Speaker:  Prof. Vijay Kumar
Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics,
University of Pennsylvania
Location： Mechanical Building F310
Time：   December 14th (Tuesday) 15:30 -17:00

Abstract: 
There are now tens of thousands of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in operation but most UAVs are not autonomous. There are very few micro UAVs capable of navigating indoor or urban environments. In this talk, Prof. Kumar will describe their recent work on control and planning for multi-rotor micro UAVs in complex environments. Prof. Kumar will also describe approaches to cooperative control enabling such tasks as persistent surveillance, cooperative manipulation and transport of large payloads.

Biography:
VIJAY KUMAR is the UPS Foundation Professor and the Deputy Dean for Education in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Pennsylvania. He is on the Faculty in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics with a secondary appointment in the Department of Computer and Information Science. Dr. Kumar served as the Deputy Dean for Research in the School of Engineering and Applied Science from 2000-2004. He directed the GRASP Laboratory, a multidisciplinary robotics and perception laboratory, from 1998-2004. He was the Chairman of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics from 2005-2008.

Dr. Kumar's research interests lie in the areas of robotics and manufacturing. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and the Institution of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). He has served on the editorial boards of the IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation, Journal of Franklin Institute, IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, ASME Journal of Mechanical Design, the ASME Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics and the Springer Stracts in Advanced Robotics (STAR).  He is the recipient of the 1991 National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator award, the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching, the 1997 Freudenstein Award for significant accomplishments in mechanisms and robotics, 2002 DARS Best paper Award and the 2004 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation Kawamori Best Paper Award, and has advised doctoral students who have won Best Student Paper Awards at ICRA 2008, RSS 2009 and DARS 2010.  He is also a Distinguished Lecturer in the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society and an elected member of the Robotics and Automation Society Administrative Committee.