IDC Seminar by Assistant Professor Soh Gim Song and Senior Lecturer Mohan Rajesh Elara
You are cordially invited to a seminar by Assistant Professor Soh Gim Song and Senior Lecturer Mohan Rajesh Elara. Register your interest here.
Abstract
Urban reconnaissance scenarios are extremely dangerous, particularly when entering buildings where no prior intelligence information may be available. The ways that reconnaissance missions are run currently involves sending out security personnel to specific locations, there are some use of fixed sensors, and more recently use of robotic vehicles in order to collect information. However, the fixed morphologies of currently adopted robotic platforms highly restrict the types of terrain that these robots can navigate.
To this end, we are developing two novel robot architectures namely Scorpio and Virgo under Project STARS deriving inspiration from nature to be able to extend the locomotion and autonomous capabilities of conventional urban reconnaissance robots than it is currently feasible. Project STARS is supported by Temasak Lab and SUTD-MIT International Design Centre. In this project, we are specifically interested in achieving rolling, crawling and wall climbing locomotion in a single robot while be able to autonomously shift between these states. We are expecting to deploy these transformer robots for reconnaissance missions in highly complex and dynamic spaces that are unpredictable involving a wide range of terrains over weeks without minimal or no human interference.
This seminar details our design experiences and research challenges in developing Scorpio and Virgo family of small, autonomous reconfigurable robots for urban reconnaissance missions. A series of live demonstrations of Scopio and Virgo robots would take place as part of this seminar.
About the Speakers
Dr. Soh Gim Song is an Assistant Professor in the Engineering Product Development Pillar at Singapore University of Technology and Design and a founding core member of the Robotics Innovation Laboratory. He obtained his MSc and PhD degree from University of California, Irvine (UCI), where he researched and developed innovative computer aided design software for the invention of articulated mechanical system. He was a visiting Scholar in the department of Mechanical Engineering of MIT and is currently serving on the ASME Mechanism and Robotics Committee and IFToMM Technical Committee for Robotics and Mechatronics. His primary research lies on mechanism and robotics with an emphasis on its design, kinematics and biomechanics.
Mohan Rajesh Elara is currently a Senior Lecturer with the Engineering Product Development Pillar at Singapore University of Technology and Design. He received his Ph.D and M.Sc degrees from the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He obtained his B.E degree from the Bharathiar University, India. Before joining SUTD, he was a Lecturer in the School of Electrical & Electronics Engineering, Singapore Polytechnic. His research interests are in reconfigurable robotics with emphasis on mechanism design as well as research problems related to perception and autonomy. He has published more than 60 papers in leading journals, books, and conferences. Dr. Mohan has served in various positions of organizing and technical committees of several international competitions (RoboCup International, Singapore Robotic Games, RoboCup Singapore Open, RoboCon, First Robotics) and conferences (ICIUS, ICICS, ICIEA, ICARA, RAHA, ICARCV).