My research interests broadly include robotic manipulation, mobile robotics, and manipulation from mobile robotic platforms.
Manipulation is about interacting with objects in our environment.
People are particularly adept at manipulation for a number of reasons. Through experience, we have developed an intuitive understanding of kinematics, dynamics, contact, impact, friction, etc. The goal of my work in manipulation is to distill the basic principles that will enable robotic systems to effectively manipulate objects. Cooperative mobile robotics Many applications, such as hazardous cleanup, search and rescue, security patrolling, and reconnaissance, would benefit from the ability of a group of autonomous mobile robots to coordinate amongst themselves to accomplish a task. Currently, we have relatively few ideas about how robots should be organized for collaborative behavior and how a task should be divided among a group of heterogeneous robots.