Event
Lockheed Martin Robotics Seminar: Daniel Goldman, "Robophysics: robotics meets physics"
Wednesday, March 23, 2016
2:00 p.m.
1146 AV Williams
Ania Picard
301 405 4358
appicard@umd.edu
Lockheed Martin Robotics Seminar Series
Robophysics: robotics meets physics
Daniel I. Goldman
Associate Professor
School of Physics
Georgia Institute of Technology
Host
Derek Paley
Abstract
Robots are moving from the factory floor and into our lives (e.g. autonomous cars, package delivery drones, and search-and-rescue devices). However, compared to living systems, locomotion by such devices is still relatively limited, in part because principles of interaction with complex environments are largely unknown. In this talk I will discuss efforts to develop a physics of moving systems -- a locomotion ``robophysics'' -- which we define as the pursuit of the discovery of principles of self-generated motion [Aguilar et al, Rep. Prog. Physics, in press, 2016]. We use the methods of physics to examine successful and failed locomotion in simplified laboratory devices using parameter space exploration, systematic control, and techniques from dynamical systems. Using examples from my group and our collaborators, I will discuss how robophysical studies in terrestrial environments have begun to aid engineers in the creation of devices that begin to achieve life-like locomotor abilities on and within complex environments, have inspired new physics questions in low dimensional dynamical systems, geometric mechanics and soft matter physics, and have been useful to develop models for biological locomotion in complex terrain.
Biography
Daniel Goldman is an Associate Professor in the School of Physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Prof. Goldman's research program investigates the interaction of biological and physical systems with complex materials like granular media. He received his S.B. in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1994. He received his PhD in 2002 from the University of Texas at Austin, studying nonlinear dynamics and granular media. He did postdoctoral work in locomotion biomechanics at the University of California at Berkeley. Prof. Goldman became a faculty member at Georgia Tech in January 2007. He is a Georgia Power Professor of Excellence, an adjunct member of the School of Biology and a member of the Bioengineering Graduate Program. Prof. Goldman is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (2014), and has received an NSF CAREER/PECASE award, a DARPA Young Faculty Award, a Sigma Xi Young Faculty award, and a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award at the Scientific Interface.
