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On March 31, Georgia Tech’s Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines (IRIM) hosted it’s biannual Robotics Research Showcase for students, faculty, and industry participants and attendees. The half day showcase brought together approximately 155 Georgia Tech and external participants for panel discussions, a keynote lecture from Berkshire Grey, and a student research poster session and reception.

The event kicked-off with a panel discussion on “The Future of Robotics, and how GT Will Take us There” featuring Stephen Balakirsky - Chief Scientist of the Aerospace, Transportation & Advanced Systems Laboratory (ATAS); Georgia Tech Research Institute, Jaydev Desai - G.P. “Bud” Peterson and Valerie H. Peterson Professor in Pediatric Research, Carol Ann and David D. Flanagan Distinguished Faculty Fellow, Director; Georgia Center for Medical Robotics, Associate Director; Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines and Panagiotis Tsiotras - David & Andrew Lewis Endowed Chair; Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering and Associate Director; Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines. 

Matt Mason, Chief Scientist at Berkshire Grey and Professor Emeritus of Robotics and Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, delivered the keynote lecture “Robotic Manipulation in Logistics:  From Research Labs to Warehouse Automation”. Mason’s talk followed the trajectory of research in robotic manipulation, and then reviewed development and deployment of Berkshire Grey automation technology and systems. Mason discusses some lessons learned from warehouse automation, from the contrast between warehouses and factories, and from the contrast between academia and industry.

Following the keynote presentation, a second panel discussion featuring Karen Feigh - Professor and Associate Chair for Research; Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering, Matthew Gombolay - Assistant Professor; School of Interactive Computing, and Charlie Kemp - Associate Professor; Department of Biomedical Engineering and PI; Healthcare Robotics Lab focused on Human-Centered Robotics and related interdisciplinary research at Georgia Tech.

The evening was concluded with a reception and poster session involving robotics students from across the colleges and schools at Georgia Tech. Awards for best technical presentations were given to the three best poster teams out of the 32 entries.

The IRIM team congratulates the winners below!

• A Novel Limbless Robot for Complex Terrain Navigation via Passive Mechanical Interactions - Tianyu Wang, Velin Kojouharov, Daniel I. Goldman.
• Integrating Motion Planning, Machine Learning, and a Robotic Exoskeleton to Improve Human Intuition and Dynamic Movements in Unstructured Environments - Aakash Bajpai, Aaron J. Young, Anirban Mazumdar.
• MIND MELD: Personalized Meta-Learning for Robot-Centric Imitation Learning - M. L. Schrum, E. Hedlund-Botti, N. Moorman, M. C. Gombolay.

-Christa M. Ernst