Ayanna Howard was one of five extraordinary women featured in the TechMAKERS initiative during the 2018 South by Southwest® (SXSW®) Conference in Austin, Texas.

Machine learning has been around for decades, but the advent of big data and more powerful computers has increased its impact significantly. Georgia Tech researchers are advancing both basic and applied science involved.

Shimon, the marimba playing robot, will perform at this Friday's Rise Up, Robots event.

To date, there is usually a weight limit on how much a drone can carry, restricting its usefulness. But Jonathan Rogers, assistant professor at the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, is trying to change that. He is designing, building and programming robotic drones that can link up and carry larger, heavier objects as a unit.

Four Georgia Tech faculty members were named IEEE Fellows, effective January 1, 2018. They are BME Professor Jaydev Desai, ECE Professors Saibal Mukhopadhyay and Justin Romberg, and GTRI Senior Research Engineer Kevin James “Jim” Sangston.

ISyE Assistant Professor Yao Xie has been working with the Atlanta Police Department to create an algorithm that finds connections between crime incidents. 

ECE Assistant Professor Sam Coogan received the IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems Best Paper Award at the 56th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, which took place December 12-15, 2017 in Melbourne, Australia. 

Luke Skywalker’s bionic hand is a step closer to reality for amputees in this galaxy. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have created an ultrasonic sensor that allows amputees to control each of their prosthetic fingers individually. It provides fine motor hand gestures that aren’t possible with current commercially available devices.

Ayanna Howard named chair of School of Interactive Computing.

Last Halloween, Sonia Chernova hardly left her doorstep in Decatur, Georgia, handing out candy to a constant stream of kids. This year, she put an autonomous robot on the porch to do it for her. It gave out 1,000 pieces in three hours to hundreds of kids.

The U.S. Army Research Laboratory has awarded an alliance headed by the University of Pennsylvania a five-year, $27 million grant to develop new methods of creating autonomous, intelligent and resilient teams of robots. 

Luke Drnach and Katelyn Fry met through a first-of-its-kind traineeship in health care robotics offered by Georgia Tech and Emory University.

ECE Professor Ayanna M. Howard has been named as a recipient of the Walker’s Legacy Power25 Atlanta Awards.

The Georgia Tech robotics community is growing. During the last year, four new faculty members in three different colleges joined Georgia Tech and the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines. Additionally, Prof. Seth Hutchinson will join our faculty in January 2018 as the next KUKA Chair of Robotics. 

Michael Jeffries, a research technologist in the Aerospace, Transportation and Advanced Systems (ATAS) with the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), has turned his hobby of robot building and battling into a turn on ABC’s BattleBots.

Advancing research in medical robotics to improve patient quality of life

The Robotarium held its grand opening on Tuesday in the Van Leer Building. Appropriately, a scissor-wielding robot (named Snips) cut the ribbon. Later, a researcher from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign skyped into the room to run a live remote experiment.

This month Georgia Tech opens the Robotarium, a $2.5 million lab funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and Office of Naval Research. The 725-square-foot facility houses nearly 100 rolling and flying swarm robots that are accessible to anyone. Researchers from around the globe can write their own computer programs, upload them, then get the results as the Georgia Tech machines carry out the commands. The researcher later receives video and data from the experiment.

The Robotics Industries Association (RIA) announced its new board members, including the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machine’s (IRIM) Gary McMurray. 

The human brain's computational might is the envy of computer engineers, and emulating it is coming a step closer thanks to new nanomaterials. Georgia Tech research engineers have created next-generation brain-mimmicking memory via "memristors" to underly processing "neuristors." The engineers are using them to make an artificially intelligent retina that could spot enemy aircraft or find missing children.

Ph.D. candidate from Jaydev Desai’s robotics lab earns top honor for best student paper

As a toddler Brittney English would duck walk under her father’s car and watch in fascination as he changed the oil. The first time she held a power drill was at the age of three under the tutelage of her grandfather as he built a set of bookshelves. A few years later, she began squirreling away nuts and bolts, saving them in a jar like precious treasure.

Researchers have created a device that makes walking up and down stairs easier. They’ve built energy-recycling stairs that store a user’s energy during descent and return energy to the user during ascent.

Fire ants use their bodies to construct Eiffel Tower-looking structures when they run into a tall obstruction while looking for food or escaping to new areas. A new study suggests that they build these structures without a leader or coordinated effort. Each ant wanders around aimlessly, adhering to a certain set of rules, until it unknowingly participates in the construction of a tower several inches tall.

The Boeing Manufacturing Development Center works to implement automation in industrial applications. It is one of 17 corporate innovation centers on Georgia Tech’s campus. 

Gary McMurray testified before the Senate Committee on Agricultural, Nutrition and Forestry Thursday.  McMurray leads the Food Processing Technology Division at the Georgia Tech Research Institute. 

Researchers fed a robot nearly 5,000 complete songs — from Beethoven to the Beatles to Lady Gaga to Miles Davis — and more than 2 million motifs, riffs and licks of music. The four-armed, marimba-playing machine is using deep learning to write and play its own music.

ECE Ph.D. student Maria Santos has been chosen for a La Caixa Fellowship for Graduate Studies in North America.

ECE Professor Ayanna Howard is featured in Atlanta magazine's Women Making a Mark.

An interdisciplinary team of graduate students and faculty from the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines (IRIM) won the Best Multi-Robot Systems Paper Award at the 2017 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA). 

Georgia Tech’s participation at ICRA 2017 is among the top ten of all institutions represented at the conference, ranking among nearly 3,000 of the world's leading roboticists contributing to 953 papers.

A new interface designed by Georgia Institute of Technology researchers allows users to simply point and click on an item, then choose a grasp, to control a robot remotely.

In what may have been the first aerial encounter of its kind, researchers recently pitted two swarms of autonomous aircraft against one another over a military test facility. While the friendly encounter may not have qualified as an old-fashioned dogfight, it provided the first example of a live engagement between two swarms of unmanned air vehicles (UAVs), and allowed the two teams to demonstrate different combat tactics in flight.

A talented trio of Georgia Tech students will go down in history as the first team to win the Collegiate Drone Racing National Championship.

Johns Hopkins’ Gregory S. Chirikjian will join IRIM as its first Visiting Faculty Fellow on Monday, April 17.

Associate Dean for Research Nancey Green Leigh answered a few questions about the future of robotics at the College of Design and Georgia Tech.

ECE Professor Ayanna Howard has been selected as one of Atlanta magazine’s 2017 Women Making a Mark, a distinction reserved for a select group of women working to grow and strengthen the metro Atlanta community. 

The Robotics Industries Association (RIA) recently announced its new board members, including the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machine’s (IRIM) Larry Sweet.

In June 2014, the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) and CNN launched a joint research initiative to study the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for newsgathering. In January 2015, CNN signed an agreement with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to share the results of the research. The project is now gaining momentum as researchers shift their focus from evaluating UAV equipment to developing potential protocols for safe operations.

Priyam Parashar, a first-year student in the Robotics Ph.D. Program at Georgia Tech, received the first Georgia Robotics Fellowship, established earlier this year by local non-profit Georgia Robotics.

Parashar

Researchers have identified a way to teach robots how to fall with grace and without serious damage. The new algorithm tells a robot how to react to a wide variety of falls – from a single step to recover from a gentle nudge, to a rolling motion that breaks a high-speed fall. As a result, robots can minimize the damage or injury they might cause to themselves or others while falling by learning the best sequence of movements to slow their momentum. 

Having a light touch can make a hefty difference in how well animals and robots move across challenging granular surfaces such as snow, sand and leaf litter. Research shows how the design of appendages – whether legs or wheels – affects the ability of both robots and animals to cross weak and flowing surfaces.

Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University faculty members are uniting to train the next generation of engineering students in healthcare robotics technologies, so they can better understand the changing needs of patients and their caregivers and healthcare providers. 

ECE Professor Ayanna Howard has been named to The Root 100 2015, a list of 100 African-Americans ages 25 to 45 who are responsible for the year’s most significant moments, movements, and ideas. 

Georgia Institute of Technology researchers have developed a new artificially intelligent system that crowdsources plots for interactive stories, which are popular in video games and let players choose different branching story options. 

As an undergraduate computer engineering major, English joined the Opportunity Research Scholars (ORS) program. Now English’s graduate research is an ORS project and she is mentoring a fresh new crop of undergraduates.

Ayanna Howard has been appointed to the Linda J. and Mark C. Smith Chair in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), effective August 17.

A team of robots and researchers from Georgia Tech’s Center for Music Technology is headed to Washington, D.C., to play a concert at the historic Kennedy Center. Professor Gil Weinberg and his machines, Shimon and three Shimi robots, will perform July 22 on the Center’s Millennium Stage. The performance is part of the Smithsonian Institution and Kennedy Center’s 25/40 celebration, which commemorates the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the 40th year of VSA, the international organization on arts and disability.

ECE Professor Magnus Egerstedt has been named the recipient of the 2015 John R. Ragazzini Education Award from the American Automatic Control Council.

ECE Professor Ayanna Howard has been named as one of the 23 most powerful women engineers in the world by Business Insider. 

Georgia Tech’s Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines announces its new Industrial Partners Program (IP2), designed exclusively for companies that may benefit from the development and implementation of robotics solutions.

Georgia Tech faculty continue to be recognized as among the most respected in their field. Last month, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) named four — in biology, computing and engineering — to its 2013 class of fellows

The Georgia Institute of Technology has announced the launch of its Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines (IRIM), the newest of Georgia Tech’s ten Interdisciplinary Research Institutes (IRIs). IRIM brings together robotics researchers from across campus—spanning colleges, departments and individual labs—to support and connect research initiatives, enhance educational programs and foster advances for the National Robotics Initiative (NRI), first announced by President Obama in 2011, and officially established in 2012.

Anthony J. Yezzi has been named as the Julian T. Hightower Chair Professor, effective October 1.

The Georgia Institute of Technology has received a five-year $4.6 million grant to increase understanding of the aging process for people with disabilities and use data gleaned from the study to develop technologies that will benefit them and others.

A new study from the Georgia Institute of Technology finds that older and younger people have varying preferences about what they would want a personal robot to look like. And they change their minds based on what the robot is supposed to do.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded funding for four robotics projects with applications in various innovative areas. 

Assistant Professor Mike Stilman of the School of Interactive Computing has been selected for a 2013 Young Faculty Award by the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA).

ECE Professor Magnus Egerstedt has been named as the 2013 Alumnus of the Year by the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. 

With a new type of engineering class, ECE Professor Magnus Egerstedt has a chance to educate thousands. Can he pull it off?

A multi-university team that includes Georgia Tech's Mike Stilman has been advanced to the next round of the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency’s Robotics Challenge.

ECE's Erin Hanson has received a scholarship under the Science, Mathematics, and Research for Transformation Program, which is administered by the U.S. Department of Defense.

Antenna technology originally developed to quickly send and receive information through a software-defined military radio may soon be used to transmit ocean data from a wave-powered autonomous surface vehicle. The technology, the lowest-power method for maintaining a satellite uplink, automatically compensates for the movement of the antenna as the boat bobs around on the ocean surface.

ECE Professor Ayanna Howard has been appointed as a member of the 2014-2015 Defense Science Study Group (DSSG), a program directed by the Institute for Defense Analyses and sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

What do swimmers like trout, eels and sandfish lizards have in common? According to a new study, the similar timing patterns that these animals use to contract their muscles and produce undulatory swimming motions can be explained using a simple model. Scientists have now applied the new model to understand the connection between electrical signals and body movement in the sandfish.

ECE Professor Ayanna Howard and two of her Ph.D. students, Hae Won Park and Richard Coogle, took the first place prize at the DARwIn-OP Humanoids Application Challenge at the 2013 International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2013).

Future teams of subterranean search and rescue robots may owe their success to the lowly fire ant, a much despised insect whose painful bites and extensive networks of underground tunnels are all-too-familiar to people living in the southern United States.

Based on a Georgia Institute of Technology study, it appears that the healthcare providers will welcome robots into the workplace. y may be welcomed with open arms depending on the tasks at hand.

Robots are now able to intelligently maneuver within clutter, gently making contact with objects while accomplishing a task, thanks to technology developed by Dr. Charlie Kemp and the Healthcare Robotics Lab.

Using bundles of vertical zinc oxide nanowires, researchers have fabricated arrays of piezotronic transistors capable of converting mechanical motion directly into electronic controlling signals. The arrays could help give robots a more adaptive sense of touch, provide better security in handwritten signatures and offer new ways for humans to interact with electronic devices.

Based on a study of both hatchling sea turtles and "FlipperBot" -- a robot with flippers -- researchers have learned principles for how both robots and turtles move on granular surfaces such as sand.

In a recent interview with Steven Cherry for IEEE Spectrum’s “Techwise Conversations,” In a recent interview with Steven Cherry for IEEE Spectrum’s “Techwise Conversations,” Henrik Christensen, director of the Robotics & Intelligent Machines Center (RIM) at Georgia Tech, dispels many of the myths surrounding the threat of automation to the American workforce.

Instead of programming a robot to copy an existing dance such as those in the online videos, Amy LaViers, a Ph.D. candidate in electrical and computer engineering, is defining the various styles of human movement and creating algorithms to reproduce them on a humanoid robot. 

Ayanna Howard has been awarded a NSF REU Site: Summer Undergraduate Research in Engineering (SURE) continuing grant for her proposal to add a robotics component to Georgia Tech’s SURE program.

Using a combination of theory and experiment, researchers have developed a new approach for understanding and predicting how small legged robots – and potentially also animals – move on and interact with complex granular materials such as sand.

Robots are being used more widely than expected in a variety of sectors, and the trend is likely to continue with robotics becoming as ubiquitous as computer technology over the next 15 years, according to the new report.

The Robotics & Intelligent Machine Center’s faculty members have technically diverse backgrounds and conduct innovative research to advance robotics. Recently, six of RIM’s outstanding faculty members received promotions within their academic units in the Colleges of Computing, Engineering and Science.

ECE Professor Magnus Egerstedt has been appointed as the Schlumberger Professor, effective March 1. He is the first faculty member in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) to hold this new professorship.

Wagner, who works in GTRI’s Aerospace, Transportation and Advanced Systems Laboratory (ATAS), is one of 40 recipients of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Program (AFOSR YIP) award for his proposal “Trust and Trustworthiness in Human-Robot Interaction: A Formal Conceptualization.” 

ATLANTA – Nov. 10, 2011 – The College of Computing’s Robotics and Intelligent Machines Center will use a gift of nearly $1 million of robotics equipment from Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated to create a Manufacturing Robotics Logistics Laboratory on the Georgia Tech campus. Source: Office of Communications

The Georgia Institute of Technology has been awarded a contract from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to provide manufacturing education programs to high school students. 

The National Science Foundation has awarded $6 million through its Division of Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation to fund three projects involving researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Georgia Tech researchers have developed a glove with a special fingertip designed to improve the wearer's sense of touch. Applying a small vibration to the side of the fingertip improves tactile sensitivity and motor performance, according to their research results.

Georgia Tech President G. P. “Bud” Peterson is participating in a national meeting focused on advanced manufacturing today in Pittsburgh. The gathering is part of President Barack Obama’s initiative focused on making American manufacturing more competitive.

President Barack Obama today named Georgia Tech President G. P. “Bud” Peterson to the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership steering committee.

In a project sponsored by the Army Research Laboratory, researchers are giving autonomous robots the ability to work together to explore and map the interiors of buildings. Beyond soldiers, the capability could also help civilian first responders.

The National Center for Manufacturing Sciences has named Henrik Christensen (Interactive Computing) to the Robotics Technology Consortium’s Board of Directors. Source: Office of Communications

Henrik Christensen, KUKA Chair of Robotics in the Georgia Tech College of Computing’s School of Interactive Computing, has been selected to receive the 2011 Engelberger Robotics Award for Education, considered the world’s top honor in the field of robotics, for his leadership in the international robotics industry. Source: Office of Communications