2018 Midwest Robotics Workshop (MWRW)
June 14–15, 2018
Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago6045 S. Kenwood Avenue (map)
Chicago, IL 60637
Overview
The robotics field is experiencing tremendous growth as a result of algorithmic and technological advances, the availability of common, low-cost sensors and platforms, and a standardization in open-source development. These factors together with the growing community of talented, highly-trained roboticists combine to render feasible real-world applications in our homes and workplaces, and on our streets.
The Midwest Robotics Workshop (MWRW) is intended to bring together roboticists from academia and industry in and around the Midwestern United States. Building on successful workshops in 2016 and 2017, it is an opportunity for researchers and practitioners to share their work with others and to network, with the goal of creating a more cohesive and vibrant robotics community in the Midwest. The workshop will feature invited talks by leading researchers, and an exciting collection of oral presentations and interactive poster sessions.
There is no cost to attend the workshop. Additionally, we we are offering a limited number of student lodging grants for the night of June 14 in order to encourage participation from outside the Chicagoland area.
If you have any questions, please contact the organizers.
Call for Participation
We invite all roboticists from the Midwest (broadly interpreted) to participate in the second annual Midwest Robotics Workshop to be held at TTI-Chicago on the University of Chicago campus (map) on June 14–15, 2018.
We encourage participants to use the workshop as an opportunity to present recent research either as a talk or during an interactive poster session. If you are interested in presenting, please submit a title and abstract summarizing your work. Since the workshop does not have published proceedings, abstracts that describe work that was previously published or is still in progress are welcome.
Keynote Speakers
Ella Atkins (University of Michigan)
Cyberphysical Flight Planning for Nominal and Emergency Situations
Dr. Ella Atkins is a Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Michigan, where she is director of the Autonomous Aerospace Systems (A2SYS) Lab. Dr. Atkins holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan. She previously served on the Aerospace Engineering faculty at the University of Maryland, College Park. Dr. Atkins is past-chair of the AIAA Intelligent Systems Technical Committee, AIAA Associate Fellow, IEEE senior member, small public airport owner/operator (Shamrock Field, Brooklyn, MI) and private pilot. She served on the National Academy's Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board (ASEB) (2011-2015 term), was a member of the Institute for Defense Analysis Defense Science Studies (DSSG) Group (2012-2013), and recently served on an NRC committee to develop an autonomy research agenda for civil aviation (2013-2014).
Louis Whitcomb (Johns Hopkins University)
Development of Nereid Under-Ice Underwater Robot and Exploration of the Karasik Seamount in the Arctic Ocean
Louis L. Whitcomb is Professor and former Chairperson of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, with secondary appointment in Computer Science, at the Johns Hopkins University's Whiting School of Engineering. He is an Adjunct Scientist, Department of Applied Ocean Physics and Engineering, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. He completed a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering in 1984 and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering in 1992 at Yale University. From 1984 to 1986 he was a R&D engineer with the GMFanuc Robotics Corporation in Detroit, Michigan. He joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University in 1995, after post-doctoral fellowships at the University of Tokyo and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. His research focuses on the navigation, dynamics, and control of robot systems — with applications to robotics in extreme environments including space and underwater robots. Whitcomb is a co-principal investigator of the Nereus and Nereid Under-Ice Projects. He is former (founding) Director of the JHU Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics. He received teaching awards at Johns Hopkins in 2001, 2002, 2004, and 2011, was awarded a NSF Career Award, and an ONR Young Investigator Award. He is a Fellow of the IEEE.
Important Dates
| June 1, 2018 | Student Lodging Grant Application Deadline |
| June 1, 2018 | Abstract Submission Deadline | June 14–15, 2018 | Workshop |
Program
The workshop will start (with breakfast) at 10:00am on Thursday to allow time for people to commute to Chicago in the morning. It will end with lunch on Friday. Breakfast and lunch will be provided both days. The program will include invited and contributed talks, as well as poster sessions.
The following times are subject to change.
Thursday, June 14
| 10:00am–10:40am | Breakfast (provided) |
| 10:40am–11:00am | Welcoming Remarks |
| 11:00am–12:00pm | Keynote Talk (Chair: Ram Vasudevan) |
| , Cyberphysical Flight Planning for Nominal and Emergency Situations | |
| 12:00pm–01:00pm | Lunch (provided) |
| 01:00pm–03:00pm | Invited/Contributed Talks (Chair: Jonathan Kelly) |
| , Herding Mobile Robots in Multiple Groups | |
| , A New Homotopy Method for Motion Planning | |
| , Robotic Data Gathering in Agriculture | |
| , Predictive Models of Locomotion - From Dynamic Robots to Assistive Exoskeletons | |
| , A Continuum Model for Fiber-Reinforced Soft Robot Actuators | |
| , Advanced Magnetic Microrobots with Real-Time Sensing Capabilities for Biomedical Applications | |
| 03:00pm–04:20pm | Poster Session I and Break |
| 04:20pm–06:00pm | Invited/Contributed Talks (Chair: Matthew Johnson-Roberson) |
| , HD Live Maps for Automated Driving: An AI Approach | |
| , Online Mobile Manipulator Self-Calibration Through Visual and Contact Sensing | |
| , Real-Time Perception for Vocally-Specified Mobile Manipulation Tasks | |
| , Jointly Learning to Construct and Control Agents using Deep Reinforcement Learning | |
| , Imitation Games for Learning to Make or Predict Sequential Decisions |
Friday, June 15
| 08:30am–10:00am | Breakfast (provided) and Poster Session II |
| 10:00am–11:00am | Keynote Talk (Chair: Matthew Walter) |
| , Development of Nereid Under-Ice Underwater Robot and Exploration of the Karasik Seamount in the Arctic Ocean | |
| 11:00am–01:00pm | Invited/Contributed Talks (Chair: Michael Zinn) |
| , What Use Are Fiducial Markers in Structure-from-Motion | |
| , Navigation Safety for Mobile Robots | |
| , Mechanical Impedance and a New Generation of Wearable Robots | |
| , Novel Control and Intent Recognition Approaches for Lower Limb Prostheses based on Computer Vision | |
| , Design and Control of the Portable Powered Ankle-Foot Orthosis (PPAFO) | |
| , On the Function of Expressive Robotic Systems (aka the Utility of Dancing Robots) | |
| 01:00pm–01:10pm | Closing Remarks |
| 01:10pm–03:00pm | Lunch (provided) |
Poster Session I (Thursday)
- , Designing Pneumatic Building Blocks for Soft Robots
- , PiCar
- , Augmented Joint Stiffness and Actuation using Architectures of Soft Pneumatic Actuators
- , Revised Design of a Passive Hydraulic Training Simulator of Biceps Spasticity
- , Ankle Impedance Varies with Ambulatory Task
- , Contact-Aided Invariant Extended Kalman Filtering for Legged Robot State Estimation
- , Deep Learning for Disparity Estimation of Underwater Images with Synthetic Data
- , Design and Analysis of a High Performance Impedance Based Hybrid Haptic Interface
- , Design and Experimental Implementation of a Proprioceptive Leg for Optimized Jumping
- , Design of Microscale Magnetic Tumbling Robots for Locomotion in Multiple Environments and Complex Terrains
- , Direction of Arrival Estimation-aided Cyberattack Detection in Multi-Robot Systems
- , Environmental Operations with Multi-robot Systems
- , Exploring the Quadrupedal Asymmetrical Gaits
- , Feedback Motion Planning for Hybrid Dynamical Systems
- , Inquiry-Based Labs for an Introductory Continuous Controls Class
- , Semantic Mapping for Orchard Environments
- , Character Recognition on a Humanoid Robotic Platform via Laban Movement Analysis
Poster Session II (Friday)
- , Model-based Control of Parallel Combinations of Soft Actuators
- , A Multiview Approach to Learning Articulated Motion Models
- , Model-free Continuous Control with Piecewise Quadratic Neural Network
- , MR Compatible Haptic Interface
- , Multi-Robot Coordination and Planning for Spatio-Temporal Data Collection and Estimation
- , Performance and Stability Limitations of Admittance-Based Haptic Interfaces
- , Perturbative Sit-to-Stand Experiment for Validating Quantitative Method of Stability Estimation
- , Pneumatic Ergonomic Crutches: A Self Contained Soft Robotic Energy Harvesting Platform
- , Power Distribution and Management of Mobile Robot
- , Predicting Obstacle Motion in Real Time with Recurrent Neural Networks for Collision Avoidance in Unstructured Environments
- , Quantification of Abnormal Hypertonic Muscle Behavior Using Wearable Measurement Device (PVRM - Position, Velocity, Resistance Meter)
- , Recognizing Geometric Constraints in Human Demonstrations using Force and Position Signals
- , Resilient Control Through Dynamic Watermarking
- , Role Determination Through Power Exchange in Physical Human Robot Interaction
- , Stylistic Gait Design from a Planar Robot Model with Core Actuation
- , The FRS Method: Provably Safe, Real-Time Trajectory Planning for Autonomous Vehicles
- , CI-RRT: Choreographic Interactive Motion Planning
Accommodations
There are two hotels nearby TTI-Chicago that provide shuttle service throughout the University of Chicago campus: The Hyatt Place Chicago-South and the LaQuinta Inn & Suites Chicago Lake Shore. There are also several reasonable options in downtown Chicago, such as Hotel Felix.
We will provide a limited number of grants for student lodging at a nearby hotel for the night of June 14. Please see the Registration section for information on how to apply.
Parking: free parking is available in the commuter parking lot at 60th St. and Stony Island Ave. and free street parking on many streets near TTIC (just beware of "permit parking" and "street cleaning" signs!). Parking can be found on 61st Street (between Woodlawn Ave and Blackstone Ave), on Dorchester Street (between 60th and 61st Streets).
Registration
Please register for the workshop here. There is no cost to register.
We are awarding a limited number of lodging grants for students from outside the Chicagoland area who would like to attend. The grants will provide a one-night stay at a nearby hotel on June 14. Please fill out this form if you would like to apply.
Last modified: January 18 2024 09:36:00