Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics Seminar: Veronica Santos

Description

Veronica J. Santos, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles, and director of the Biomechatronics Lab, will present a talk entitled "Artificial Haptic Intelligence for Human-machine Systems." The talk is part of the Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics Seminar.

Abstract: The functionality of artificial manipulators could be enhanced by artificial "haptic intelligence" that enables the identification of object features via touch for semi-autonomous decision-making and/or display to a human operator. This could be especially useful when complementary sensory modalities, such as vision, are unavailable. I will highlight past and present work to enhance the functionality of artificial hands in human-machine systems. I will describe efforts to develop multimodal tactile sensor skins, and to teach robots how to haptically perceive salient geometric features such as edges and fingertip-sized bumps and pits using machine learning techniques. I will describe the use of reinforcement learning to teach robots goal-based policies for a functional contour-following task: the closure of a ziplock bag. Our Contextual Multi-Armed Bandits approach tightly couples robot actions to the tactile and proprioceptive consequences of the actions, and selects future actions based on prior experiences, the current context, and a functional task goal. Finally, I will describe current efforts to develop real-time capabilities for the perception of tactile directionality, and to develop models for haptically locating objects buried in granular media. Real-time haptic perception and decision-making capabilities could be used to advance semi-autonomous robot systems and reduce the cognitive burden on human teleoperators of devices ranging from wheelchair-mounted robots to explosive ordnance disposal robots.