Graduate student Troy Sieusankar will be defending his thesis titled “Design and Implementation of a Mobility and Accessibility Enhancement Robotic System for Human Assistance.”

• Date: Monday, April 24
• Time: noon
• Location: IST-1048

Abstract: The motivation for this work was to implement a mobile manipulator that a user could use on a Wi-Fi network. But first, there was the need to design and construct a mobile manipulator that could provide access to more researchers and students who would not be able to afford any of the mobile manipulators on the market today. The design of this mobile manipulator had to be useful to and to fulfil the needs of these researchers and students, so it had to be easily and inherently modifiable and configurable, which gave rise to a mobile manipulator that uses threaded rods, perforated beams, and wood for the structural supports. As the mobile manipulator development progressed by integrating a robotic arm onto an omnidirectional mobile base, and its functionalities increased, the need for an advanced functionality/method for navigation had arrived. The mobile manipulator needed a powerful camera, with high functioning applications, that would work in real time and be able to be integrated into the already developed robotic operating system. The camera that met these criteria was the Huskeylens artificial intelligence (AI) camera. So, the work began to successfully integrate the Huskeylens into the mobile manipulator. After the successful integration of the Huskeylens AI camera, it was used in coordination with the robotic arm and mobile base to achieve navigation to pick-and-place an object.

For more information, contact Dr. Balasubramaniyan Chandrasekaran.