience with human factors, instrumentation, signal processing, and robot trajectory planning, are important assets.

Duties will include assisting a graduate student with setting up and implementing a series of experiments for evaluation of interactions between users and a table top robotic platform. Preparation of documentation, including technical reports, posters and journal publications will be required. Development of demonstration system for a human robot interaction based on algorithms developed in the lab. Documentation and website development for the project will also be required.

3. Kinodynamic Head & Whole Body Motion Modeling and Control Project
Appropriate for MECH/MECHA, EECE, ENPH students, any year.

A summer undergraduate research assistant is sought for the Collaborative Advanced Robotics and Intelligent Systems Laboratory to develop a kinodyamic model of the head and whole-body system suitable for modeling the effects of a pure vestibular (human balance system) disturbance on the head and whole-body movements. We intend to model two distincts parts of the vestibular apparatus that are responsible respectively for the detection of head linear and angular acceleration in three-dimensions.

This model will allow the prediction of body disturbance and walking trajectories (navigation) when a vestibular error is applied while the body is in different body postures. The obtained data will be used for controlling the motion of robot designed to guide the head and neck motion of a subject in human balance research.

The prospective candidate will have a background and strong interest in instrumentation, mechanical systems, actuators and controls, and interface programming. C/C++ programming, Matlab and labview programming are an asset. Mechanical shop skills are an asset. Duties will include researching, developing and implementing a suitable kinodynamic model of the head and whole-body; developing motion trajectories for a robot used to guide head and spine motion, and integration of the motion system into the robot and controller being developed by a commercial contractor. Documentation and website development for the project will also be required.

Involuntary Motions for Humanoid Robots

2010-02-03T15:42:00.000-08:00

This coming monday Boyd is presenting a paper written by Takahiro Miyashita and Hiroshi Ishiguro entitled "Human-like natural behaviour generation based on involuntary motions for humanoid robots", which was published in Robotics and Autonomous Systems 2004. The link to the paper is here.

Four CARISians are recognized as Department Scholars

2010-01-21T21:13:00.000-08:00

CARIS Celebrates Achievement!

UBC Mechanical Engineering designated their first group of Department Scholars at a Celebration of Achievements reception on Wednesday, January 13, 2010.

The Department Scholar designation was created to recognize the outstanding calibre of graduate students in the Department, and their achievements in their studies and research. Four graduate students from the CARIS Lab were recognized with this honour: Ambrose Chan, Thomas Huryn, Jeswin Jeyasurya and Susana Zoghbi. Thomas Huryn also was recognized for receiving the Merit Award and a Department Entrance Scholarship. CARISian Matthew Pan was also recognized for receiving a Department Entrance Scholarship. Congratulations to all!

NI LabVIEW Robotics

2010-01-20T09:08:00.000-08:00

National Instruments introduces a Robotics software package for LabVIEW. Check it out here:

http://zone.ni.com/wv/app/doc/p/id/wv-1414

For more info on robotics at NI, check out the featured robotic applications and other resources here:

http://www.ni.com/robotics/

Cheers!

Using biofeedback to design a robot controller

2010-01-15T07:25:00.000-08:00

In our next lab meeting, Susana will be presenting a paper entitled 'Controller design for human-robot interaction', where the authors propose an algorithm that uses biofeedback for
designing human-friendly controllers. It is available for downloading at:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/u31t0h3265443755/

Affective expression in appearance constrained robots

2010-01-04T17:06:00.000-08:00

This Wednesday at 8am, AJung will be presenting a paper titled "Affective expression in appearance constrained robots" followed by a brief discussion on the motivations for her Master's research project.

Written by Cindy L. Bethel and Robin R. Murphy the paper was originally presented at the HRI'06 conference. (Access paper here: http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1121241.1121299)

Emotion Recognition from Physiological Signals for User Modeling of Affect

2009-11-26T13:57:00.000-08:00

This week, Matthew will be presenting a paper entitled "Emotion Recognition from Physiological Signals for User Modeling of Affect" authored by Fatma Nasoz, Christine L. Lisetti, Kaye Alvarez and Neal Finkelstein.

The paper can be found here:

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.113.1040&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Sina's practice talk.

2009-11-24T16:36:00.000-08:00

This Wednesday Sina will be giving a practice talk for his mech 698 presentation. The talk is entitled as ' Regaining Lost Target Visualation for Eye-in-Hand Visual Servoing'.

This week's talk

2009-11-17T14:22:00.000-08:00

This Wednesday Susana will be giving a practice talk for her upcoming Thesis Proposal presentation. The talk is entitled 'Enhancing Collaborative Human Robot Interaction through Physiological-Signal Based Communication'

This week's talk

2009-11-03T17:35:00.000-08:00

This week, Chris will go over some of the more frustrating aspects of writing a paper, and how to solve them.

Joe's Practice Talk

2009-10-27T09:32:00.000-07:00

This Wednesday, in lieu of a paper, Joe will be giving a practice talk for his 598 presentation this Friday.

This week's paper (October 21) - Balancing Humans, Balancing Robots

2009-10-16T10:11:00.000-07:00

This week Tom Huryn will be discussing a paper from Neural Networks titled, "Sensory adaptation in human balance control: Lessons for biomimetic robotic bipeds" (available for download at the link below).

Steering the CARIS Lab back into the zany world of human and humanoid balance control, the paper addresses current theories of sensorimotor balance control, and application of the sensory re-weighting hypothesis on a robotic biped. We will laugh, we will cry, we will exit with a better appreciation of our own postural control mechanisms.

The paper is available here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2486449/?tool=pubmed

Lab Presentation

2009-10-13T09:22:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday October 14, Jeswin will be discussing his research in a presentation titled
"Sit to Stand Assistive Testbed". All are welcome to attend.

October 7 Meeting: Lab Wiki Discussion

2009-10-06T16:13:00.001-07:00

This weeks meeting will serve as a discussion of what will be in the upcoming Lab Wiki. Please take a quick look at the Wiki set up by the Biometics and Dextrous Manipulation Laboratory at Stanford. It would be wonderful if ours could eventually be this well-structured:

http://bdml.stanford.edu/twiki/bin/view/Main

This week's paper (September 30) - Visual Servoing By Partitioning Degrees of Freedom

2009-09-28T19:12:00.000-07:00

This week Ambrose will be reviewing the paper titled "Visual Servoing By Partitioning Degrees of Freedom" which can be found at the link below

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=917078