Robot Imagination

Affordance Imagination Dictionary Project Page [project]

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Robotic Repair

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Robot Action Recognition

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Malaria Vaccine Manufacturing Automation

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Polymer Science

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Robotic Self-Replication

Since the first theoretical work was presented by John von Neumann in 1950's, many researchers have been designed/built robotic replicating systems to prove the concept of machine reproduction. For many years, our lab has been built several prototypes to demonstrate robot replication and uncover hardware limitations. The first generation (Phase I) of the physical prototypes are called 'man-controlled replicating systems.' An initial functional system consisting of many (four or five) subsystems was able to replicate itself by collecting and assembling those subsystems. The second generations (Phase II) are called 'semi-autonomous replicating systems.' These systems are partially controlled by human. The third generation (Phase III) includes 'fully-autonomous self-replicating systems', which are able to replicate itself without human intervention. In addition to developing physical prototypes, a descriptive framework and complexity measures for robotic replicating systems have been defined and applied for physical prototypes.
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DNA Mechanics and Conformation

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Structural Bioinformatics

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Protein Kinematics

Our work on protein kinematics seeks to animate transitions between conformational states. In some cases two fully known conformations are provided as the inputs, and our mehods generate pathways that morph between these two states. Inother cases, one conformation is fully known, and partial information is known about the second one (as might be the case if FRET, NMR or X-ray data are provided).
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Image Analysis

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Robot Motion Planning

This project studies a geometric motion planning paradigm for robots in narrow passage and with high degrees of freedom. The mathematical foundation is based on a closed-form characterization of collision-free configuration-space boundary. The solutions start with a 2D single-body robot, and extend to 3D articulated bodies. A rigorous benchmark with sampling-based motion planners shows the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed algorithms.

Related publication:
Ruan, S., Poblete, K.L., Wu, H., Ma, Q. and Chirikjian, G.S., 2022. Efficient Path Planning in Narrow Passages for Robots with Ellipsoidal Components. IEEE Transactions on Robotics (Accepted) [paper] [project]
Ruan S., Ma Q., Poblete K.L., Yan Y., Chirikjian G.S., 2018. Path Planning for Ellipsoidal Robots and General Obstacles via Closed-form Minkowski Operations. In International Workshop on the Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics (pp. 3-18). Springer, Cham. [paper] [project]

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Nano Science

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Applied Mathematics

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Medical Applications

The primary objective of this work is to present robust numerical methods for registration of rigid-body fiducials to the CT or MRI image space with the use of a single image slice. A key feature of the methods is that they guarantee reliable registration in situations when only part of the rigid body fiducial shows up in the resulting image, i.e. no sufficient input data for the registration algorithm is provided. The secondary objective is to make these methods applicable to a plurality of conceivable fiducial patterns without algorithmic refinement or modification.
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Library Robots

This research is being executed as part of The Comprehensive Access to Printed Materials (CAPM) Project. The primary goal of this project is to develop a system which will allow real-time browsability of library collections. This effort has many components and the development of a 'library robot' is just one part of the whole. Our aim is to construct a robot that is capable of tackling the physical retrieval of the actual books. As in any engineering design problem, this task can be approached in many ways.
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Metamorphic Robots

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Theoretical Kinematics and CAD

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Hyper-Redundant Robots

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Binary Manipulators

The traditional assumption in robotics/kinematics is that mechanisms are actuated with continuous- range-of-motion actuators such as motors. However, there are many applications of mechanisms and robotic manipulators where only a finite number of locations need to be reached, and the robot trajectory is not important as long as it is bounded. For these tasks, continuous-range-of-motion machines are overskill. Discretely actuated mechanisms and manipulators have a finite number of states. These systems usually do not require extensive feedback control, can achieve high repeatability and inexpensive (e.g. solenoids, pneumatic cylinders, etc.). We believe that the significance of a discrete/binary paradigm for mechanisms and manipulators will have as much impact on robotics as digital circuitry has had on electronics (i.e. reduced cost and high reliability).
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Spherical Stepper Motor

The concept of a spherical motor is not new, and our work builds on the accomplishments of a number of notable works. The basic operating principles of spherical DC induction motors have been known for a while.
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Error Propagation and Bayesian Fusion

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Mathematical Crystallography

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Electron Microscopy

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Sensor Calibration

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