Visual servoing with and without image processing
 
Professor François Chaumette
INRIA senior research scientist at IRISA in Rennes, France

Abstract:  Visual servoing consists in using the data provided by a vision sensor for controlling the motions of a dynamic system, robots typically. The classical approach is based on an image processing-then-control loop, extracting and tracking from the image a set of geometrical features used as input of a closed-loop control scheme. A more recent approach avoids this feature extraction step. The talk will present the main basic modeling and control aspects of these two approaches, as well as their respective advantages and drawbacks. An overview of the visual servoing applications in robotics will be also given.

Speaker Biography: François Chaumette, IEEE RAS Fellow, is an INRIA senior research scientist at IRISA in Rennes, France, where he leads the Lagadic group since 2004. He received the M.Sc. (eng.) degree from “Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Mécanique”, Nantes, in 1987 and a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Rennes in 1990. His research interests lie in the area of robot vision, mainly visual servoing and active perception. He has published over 230 journal or conference papers, with the 2002  Best IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation Paper Award. He has served on the technical program committee of the main conferences in  computer vision (ECCV, CVPR, ICCV) and robotics (ICRA, IROS, RSS). He has been Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Robotics  (2001-2005) and is currently in the Editorial Board of the Int. Journal  of Robotics Research and Senior Editor of the new IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters.

The New Robotics Age: The Interactivity Challenge

Professor Oussama Khatib
Robotics Laboratory,Computer Science Department,Stanford University,USA

Abstract: The generations of robots now being developed will increasingly touch people and their lives. They will explore, work, and interact with humans in their homes, workplaces, in new production systems, and in challenging field domains. The emerging robots will provide increased operational support in mining, underwater, and in hostile and dangerous environments. While full autonomy for the performance of advanced tasks in complex environments remains challenging, strategic intervention of a human will tremendously facilitate reliable real-time robot operations. Human-robot synergy benefits from combining the experience and cognitive abilities of the human with the strength, dependability, competence, reach, and endurance of robots. Moving beyond conventional teleoperation, the new paradigm − placing the human at the highest level of task abstraction − relies on robots with the requisite physical skills for advanced task behavior capabilities. Such connecting of humans to increasingly competent robots will fuel a wide range of new robotic applications in places where they have never gone before. This discussion focuses on robot design concepts, robot control architectures, and advanced task primitives and control strategies that bring human modeling and skill understanding to the development of safe, easy-to-use, and competent robotic systems. The presentation will highlight these developments in the context of a novel underwater robot, Ocean One, called O2, developed at Stanford in collaboration with Meka-Google Robotics, and KAUST.

Speaker Biography: Oussama Khatib received his PhD from Sup’Aero, Toulouse, France, in 1980. He is Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University. His research focuses on methodologies and technologies in human-centered robotics including humanoid control architectures, human motion synthesis, interactive dynamic simulation, haptics, and human-friendly robot design. He is a Fellow of IEEE. He is Co-Editor of the Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics (STAR) series and the Springer Handbook of Robotics, which received the PROSE Award for Excellence in Physical Sciences & Mathematics. Professor Khatib is the President of the International Foundation of Robotics Research (IFRR). He has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the IEEE RAS Pioneer Award in Robotics and Automation, the IEEE RAS George Saridis Leadership Award in Robotics and Automation, the IEEE RAS Distinguished Service Award, and the Japan Robot Association (JARA) Award in Research and Development.