Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Events for February
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AME Seminar
Wed, Feb 06, 2019 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Ran Dai, Ohio State University
Talk Title: Planning and Decision-Making for Energy Efficient and Sustainable Autonomous Systems
Abstract: Many autonomous systems will benefit from prolonged operational time and reduced power consumption in a variety of long-duration missions, ranging from terrestrial operating domain to interplanetary space exploration. Due to limited power capacity, dynamic operating environments, complex system behaviors, and strict mission constraints, it is challenging to realize full autonomy with capabilities of sustained power supply and energy efficient operations. Without human intervention, real-time planning and decision-making, including both motion planning and logic/reasoning decisions, play a critical role in assuring the reliability and performance of such systems toward accomplishing the mission objectives.
This talk will present our work on developing vision-based energy awareness, sophisticated modeling approach, highly implementable optimization algorithms, and machine learning based auto-tuning method that collectively contribute to advanced planning and decision-making strategies for energy efficient and sustainable autonomous systems. Applications in two types of autonomous systems will be discussed. One is solar-powered ground robot that harvests energy from the environment and charges the storage batteries as backup to extend the endurance time or realize persistent operations. The other type of application focuses on space vehicles in complex missions involving multiphase or hybrid operations where onboard propellant is limited and timely ground support is unavailable. The overall objective of real-time planning and decision-making for both types of autonomous systems is to realize high-level autonomy in energy harvesting and utilization under dynamic environments, complex operations, and mission constraints. Results obtained in virtual simulations are verified in real-world environments or experimental platforms that mimic the mission challenges, leading to a synthesized theoretical and experimental framework for evaluating improved performance of this transformational technique.
Host: AME Department
More Info: https://ame.usc.edu/seminars/
Location: 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Tessa Yao
Event Link: https://ame.usc.edu/seminars/
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
AME Seminar
Wed, Feb 13, 2019 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Quan Nguyen, MIT
Talk Title: Extremely Agile and Robust Legged Robots
Abstract: The mobility of man-made machines is still limited to relatively flat grounds, whereas humans and animals can traverse almost all surfaces of the earth including rocky cliffs or collapsed buildings.
In this talk, I will pose the question How can we make robots with similar morphologies achieve such extremely agile and robust behaviors? Enabling robots to exhibit such behaviors will one day facilitate robotic space exploration, disaster response, construction, etc. Furthermore, such time and safety critical missions also require robots to operate swiftly and stably while dealing with high levels of uncertainty and large external disturbances.
To achieve these capabilities, a unified adaptive control framework will be presented, that enables the ability to enforce stability and safety critical constraints arising from robotic motion tasks under a high level of model uncertainty. Next, I will present novel optimization-based approaches to address the challenge of dynamic robotic walking over randomly generated stepping stones, and optimized jumping on high platforms. I will then show how these can be translated to real world experiments, that enables (a) ATRIAS, a bipedal robot at CMU, to walk dynamically on stepping stones, and (b) MIT Cheetah 3 robot to jump up onto and jump down from a desk.
Host: AME Department
Location: 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Tessa Yao
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
AME Seminar
Wed, Feb 20, 2019 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Kazuhiro Saitou, University of Michigan
Talk Title: Manufacturability-Driven, Multi-Component Topology Optimization (MTO) for Top-Down Design of Structural Assemblies
Abstract: This talk presents a manufacturability-driven, multi-component topology optimization (MTO) framework for simultaneous design and partitioning of structures assembled of multiple components. Constraints on component geometry imposed by chosen manufacturing processes are incorporated in the conventional density-based topology optimization, with additional design variables specifying fractional component membership which enables continuous relaxation of otherwise discrete partitioning problems. The geometric constraints imposed by various manufacturing processes, such as size, perimeter length, undercut, and enclosed cavities, are also relaxed to enable the manufacturability evaluation of gray geometries that occur during the density-based topology optimization. Examples on minimum compliance structural assembly design for sheet metal stamping (MTO-S), die casting (MTO-D), additive manufacturing (MTO-A), and tailored-fiber composite process (MTO-C) show promising advantages over the conventional monolithic topology optimization. In particular, manufacturing constraints previously applied to monolithic topology optimization gain new interpretations when applied to multi-component assemblies, which can unlock richer design space for topology exploration. The talk will conclude with a brief overview of the latest developments on the MTO framework for continuous fiber printing processes and for 4D printing processes.
Host: AME Department
More Info: https://ame.usc.edu/seminars/
Location: 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Tessa Yao
Event Link: https://ame.usc.edu/seminars/
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor.
