ONLINE AE Department Seminar: Towards High Performance Robotics in the Wild

Wednesday, April 8, 2020
3:30 p.m.
Online via Zoom
Becky Sarni
rsarni@umd.edu

Aerospace Department Seminar

Towards High Performance Robotics in the Wild, via Computation and Controls

Join Zoom Meeting https://umd.zoom.us/j/629228787

Wenlong Ma 
Graduate Research Assistant
Mechanical and Civil Engineering Department  
California Institute of Technology
Advisor: Dr. Aaron D. Ames 

Abstract
Almost all terrestrial creatures in nature are granted the capability to locomote with legs, from the simplest insects to the agile and intelligent biomachine --- humankind. The advantage of legs is compelling: the ability to overcome any unstructured terrains. Yet, the mechanism of robust locomotion remains a cutting-edge research topic across the fields of science and engineering. The challenges are twofold: the design of machinery that resembles biological systems' dynamics and the controller that realizes its autonomy. However, these two targets are often coupled. A carefully designed system might be impossible to model or control. A provably stabilizing control law could diverge from the physical system it is built from because of an ignored lightweight linkage. This coupled dilemma appears almost in every domain of robotics and engineering. Thus, the study of legged locomotion presents a unique fusion of multiple disciplines, and I am interested in bridging this gap between a theoretically justifiable method and experimental realization. In this talk, I will present ways to engineer the problem of highly dynamic robotic behaviors using computational methods and formal control analysis. More specifically, numerical trajectory optimization, stability analysis, and experimental robotics on multiple legged robots from monopod to bipedal and quadrupedal robots will be discussed. I will mainly focus on two examples: fast bipedal running and rapid gait generation for quadrupedal locomotion on uneven terrains, because of their representative complexity and difficulties. The target is to provide convincing evidence that legged locomotion and robotics can be a tractable problem by combining systematic experiments and rigorous mathematical analysis.

Biography
Wenlong Ma is a graduate research assistant with a focus on control and robotics in the Department of Mechanical and Civil Engineering at California Institute of Technology, advised by Dr. Aaron D. Ames. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the China University of Petroleum in 2011 and his master’s degree from Texas A&M University in 2014. He is interested in understanding how to design well- posed computational and robust control methods for high performance robotics. He has developed optimization methods and controllers for a variety of robotic platforms, including monopods, bipeds, quadrupeds, and autonomous driving. These methods were both theoretically justified and experimentally validated. The results include bipedal running and quadrupedal walking on uneven outdoor terrains. His work was featured on the Discovery channel, Engadget, CBS/CNET, Daily Mail, and other media releases.

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