Seminar: Robots for Physical Interaction

Sangbae Kim, PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

All dates for this event occur in the past.

Scott Laboratory
Scott Laboratory
E525
201 W 19th Ave
Columbus, OH 43210
United States

Abstract

While robots dominate repetitive labor tasks in factories, the design and controller of these robots are not suitable for relatively complex tasks that humans easily do. These tasks typically require intricate interaction force control on impacts and rich physical interactions such as walking, grinding and manipulating non-rigid objects. Conventional robots are not built to control force or be flexible to perform like human arms. The talk will discuss how the new design paradigm allows such dynamic interactive force control with environments. Demonstrating the effect of using employing robot design paradigm, the latest version of cheetah robot and force feedback teleoperation arms will be presented. This new class of robots will play a crucial role in future robot applications such as elderly care, home service, delivery and services in environments unfavorable for humans.

About the speaker

Sangbae Kim is the director of the Biomimetic Robotics Laboratory and an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His research focuses on the bio-inspired robot design by extracting principles from animals. Kim's achievements on bio-inspired robot development include the world's first directional adhesive inspired by gecko lizards, and a climbing robot, Stickybot, that utilizes the directional adhesives to climb smooth surfaces featured in TIME's best inventions in 2006. A recent achievement includes the development of the MIT Cheetah capable of stable outdoor running up to 13mph and autonomous jumping over an obstacles at an efficiency of animals. This achievement was covered by more than 300 media articles. He is a recipient of best paper award from the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (2007), King-Sun Fu Memorial Transactions on Robotics (2008) and IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics (2016), DARPA Young Faculty Award (2013), NSF CAREER award (2014) and Ruth and Joel Spira Award for Distinguished Teaching (2015).

Hosted by Professor Haijun Su.