ROBOTICS SEMINAR: We are excited to host Lukas Kaul from the Toyota Research Institute (TRI) over zoom for this week's Robotics Seminar! Join us this Friday, 10/25, at 1 pm CT to learn about making robots useful in industry!
We will meet only virtually. Please use the following zoom meeting information to join us:
https://illinois.zoom.us/j/84149708803?pwd=R3JqMnk3VU0wWUZRbGtMd3o1YjZwdz09&from=addon
Meeting ID: 841 4970 8803
Password: 444347
Please see their abstract and biography below:
Abstract: The rapid commoditization of high performance hardware for compute, sensing and actuation, paired with recent incredible breakthroughs in data driven methods for robot control, make a wave of new robot applications seem imminent. Yet, the long-standing vision of widespread real-world use of cutting edge robotics in areas where they are desperately needed, is still far from being fulfilled. Why is that, and how can we bridge the gap from what seems possible in the lab today to deployments in actual use cases that can have a positive impact on society? This talk describes TRI's approach to answering this question with a multipath approach that spans various technologies and timespans. It also highlights several of TRI's robotics research achievements and recent progress in autonomous mobile manipulation.
Bio: Dr. Lukas Kaul is a Senior Research Scientist with the robotics division at the Toyota Research Institute in Los Altos, California. His current work revolves around hardware system design and algorithms for autonomous mobile manipulators, with a focus on the challenges of real-world deployability. He received his PhD in computer science from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in 2019 for a thesis on efficient methods for humanoid balancing. Prior to that, he received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in mechanical engineering from KIT, where his work spanned topics ranging from control circuits for high-voltage micro vibratory conveyors to large-scale mapping of underground caves with drones. Passionate about making robotics ever more accessible, he published his book "Practical Arduino Robotics", a guide to getting started with building robots, in 2023.