Unconventional Robots:
Universal Lessons for Designing Unique Systems
IEEE ICRA 2024 Full-Day Workshop
Friday May 17, 2024
Yokohama, Japan
Standard robot morphologies, including quadrupeds, 7-DOF arms, and multirotors, have become commercialized and widespread as general-purpose systems with well-studied dynamics and a wide variety of easy-to-use toolboxes. On the other hand, unconventional robot designs can unlock new capabilities, improve performance, and enable robots to operate in challenging and unstructured environments. Examples range from exploratory robots for space and earth science, to modular robots for construction and transportation, to soft robots for medical applications and human interaction. However, unconventional robots are often underactuated or high-degree-of-freedom systems that require the development of innovative mechanisms with new models and control strategies. This workshop aims to answer the following questions: How can we develop systematic approaches to the design and modeling of complex robotic systems? How do we consider control as part of the robot design process? How can we propel unconventional designs from the lab to the real world? What role do specialized systems have in a future of increasingly standardized robots? We aim to bring together researchers and engineers across the disciplines of mechanism design, modeling and simulation, and control to share their experiences building and controlling unconventional robots.
Schedule
8:50 - 9:00 Opening Remarks by Justin Yim
9:00 - 9:30 Ryan St. Pierre
"Dual spring systems in biological and robotic systems"
9:30 - 10:00 Alexis E. Block
"The HuggieBot Chronicles: Lessons Learned from Designing a Hugging Robot"
10:00 - 10:10 Spotlight talks: Session 1
10:10 - 11:00 Coffee break and Poster Session
11:00 - 11:30 Gwang-Pil Jung
"Unconventional Motions in Milli-Scale Robotic Systems"
11:30 - 12:00 Mark Yim
Talk title TBA
12:00 - 12:30 Panel Discussion 1
Ryan St. Pierre, Alexis E. Block, Gwang-Pil Jung, and Mark Yim (Hosted by Zeynep Temel)
12:30 - 13:30 Lunch break
13:30 - 14:00 Tasuku Makabe
"Transform humanoid, hardware modules and software & developmental systems"
14:00 - 14:30 Zac Manchester
"Engineering the World’s Smallest Spacecraft"
14:30 - 15:00 Hannah Stuart
Talk title TBA
15:00 - 15:10 Spotlight talks: Session 2
15:10 - 16:00 Coffee break and Poster Session
16:00 - 16:30 Margaret Coad
Talk title TBA
16:30 - 17:00 Panel Discussion 2
Tasuku Makabe, Zac Manchester, Hannah Stuart, and Margaret Coad (Hosted by Jeong Hun (JJ) Lee)
17:00 - 17:15 Closing Remarks and Award Announcement by Aaron Johnson
Invited Speakers
Alexis E. Block
Assistant Professor
Case Western Reserve University
Margaret Coad
Assistant Professor
University of Notre Dame
Gwang-Pil Jung
Associate Professor
Seoul National University of Science & Technology
Tasuku Makabe
Assistant Professor
The University of Tokyo
Zac Manchester
Assistant Professor
Carnegie Mellon University
Ryan St. Pierre
Assistant Professor
University at Buffalo
Hannah Stuart
Assistant Professor
University of California, Berkeley
Mark Yim
Asa Whitney Professor
University of Pennsylvania
Call for Abstracts
We invite ICRA 2024 attendees to submit 1-page extended abstracts related to the following topics:
Design of novel robotic systems
Hardware and control co-design
Bioinspiration and biomimicry
Underactuation and soft robotics
Modeling and simulation of unconventional robotic systems
Control of unconventional robot morphologies
Late-breaking results, materials under review, and elaborations on previously accepted works are all welcome.
Format
1 page maximum (excluding references)
ICRA double-column format (templates available here)
Upload abstract as a PDF file (10 MB limit)
Authors of accepted abstracts will be asked to give a 1-minute spotlight talk and present a poster in person at the workshop; live robot demos are greatly encouraged!
Accepted abstracts will be made publicly available on the workshop website
Timeline
February 13, 2024: Call for abstracts open
March 4, 2024: Early submission deadline to ensure decision by ICRA early registration deadline (3/13)
March 11, 2024: Acceptance notification for early submissions
April 19, 2024: Regular submission deadline
May 1, 2024: Acceptance notification for regular submissions
We will have two awards: best demo and best poster! We are grateful for the support from the TC on Mechanisms and Design for sponsoring the award at the workshop.
Organizers
Sha Yi, Carnegie Mellon University
Jeong Hun (JJ) Lee, Carnegie Mellon University
Paul Nadan, Carnegie Mellon University
Justin Yim, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Zeynep Temel, Carnegie Mellon University
Aaron Johnson, Carnegie Mellon University
Kei Okada, The University of Tokyo
Laura Blumenschein, Purdue University
Technical Committee Support
We are grateful for the support of the IEEE-RAS Technical Committee on Mechanisms and Design.