Love for Robots Conjures Dreams of Helping Others
From: Daily Texan - 11/18/2004
By: Cindy Stowell

University of Texas computer science professor Benjamin Kuipers is being
funded by the National Science Foundation to develop Vulcan, a robotic
wheelchair capable of navigation, collision avoidance, and execution of
spoken directives. "The design of the wheelchair needs to increase rather
than decrease the autonomy of the driver," explains Kuipers. UT graduate
student Joseph Modayil says the wheelchair features a pair of range-finding
lasers, infrared sensors, a Global Positioning Satellite sensor, and optical
binoculars, while Kuipers notes that lines of code written primarily in C++
allow Vulcan to interpret sensor input so that it can map out and navigate
small rooms while evading large objects. Before Vulcan is ready for practical
use, researchers will need to address a number of challenges, including the
wheelchair's current inability to avoid descending staircases, its limited
range-finding capability, and voice interface issues. The device must also be
programmed to choose the optimum route to a destination, follow directions,
contend with moving objects, and learn to navigate in environments that have
not been preprogrammed into it. Modayil is working with a pair of smaller,
more resilient sensor-equipped robots in Kuipers' lab to research the
detection of moving objects. His work will enable Vulcan to establish the
location of doors and determine whether objects can be pushed. Other students
on Kuipers' team are studying speech recognition and how people relay
directions and rendering that data as a model. "We hope to be doing prototype
work with people with disabilities in the next three years," says Kuipers. 

Read the entire article at:
http://www.dailytexanonline.com/news/2004/11/18/Focus/Love-For.Robots.Conjures.Dreams.Of.Helping.Others-809228.shtml

More links:
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/qr/robotics/wheelchair/
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/kuipers/