Rice’s Lydia Kavraki presents “Reasoning for Complex Physical Systems” as part of the IRIM Robotics Seminar Series. The event will be held in the Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute Auditorium from 12-1 p.m. and is open to the public.

Abstract

Robots are rapidly evolving from simple instruments for repetitive tasks to increasingly sophisticated machines capable of performing challenging operations in our daily environment. As they make their way out of custom-made workspaces in factories, algorithms that integrate task and motion planning are needed to enable robots to autonomously execute high-level tasks. This talk will describe a novel framework for the synthesis of motion plans using specifications expressed in temporal logics and sampling-based motion planners. The power and extensibility of the framework has led to algorithmic advances for analyzing the motion and function of proteins, the worker molecules of all cells. The talk will conclude by discussing robotics-inspired methods for computing the flexibility of proteins and large macromolecular complexes with the ultimate goals of deciphering molecular function and aiding the discovery of new therapeutics. 

Bio

Lydia E. Kavraki is the Noah Harding Professor of Computer Science and Bioengineering at Rice University. She received her B.A. in Computer Science from the University of Crete in Greece and her Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University. Her research contributions are in physical algorithms and their applications in robotics, as well as in computational structural biology and biomedicine. Kavraki has authored more than 200 peer-reviewed journal and conference publications and co-authored the popular robotics textbook “Principles of Robot Motion” published by MIT Press. She is heavily involved in the development of The Open Motion Planning Library, which is used in industry and in academic research in robotics and medicine. Kavraki is a Fellow of the Association of Computing Machinery, a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies. She was recently recognized with the Women in Science Award from BioHouston.