The Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines presents “Robotic Manipulation: A Broadening View” by Matthew T. Mason of CMU. The event will be held in the Callaway Building, GTMI Auditorium, from 12:15-1:15 p.m. and is open to the public.

Abstract

Mason will discuss a rambling mashup of topics in robotic manipulation, manipulation by apes and humans, early research on manipulation in the blocks world, more recent research motivated by e-commerce and logistics, with a brave attempt to identify cross-cutting principles and future directions.

Bio

Matthew T. Mason is a researcher in the area of robotic manipulation and is the author of two highly cited textbooks in the field. In 2004, he received widespread media attention for developing the first origami-folding robot, demonstrating advances in difficult manipulation tasks.

Mason received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1976, 1978, and 1982, respectively. His M.S. Thesis Compliance and Force Control for Computer Controlled Manipulators was advised by Berthold K. P. Horn, and his Ph.D. thesis Manipulator Grasping and Pushing Operations was advised by Tomas Lozano-Perez and Berthold K. P. Horn.

He worked at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center as a research visitor in 1978 and has been teaching at the School of Computer Science and the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University since 1982. At CMU, Mason served as the chair of the robotics doctoral program from 1995–2004 and is a past director of the Robotics Institute.

Mason served as the North American editor of the Butterworths Series in Computer Automation from 1988 to 1994, the technical editor of the IEEE Journal Robotics and Automation from 1989 to 1992, and on the board of editors for the MIT Robotics Review from 1988 to 1992. He is currently a member of the editorial and advisory board for the International Journal of Robotics Research.

He was a National Science Foundation Fellow from 1976 to 1980. In 1983, he received the System Development Foundation Prize. In 1992, he became a fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, and in 2000, he became a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.