Project work is avaiable in several areas. Manipulation is about interactingwith objects in our environment.
People are particularly adept atmanipulation for a number of reasons.
Through experience, we havedeveloped an intuitive understanding of kinematics, dynamics, contact,impact, friction, etc. The goal of my work in manipulationis to distill the basic principles that will enable robotic systems toeffectively manipulate objects. Many applications, suchas hazaderous cleanup, search and rescue, security patrolling, and reconnaissance,would benefit from the ability of a group of autonomous mobile robots tocoordinate amongst themselves to accomplish a task. Efforts in manipulationfrom mobile robotic platforms have involved attaching a traditional roboticmanipulator to a mobile robot. In this area, I am interested inhow we can design mechanisms that integrate manipulation and mobility inorder to increase the versatility of a robot.