The idea of enabling humans to do more is central to the 2016 Contextual Robotics Forum at UC San Diego, which will take place this Friday, October 28 at UC San Diego. Leaders in robotics research and manufacturing will convene to discuss Shared Autonomy: New Directions in Human-Machine Interaction. “We chose the theme because we are getting to the era of deploying robots in all places – but in almost every case, there needs to be a human interacting with them,” said Henrik Christensen, director of the Contextual Robotics Institute at UC San Diego. “We invited global and local thought leaders to discuss the question, ‘How do we build robots that empower people to do things that they couldn’t do before?’” The Forum is jointly sponsored by the Jacobs School of Engineering, the Division of Social Sciences, and the Qualcomm Institute at UC San Diego (which will host the conference in its Atkinson Hall headquarters).
The university hired Christensen in July 2016 to lead the Institute and serve as a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering in the Jacobs School. In his talk to the Forum, Christensen will discuss big trends in robotics – where the field is going, and how it plays into the broader ecosystem of intelligent homes, workspaces and appliances.
(Pictured l-r: Christensen, Riek, Gupta, Rosing, Kuester and Kastner)
Other CSE faculty will be on hand, and a handful are slated to present as part of the Forum's Technology Showcase (which will run from 2:45pm to 4:30pm). CSE Prof. Laurel Riek will demonstrate human-robot teaming and healthcare robotics. CSE Prof. Rajesh Gupta will jointly present machine- learning projects with Cognitive Science professor Zhuowen Tu (related to the Northrop Grumman Autonomy Challenge Project). CSE Prof. Tajana Rosing will showcase "drones that sniff out forest fires." Structural Engineering professor Falko Kuester, who has a faculty-affiliate appointment in CSE, will have his Drone Lab team doing demos on the second floor of Atkinson Hall, and CSE Prof. Ryan Kastner and some of his students will be displaying various underwater robotics systems with a focus on computer vision for underwater platforms.
Kastner is a co-director of the student Engineers for Exploration program, as is Qualcomm Institute research scientist Curt Schurgers (the latter will present the program's unmanned vehicle survey of the Belizean jungle in the Technology Showcase). Other exploration-themed projects include the SphereCam (for underwater 360-degree imaging), developed by CSE second-year Ph.D. student Antonella Wilby. The SphereCam (at left) triggers recording if it recognizes the specific clicking sound made by the endangered vaquita porpoise as part of its echo-location vocalization. The clicks are in the 122-150kHz range and can be picked up by an ultrasonice hydrophone in the SphereCam. In future, the SphereCam can also be repurposed to find and record other underwater species with unique signature vocalizations.
The device, equipped with six underwater GoPro cameras, was first deployed in early September.
Visit the Contextual Robotics Forum 2016 website.
Learn more about SphereCam on the E4E website.