Just got back from the International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Hong Kong. I presented our group’s work on the application of FIRM to physical mobile robots (ICRA-2014-pdf). FIRM (Feedback-based Information RoadMap) is a method developed by Dr. Ali-akbar Agha-mohammadi that allows for motion planning in belief space. There were some great talks, I enjoyed the workshop on Grasping and Mobile Manipulation. There were some interesting insights by Dr. Oliver Brock who showed with a simple video of a chef cutting a potato, how lacking our understanding is of human grasping. The way we humans sub-consciously use the environment around us to help us in grasping objects is truly marvelous! I got to visit the Univ. of Hong Kong and see the ATLAS (Boston Dynamics) live in action (totally awesome!).
