The Office of the Executive Vice President for Research and the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines present “Robotics Research at Georgia Tech: Challenges and Opportunities in a Rapidly Changing Global Landscape” by Panagiotis Tsiotras. The event will be held in the Callaway GTMI Building, Room 114 from 12:30-1:30 p.m. and is open to all members of the Georgia Tech campus community.

Abstract

Robotics and autonomous machines are already transforming our lives and society in many different ways, some of which we are only now starting to comprehend.  From self-driving cars, drones, digital assistants and medical robots to AI&ML tools used by insurance companies, consumer electronics and the entertainment industry, these intelligent machines (and the algorithms that drive them) will change how we work, we commute, we learn, and we operate and interact with each other. Georgia Tech, as one of the premier technological institutions in the world with tremendous capital in terms of human talent and resources, is one of the academic leaders in this not-so-silent revolution. The Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Machines (IRIM) was the first truly interdisciplinary robotics program in the US, and has been a model for several other robotics programs around the nation.  IRIM is a great success story for Georgia Tech. It put Georgia Tech on the map in the area of robotics, and it has been the catalyst for attracting superb new faculty and industrial collaborators. The next step is to build on this momentum to capitalize on the wealth of opportunities brought about by the emerging new technologies in the field. In this talk, I will draw on my experience as Associate Director for IRIM over the past 2.5 years to share my thoughts on how IRIM can capitalize on its strengths to provide the thought leadership in the robotics community in order to address the technical, societal, and economic challenges that lie ahead.

Bio

Panagiotis Tsiotras is the Dean’s Professor at the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the Associate Director for Research at the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines (IRIM). He is also the Director of the Dynamics and Controls Systems Laboratory (DCSL) and a member of the Center for Space Technology and Research (C-STAR) and the Decision and Control Laboratory (DCL). His current research interests are in the dynamics and control of nonlinear systems, optimal and robust control and their connections with autonomy, robotics, and AI. He has authored or co-authored more than 300 journal and conference papers in these areas. His research has been supported by NASA, NSF, AFOSR, ARO, ONR, DARPA, and private industry. He is the recipient of the CAREER Award from the NSF, the President’s Award for Excellence in Research from the Sigma Xi Society, and the Outstanding Aerospace Engineer Award from Purdue. Tsiotras has served in the Editorial Boards of the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, the AIAA Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics, the IEEE Control Systems Magazine, and the Dynamics and Control. He is a Fellow of AIAA and a Senior Member of IEEE.