Publicado em: 14/11/2014
Dr. Raj Madhavan – IEEE RAS palestra no INF
No dia 18 de novembro, 14h, o Dr. Raj Madhavan, Presidente do Group on Humanitarian Technology – IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, ministrará a palestra intitulada Humanitarian Robotics & Automation Technologies: How can they improve the Quality of Life for Humanity? A palestra acontecerá no Auditório do Prédio 67, do Instituto de Informártica.
Humanitarian Robotics & Automation Technologies: How can they improve the Quality of Life for Humanity?
Abstract
Robotics and Automation Technologies hold immense promise in transforming people’s lives across various communities around the globe. It is quite easy to get the public’s interest stoked when ‘robots’ are mentioned as robotics is seen as something sexy while evoking sci-fi type images. Consequently, there exists a huge disconnect between what is possible from an engineering and scientific viewpoint and what the expectations of the general public are. While the source of this disconnect can be conveniently blamed on Hollywood movies, the robotics
community also can be held accountable, at least partly, for some of these confusions and exaggerations. It is my opinion that the academic and research entities have not done enough to educate the masses on what is realistic and what the limitations are. More fundamentally, the problem lies in the fact that we have not seen practical solutions that can be deployed in a truly useful and effective fashion towards making a difference in the quality of lives of people.
In this talk, I will describe my current work focusing on the applied use of robotics and automation technologies for the benefit of under-served and under-developed communities by working closely with them to sustain developed solutions. This is made possible by bringing together researchers, practitioners from industry, academia, and government and various entities such as the IEEE Robotics Automation Society’s Special Interest Group on Humanitarian Technology (RAS-SIGHT), NGOs, NPOs and other organizations and governments across the globe.
I will share some of my preliminary thoughts and efforts on urban search and rescue, and disaster prevention, recovery, and response efforts, using Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), respectively. I will describe the goals of RAS-SIGHT, its activities, and associated efforts. I will also discuss a recently held demining challenge that I co-organized with the intent of producing an open source solution for detecting and classifying unexploded ordnance buried in minefields. A set of videos from several appropriate domains focusing on humanitarian applications will be featured.
Biography
Raj Madhavan is a research scientist with the Institute for Systems Research, and a member of the Maryland Robotics Center at the University of Maryland, College Park. Currently he is on leave working on applying robotics and automation technologies for the benefit of humanity in a variety of domains. He has held appointments with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (March 2002-June 2013) and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (March 2001-January 2010). He received a Ph.D. in Field Robotics from the University of Sydney, an ME
(Research) in Systems Engineering from the Australian National University, and a BEEE from the College of Engineering, Anna University, India.
Over the last 19 years, he has contributed to topics in field robotics, and systems and control theory. His current research interests include autonomous vehicle navigation in unstructured environments, performance evaluation and testing, benchmarking, and standardization of intelligent systems, and humanitarian robotics, particularly the development of applied robotics and automation technologies systems that are cost effective, reliable and efficient geared towards improving the quality of lives of people in under-served and under-developed communities around the globe.
Dr. Madhavan has edited two books and four journal special issues, and has published over 170 papers in archival journals, conferences, and magazines. He has served as an invited independent judge for robotics competitions, has given numerous invited presentations in research organizations in several countries, has served on editorial boards and program committees of premier robotics, automation, and control conferences, and on numerous national and international panels and review boards. He has been serving as the Vice President of the Industrial Activities Board (2013-2016), Chair of the Standing Committee for Standards Activities (2011-2016), and since 2012 as the Chair of the Special Interest Group on Humanitarian Technology (SIGHT), all within the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society.