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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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Charlie Kemp, director of the Healthcare Robotics Lab along with his research team has been awarded the use of the PR2, a personal robot, to develop open source applications for assistive robotics. Kemp’s Healthcare Robotics Lab was one of 11 chosen from a pool of 78 submissions that included the foremost names in robotics research, such as MIT CSAIL, Stanford and UC Berkeley. Willow Garage is spending over $4.4 million for the PR2 Beta program.
Kemp will be placing the PR2 in the "Aware Home" to study how robots can help with homecare and creative assistive capabilities for older adults. Their research includes developing easier ways for adults to interact with robots, and enabling robots to interact with everyday objects like drawers, lamps, and light switches. The Sponsor of the PR2 Competition was Willow Garage, a company that develops hardware and open source software for personal robotics applications. The awards were announced at the 2010 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) held in Anchorage, Alaska from May 3rd – 8th.
Other Investigators on this proposal include, Profs. Wendy Rogers (Psychology), Jim Rehg (Interactive Computing), Andrea Thomaz (Interactive Computing) and Brian Jones (Director, Aware Home Research Initiative).
