AI Seminar
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      Tuesday, April 20th, 2004
      4:00 pm - 5:30 pm
      175 ATL (Large Conference Room)

      "Invitation to Robotics"

      Dan Koditschek
      Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
      University of Michigan




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Robotics is an exciting field, still in its infancy, promising a long
term social impact at least as great as that of the information
technology revolution. Although it ultimately will open up a domain of
intellectual inquiry distinct from that of Computer Science and
Engineering, Robotics,  nevertheless, offers a great deal of value to
students of computing in general and AI in particular. At the same time,
because the problem of robtotics is fundamentally different from that of
computing, there is a great deal of background and technique essential
to understanding this domain that is missing from the conceptual toolbox
of the typical CSE student. More generally, as the foundations of the
field are not yet firmly established, cutting edge robotics work
necessarily exhibits a pronounced dependence upon technical ideas from
many other disciplines whose profusion can bewilder and further impede
participation by all but the most determined.

In this talk I will review very briefly some aspects of the recent work
within my research group that illustrate these general observations by
concrete example. I will then briefly sketch the outlines of a new
course I am hoping to develop within EECS that might represent an
invitation to robotics attractive enough to a broad audience as to
overcome the "painful" aspects of the necessary encounter with the great
diversity of unfamiliar technical tools.  My hope would be to motivate
students to push themselves into greater familiarity with the tools and
their uses through the stimulus of empirical exploration. I will hope to
devote the greatest portion of the seminar to a "question & answer"
style discussion where we explore together how to devise a course that
can appeal, at first, to a large number of graduate students in CSE.

The excitement of Robotics seems great enough to attract a very broad
mix of young students just thinking about a major in computer,
electrical, or mechanical engineering, who might benefit from exploring
the interplay of these disciplines with mathematics and biology that
represents the contemporary cutting edge of the field. Indeed, the
inescapable interdisciplinary flavor and thrilling physical
manifestations of Robotics ought to provide a prime vehicle for the
motivating "context" so frequently absent across the introductory
technical engineering curriculum of most engineering majors. I will hope
to lead the seminar's discussion toward the consideration of a freshman
level version of the course that would include participation by graduate
students and, in the long run local high school teachers and their
students.