Now available: Robotics 101 online

December 22, 2020
Robot standing in lidar waves

A pilot course for an undergraduate robotics curriculum at the University of Michigan, Robotics 101: Computational Linear Algebra, is now available for free online. All lectures, notes, projects, and the textbook can be accessed on GitHub and YouTube.

The course is meant to inspire and welcome students to learn key mathematical concepts that can immediately be applied to hands-on, interesting engineering problems, such as building a map from LiDAR data and balancing a Segway.

“Linear algebra has become the language of computer vision, machine learning, robotics, and autonomy,” said Professor Jessy Grizzle, Director of Michigan Robotics.

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Lab Showcase 2020

October 8, 2020

A handful of labs across the Robotics Institute summarized their latest research efforts, from regenerative peripheral nerve interfaces to virtual reality teleoperation for pancake making.

Explore the videos below, or check out the entire playlist, to discover the breadth of robotics research at Michigan.

Offutt Charitable Trust supports Michigan Robotics

August 7, 2020
LIDAR demo with Damen Provost
Damen Provost (left), Managing Director of the Robotics Institute, explains a LIDAR demonstration to young roboticists at the 2019 FIRST World Championships in Detroit in April 24, 2019.

A portion of a $2.5M gift from the Daniel E. Offutt III Charitable Trust to endow the Computer Science and Engineering Division Chair will support the Managing Director of the University of Michigan Robotics Institute. 

The late Mr. Offutt graduated from the University of Maryland and received an MBA from Columbia University in 1965. His career was as a stock trader. His longtime friend and colleague, Richard Orenstein, made the gift on behalf of the Trust.

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Better thermal vision and better citizens of robotics: Michigan at RSS 2020

July 14, 2020
deblurred thermal video
Figure 1 from “Pixel-Wise Motion Deblurring of Thermal Videos,” Manikandasriram Srinivasan Ramanagopal, Zixu Zhang, Ram Vasudevan, Matthew Johnson Roberson.

Deblurred thermal imaging, safe trajectory of manipulator arms, and teaching robots multipart tasks are a few topics that University of Michigan researchers presented at the Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS) conference in 2020.

While the conference had to be held remotely this year, organizers still pulled together a wide range of robotics experts to showcase their latest work. Not only is top research featured, but the conference also offered participants the chance to examine the values embedded in their work.

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