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2016 NSF Award Recipient

February 29, 2016

Yu Sun has received a grant from NSF for $299,887 in support of the project entitled "EAGER: Characterizing Physical Interaction in Instrument Manipulations." This award starts March 1, 2016 and ends February 28, 2018.

As personal robots become common in our homes, they will perform a broad range of helpful tasks for their owners. In doing so, all sorts of physical interactions will occur between the robot and the home environment. For example, picking up a mug requires the robot to carefully control contact forces it applies. As tasks become more advanced, for example, operating a can opener, the robot will have to "understand" how to grasp the can and the can opener, so that it can operate the opener. The goal of this project is to gather data and develop algorithms that will allow a robot to understand how to grasp  tools in a way that facilitates its ability to operate that tool safely and effectively.

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