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Robotics: Passing the Tipping Point
Paul Oh, Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics Department, Drexel University
Friday, Feb. 21, 2014
1:30 p.m.
Durham Language and Literature Building (LL), Room 2 [map]
Abstract
Robotics is going through a rapid “growth spurt.” Programs like the National Robotics Initiative (NRI) and the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) in the US and others in Europe and Asia have “tipped” the field into an era of disruptive and transformative products and services. Today’s unprecedented convergence of technologies makes the near-term outlook very promising. Driverless vehicles and robotic factory co-workers, eldercare co-helpers that were “dreams” yesterday, are commercially available today. A personal reflection of his experiences with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), humanoids, and the DARPA Robotics Challenge will be given. Such reflection serves to articulate this “tipping point” phenomena and how they factor into transformative research and disruptive products and services.
Biosketch
Paul Oh is a professor, ASME Fellow and associate department head in Drexel University’s Mechanical Engineering Department. He received mechanical engineering degrees from McGill (B.Eng 1989), Seoul National (M.S. 1992), and Columbia (Ph.D. 1999) universities. Honors include faculty fellowships at NASA Jet Propulsion Lab (2002), Naval Research Lab (2003), the NSF CAREER award (2004), the SAE Ralph Teetor Award for Engineering Education Excellence (2005) and being named a Boeing Welliver Fellow (2006). He is the director of the Drexel Autonomous Systems Lab and also the founding chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Aerial Robotics and UAVs.
