Title: The Gentle Robot
Presented By: Sami Haddadin, Technical University of Munich (TUM)
Abstract:
Enabling robots for interaction with humans and unknown environments has been one of the primary goals of robotics research over decades. I will outline how human-centered robot design, nonlinear soft-robotics control inspired by human neuromechanics and physics grounded learning algorithms will let robots become a commodity in our near-future society. In particular, compliant and energy-controlled ultra-lightweight systems capable of complex collision handling enable high-performance human assistance over a wide variety of application domains. Together with novel methods for dynamics and skill learning, flexible and easy-to-use robotic power tools and systems can be designed. Recently, our work has led to the first next generation robot Franka Emika that has recently become commercially available. The system is able to safely interact with humans, execute and even learn sensitive manipulation skills, is affordable and designed as a distributed interconnected system.
Biography:
Prof. Sami Haddadin is Director of the Munich School of Robotics and Machine Intelligence at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and holds the Chair of Robotics and System Intelligence. His research interests include intelligent robot design, robot learning, collective intelligence, human-robot interaction, nonlinear control, real-time planning, optimal control, human neuromechanics and prosthetics, and robot safety.
Prof. Haddadin was Chair of the Institute of Automatic Control at Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Universität Hannover from 2014 to 2018. Prior to that, he held various positions as a researcher at DLR. He holds degrees in electrical engineering, computer science and technology management from the Technical University of Munich and the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. He received his PhD summa cum laude from RWTH Aachen University. He has published more than 130 scientific articles in international journals and conferences. He has received numerous awards for his scientific work, including the George Giralt PhD Award (2012), the RSS Early Career Spotlight (2015) and IEEE/RAS Early Career Award (2015), the Alfried Krupp Award for Young Professors (2015), the German Future Prize of the Federal President (2017) and the Leibniz Prize (2019).
Prof. Haddadin is the founder of Franka Emika GmbH (Munich, 2016). During his time as at DLR, he played a major role in the development of the lightweight robot technology, which became the KUKA LBR iiwa in technology transfer.