Host: Magnus Egerstedt, Alex Nguyen

Location: 1310 ISEB

Description: Robots are increasingly leaving the confines of laboratories, warehouses, and manufacturing facilities, venturing into agriculture and other settings where they must operate in uncertain conditions over long timescales. However, the deployment of robots over truly long time-scales poses problems that are fundamentally different from those faced by robots deployed in factories or other controlled settings, where operating conditions exhibit only limited variability, power is readily available, and regularly scheduled maintenance routines ensure that minor technical problems do not accumulate to produce catastrophic failures. What is needed is an understanding of the tight coupling between robot (animal) and its environment (habitat). This workshop will discuss how to combine ecological principles with more classical robotics to provide a formal approach to constraint-based control design and help inform the design of slow and energy-efficient robots which can take full advantage of the environments they inhabit.

Host: Ankur Mehta

Location: 4211 Engineering Gateway

Description: The workshop aims to address the challenges surrounding robotics education accessibility and inclusivity, ensuring that it becomes available to all students and teachers, regardless of their background. Discussing our experiences and educational kits, we will dive into the technical aspects of robotics, various teaching approaches, costs, and resource availability. Participants are encouraged to bring their kits, materials, and experiences to the discussions to uncover the diverse point of view and approaches.

Through interactive demonstrations and activities, we hope the participants can better understand what kits are trying to communicate and what could be barriers for the users. Our primary goal is to share, experience, and discuss the barriers that prevent teachers and students from robotic education, and then lead to future actions to improve their teaching and classrooms by executing the workshop outcome. We will explore and discuss strategies to make robotics education more accessible, engaging, and exciting, encouraging students to pursue further studies and careers in related fields.

Participants will better understand robotics education challenges and foster an inclusive learning environment. Through discussions, hands-on activities, and networking opportunities, we intend to empower teachers, future educators, and students with the knowledge, tools, and approaches necessary to integrate robotics education effectively into their teaching and learning practices, positively impacting the future of education.
We hope that participants can return and gather their own executions and results by the next symposium.

Host: Jonathan Realmuto

Location: 3161 Engineering Gateway

Description: We will provide a hands-on tutorial on fabricating pneumatic based soft actuators particularly suited for body-mounted applications. The actuators are fabricated using textiles (fabrics) with different material properties and joined together through sewing. The tutorial will include detailed fabrication principles for rigidizeing and bending actuators, and basic mounting principles to attached the actuators to the body. We will also provide some theoretical considerations for design principles.

Rehabilitation and Augmentation Lab (EG 2123). PI: Alexandra Voloshina. The research focus of the lab aims to bridge the gap between wearable assistive devices, their users, and the environment. Specifically, we aim to advance the integration of robotic devices, such as exoskeletons and lower-limb prostheses, into the everyday lives of individuals, particularly those with gait disabilities. Our work also includes the development of wearable sensors and feedback devices for improved rehabilitation in home and clinical environments.

Robotics and Automation Lab (Cal State Fullerton, EG 2123). PI: Nina Robson. The laboratory has extensive experience in the areas of Mechanical Systems Design, Robotics, Biomechanics and Developing Technologies to aid people with disabilities. Current research interest is on human motion planning with reduced mobility with the goal of developing novel technologies to facilitate the recovery of patients with neurological disorders.

UC Irvine Biorobotics Lab (EG 3151/3150). PI: David Reinkensmeyer. Our goal is to develop innovative technologies that help people recover after neurologic injuries such as stroke and spinal cord injury based on an understanding of neuromuscular control and plasticity mechanisms. We are also using such technologies, along with computational models of neuro-recovery, to help assess and enhance emerging neuro-repair therapies.

Robot Ecology Lab (ISEB 6900). PI: Magnus Egerstedt. The Robot Ecology Lab focuses on the robust deployment of large teams of mobile robots in terms of coordinated decision and control strategies. Particular applications of interest include environmental monitoring, precision agriculture and transportation systems.

Magnetic Microsystems and Microrobotics Laboratory (EG 1103). PI: Camilo Velez Cuervo. What would you do with robots the size of plankton? Our vision is to create a swarm of functional autonomous robots, each the size of a bacterium, working together to solve complex problems independently, such as wastewater treatment. We aim to enhance the autonomy and functionality of these micro-robots through advanced research in manufacturing techniques for magnetic materials and complex microsystems, including sensors and actuators.

MicroSystems Lab (EG 2115/2110). PI: Andrei Shkel. The Microsystems Laboratory at the University of California Irvine conducts the cutting edge research and provides rigorous multidisciplinary academic training in the field of Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS). The Laboratory assumes a leadership role in the development of chip-scale gyroscopes and Inertial Measurement Units (IMU). Researchers in the laboratory are skilled in the full cycle of development, including theory, design, modeling, fabrication, control electronics, packaging, and hands-on experiment. The innovations are fueled by funding from the government and private industry.

Kia Cooperative Systems Lab (EG 3112). PI: Solmaz Kia. The lab research interests, in a broad sense, include networked control systems, decentralized/distributed algorithm design for multi-agent systems, nonlinear control theory and robotics.

Cognitive Anteater Robotics Lab (2328 Social and Behavioral Sciences). PI: Jeffrey Krichmar. In the Cognitive Anteater Robotics Laboratory (CARL) at the University of California, Irvine, we are designing robotic systems whose behaviors are guided by large-scale simulations of the mammalian brain. Because these simulated nervous systems are embodied on a robot, they provide a powerful tool for studying brain function. Moreover, because these cognitive robots are embedded in the real-world, the system’s behavior and function can be tested similarly to that of an animal under experimental conditions. We have studied perception, operant conditioning, episodic and spatial memory, and motor control through the simulation of brain regions such as the visual cortex, the hippocampus, the cerebellum, and the neuromodulatory systems. The behavior and neuronal dynamics of these systems were directly compared with empirical data from experimental psychology and neuroscience experiments.