NSF-DOD-NIST Workshop Towards Modeling & Simulation-Enabled Design of Intelligent Robots
April 17, 2018
Gaithersburg, MD
The last five years marked a manifest surge in interest for and use of “smart” robots that operate in dynamic and unstructured environments and might interact with humans. Yet the principles that govern the design and control of these intelligent agents are anything but clear. Against this backdrop, the premise of this workshop was that computer simulation can provide a fertile testbed instrumental in understanding faster, at lower costs, and more thoroughly how the robots of the future should be designed for safety and performance. The purpose of the one-day workshop was to bring together experts from robotics and the modeling and simulation communities in a brainstorming exercise that pointed out opportunities, identified challenges, and proposed “next steps” vis-à-vis the goal of increasing the role that computer simulation plays in smart robotics.
The workshop report is available here. The pre-workshop slides, workshop discussion notes, etc. are available at the links below.
- Pre Workshop Thoughts
- Breakout Session 1
- Breakout Session 2
- Breakout Session 3
- Participants
- Schedule
The following links are PDFs of what occurred during each session
The following links are PDFs of what occurred during each session
The following links are PDFs of what occurred during each session
- Anderson, Stuart – NVIDIA Robotics, https://www.linkedin.com/in/stuartoanderson
- Boots, Byron – Georgia Tech, https://www.cc.gatech.edu/~bboots3/
- Crump, Cindy – US Army Medical Research and Materiel Command
- Drumright, Evan – George Washington University, http://edrumwri.github.io/
- Duriez, Christian – INRIA Lille/Stanford, https://team.inria.fr/defrost/team-members/christian-duriez/
- Gupta, Abhinav – Carnegie Mellon University, http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~abhinavg/
- Fink, Jonathan – Army Research Lab, https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-fink-002a7731
- Hager, Greg – Johns Hopkins University, http://www.cs.jhu.edu/~hager/
- Hodgins, Jessica – Carnegie Mellon University, https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jkh/
- Jain, Abhinandan – Jet Propulsion Lab, https://www-robotics.jpl.nasa.gov/people/Abhinandan_Jain/
- Kapoor, Ashish – Microsoft Research, https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/people/akapoor/
- Koditschek, Daniel – University of Pennsylvania, http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~kod/
- Koenig, Nate – Open Robotics, https://www.osrfoundation.org/team/nate-koenig/
- Lee, Daniel – University of Pennsylvania, https://www.seas.upenn.edu/~ddlee/
- Lee, Edward – UC Berkeley, https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Faculty/Homepages/lee.html
- Leve, Frederick – US AFSOR, https://www.linkedin.com/in/frederick-leve-3108ab8a
- Li, Chen – John Hopkins University, https://me.jhu.edu/faculty/chen-li/
- Liu, Karen – Georgia Tech, https://www.cc.gatech.edu/~karenliu/Home.html
- Miller, Geoffrey – Army Research Lab, https://www.linkedin.com/in/geoffrey-miller-46a5046
- Neema, Sandeep – DARPA, https://www.darpa.mil/staff/dr-sandeep-neema
- Rajhans, Akshay – MathWorks, http://arajhans.github.io/
- Righetti, Ludovic – New York University, http://engineering.nyu.edu/people/ludovic-righetti
- Rodriguez, Alberto – MIT, http://meche.mit.edu/people/faculty/ALBERTOR@MIT.EDU
- Schaal, Stefan – University of Southern California, http://www-clmc.usc.edu/~sschaal/
- Stump, Ethan – Army Research Lab, https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethan-stump-4723aa83
- Tan, Jie – Google Brain Robotics, https://research.google.com/pubs/JieTan.html
- Tassa, Yuval – DeepMind, https://uk.linkedin.com/in/yuval-tassa-0ba2924a
- Todorov, Emanuel – University of Washington, https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~todorov
- Trinkle, Jeff – Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~trink/
Schedule:
07:30 – Registration
08:00 – Introduction: goal of the workshop, logistics
08:30 – Participant self-introduction
09:00 – Coffee/Snack Break
09:30 – Breakout, Topic 1: How M&S could help/helps Robotics. Suggested discussion points:
- Machine learning aspects
- Model based control, path planning, optimal design
- Autonomous vehicles
10:15 – Joint session. Group speaker summarizes each group’s thinking on issues related to Topic 1. General discussion.
11:15 – Lunch (onsite, catered)
12:00 – Breakout, Topic 2: Issues that continue to hinder M&S in Robotics. Suggested discussion points:
- Nonsmooth dynamics (friction/contact/impact)
- Soft robotics (nonlinear geometry/nonlinear material/nonlinear boundary conditions)
- Multi-physics (CFD, plasticity)
- Terramechanics
- Sensor/virtual world/communication simulation
- Central repository of standardized, shared models, open source software issues
12:45 – Joint session. Group speaker summarizes each group’s thinking on issues related to Topic 2. General discussion.
13:45 – Coffee/Snack Break
14:15 – Breakout, Topic 3: M&S in Robotics: concrete next steps. Possible breakthroughs. Speculations about disruptive technologies vis-Ã -vis the issue of M&S in Robotics. Suggested discussion points:
- Low hanging fruit
- “The long view” issues
- Imminent landscape changes
- Prioritization aspects. Spectacular-return-on-investment opportunities.
- The role of industry (video-games, VR, AR). What/How can we leverage? How to engage?
15:00 – Joint session. Group speaker summarizes each group’s thinking on issues related to Topic 3. General discussion.
16:00 – Short Coffee Break
16:15 – Joint session. Open-floor discussion. Minutia, workshop-related: blue ribbon report and journal paper.
17:00 – Wrap up