The Robotics Institute
 Search the site
RI | People | David Ferguson

Text only version of this site

David Ferguson
Adjunct Faculty (Adjunct)

Associated centers: NREC and CFR

Email address: dif@cmu.edu

Mailing address:
National Robotics Engineering Center
10 40th Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15201

For more information, see my personal homepage.

Jump to: Research interests | Keywords | Labs & Groups | Projects | Publications

Research interests

I'm interested in the study of truly autonomous systems - agents that make all their decisions for themselves - and how we can use such entities to do useful things in the world. Once our robots no longer need to hold our hands, we can send them to places we are too afraid to go into ourselves. To this end, I've been a part of the CMU Mine Mapping Project, which sent an autonomous groundhog into an abandoned mine at the end of May.

There are a number of sub-issues involved with creating an autonomous agent. Currently, I'm investigating pretty quick ways of getting our robots to make sensible plans in uncertain environments. When almost all the information you had about a place turns out to be wrong, what do you do? And how can you do it quickly? It turns out that robots gain little by throwing tantrums.

This section last updated - January 1999.

Research interest keywords

active perception, artificial intelligence, field robotics, game theory, hazardous environments, machine learning, mobile robots, motion planning, multi-agent systems, obstacle avoidance, planning, sensor fusion, and space robotics

Past Labs & Groups

Robot Learning Lab - Pursuing research on robot learning, mobile robotics, multi-robotics, human robot interaction, and basic machine learning.
 

Current Projects [Past projects]

Active Home/Personal Robotics - Creating a robot to help with tasks in the home.
Planning for Manipulation - Developing algorithms for autonomous manipulation.
Tartan Racing - Carnegie Mellon University is teaming with General Motors to compete in the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge.
Urban Challenge

Recent publications [View all 51 publications]

The Robotics Institute is part of the School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University.
For updates and comments, please see these instructions.
This page maintained by robotwebmaster@ri.cmu.edu