University of Georgia
Faculty fellow and director Prashant Doshi is leading a collaboration that received a large three-year grant from NSF as part of the National Robotics Initiative 2.0. The grant will enable research on inverse learning of robot behavior for collaborative tasks on factory floors. It also includes a collaboration with the Vidalia Onion and Vegetable Research Center.
Faculty fellows Charlie Li and Javad Mohammadpour are leading a team that received a large three-year grant from USDA as part of the National Robotics Initiative 2.0. The grant will enable robot-assisted field based high throughput phenotyping of plants, and will involve coordination between drones and ground-based robots.
Budding roboticists are encouraged to team up with Faculty Fellows to pursue CURO projects in robotics.
Exploring Robotics with ROBOTIS Systems by Chi Thai was recently published by Springer and is available for download at SpringerLink. In it Thai uses a learner-centric approach to teach robotics concepts using kits and other hardware from ROBOTIS, such as BIOLOID, Dynamixel servos and DARWIN kits. The book may be downloaded directly from Springer here.
UGA and Toyota sign a collaborative research agreement. The PI at UGA is Prof. Prashant Doshi.
Thanks to a 50/50 partnership between College of Engineering and the Provost’s Office , graduate instruction and research, CENGR has acquired two Robai bi-handed robots based on the Cyton 300 and 3 DJI S-900 Hexacopters. These platforms are intended for robotics projects in precision agriculture. Please contact Prof. Chi Thai in CENGR if you would like to collaborate.
Faculty of Robotics held its mid-semester gathering of Faculty Fellows and student researchers on Oct 31 featuring a very exciting agenda of speakers: 12:30p - 12:45p Meet and greet over refreshments 12:45p - 1:05p Short presentation by UGA's TCO and Corporate Connect (Cory Acuff, Gennaro Gamma and Tyler Duggings) 1:10p - 1:40p Presentation by KUKA Robotics (Brian Kocks) 1:45p - 2:15p Short spotlight talks by PIs (or Co-PIs) of CR2G grants (David Saltz, Chi Thai and Charlie Li) 2:15p - 2:25p Presentation by PhD student Ken Bogert; Director's remarks and next steps. The event was extremely informative and well attended.
The Georgia Department of Education has awarded funding for a MSP grant proposal designed to increase teacher content knowledge and pedagogical ability by converging robotic activities with STEM learning in grades 3 – 8. A team of faculty from the University of Georgia College of Education and College of Engineering will work with Jackson County administers and teachers to create curriculum units incorporating robotics with the objective of improving student achievement and enhancing teacher content knowledge in mathematics and science.
The two-year RAFTSTEM project will provide teachers with rigorous and relevant opportunities to create powerful learning experiences for their students and prepare them with the necessary skills and understanding to excite students about STEM. If students are excited and motivated by the learning experiences, then they are more likely to participate and learn the STEM concepts and consider future STEM courses and careers. RAFTSTEM will not merely focus on robot assembly, which captures students’ interest, but on how they learn and apply scientific, technological, engineering and mathematical principles. Robotics will not be added as just another activity, but will be infused into the instructional process to enhance learning and increase student achievement in mathematics and science.
Three proposals were selected for funding from the core robotics research
grant (CR2G) program:
1. “STEAM Learning with Humanoid Robots”, David Saltz (PI), Chi Thai (Co-PI)
and ChanMin Kim (Co-PI)
2. Development of Co-Robots to Control Weeds in Organic Food Production”,
Changyin Li (PI), George Boyhan (Co-PI), Javad Mohammadpour (Co-PI) and
David Berle (Co-PI)
3. “Mobile Manipulator Systems for Field Detection and Classification of
Agricultural Pests”, Chi Thai (PI), Suchendra Bhandarkar (Co-PI), Mark
Haidekker (Co-PI), Kyle Johnsen (Co-PI), Don Potter (Co-PI) and Zion Tse
(Co-PI)
Congratulations to all PIs and Co-PIs above!
Faculty Fellows Kim and Doshi are part of a grant from UGA’s inaugural Interdisciplinary Proposal Development program. The project is on developing RoboSTEM, a collection of open educational resources to help elementary school teachers teach STEM subjects through robotics and design-based learning.