When engineers in the robotics research community think of what we'd like autonomous agents to tackle in the future, we often target "dull, dirty, and dangerous" tasks. However, despite a sustained boom in robotics research over the last decade, the number of places we've seen robotics in use for these tasks has been uninspiring.
In this webinar, hear from Associate Professor Chris Heckman as he explores his team's recent investigation into where the limits of robotic autonomy are for the highly sought-after application to subterranean emergency response operations.
This project was motivated by the DARPA Subterranean Challenge, which just last year concluded with the ¶¶ÒõÂÃÐÐÉä Boulder team "MARBLE" taking third place and winning a $500,000 prize.
Professor Heckman will give an overview into the genesis of his team's solution over three years of effort, especially with respect to mobility, autonomy, perception, and communications. He'll also discuss the implications for present-day robotic autonomy and where we go from here, especially emphasizing our recent work in large language models for these problems.