NU SEDS Guest talk “Autonomous mobile manipulation and AI: research trends and business opportunities” by Associate Professor Dr. Iacopo Gentilini

Professor Akhan Almagambetov, Head of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department invites you to the Guest talk “Autonomous mobile manipulation and AI: research trends and business opportunities” by Associate Professor Dr. Iacopo Gentilini.

Iacopo Gentilini is a manager and research scientist at an organic and sustainable farming startup in Italy. He is currently developing a novel and efficient robotics harvesting machine to be deployed in uneven and complex olive groves. Previously, he worked as an Associate Professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in the United States with a primary research focus on redundant manipulation and space robotics. While at Embry-Riddle, he also developed the undergraduate and graduate curriculum in robotics and a laboratory with state-of-the-art robotics equipment. He also worked as a postdoctoral scholar at Carnegie Mellon University, developing novel nonlinear programming algorithms for finding solutions to several Traveling Salesman Problems with Neighborhood instances.

ABSTRACT: One of the first tasks that robotics tried to mimic from human beings was object manipulation. The aim was to perform predefined tasks in a fully known environment with high precision and repeatability. The robot or “manipulator” was mounted on a fixed support, pre-programmed, and “let go”.

Over the past 10 years, robotics research has attempted to remove these constraints one by one: the robot does not have prior knowledge of the environment and instead learns it through interaction, the manipulator is mobile just as human beings are free to move around, and each performed action can be different. The robot autonomously adapts to each task using efficient machine learning (ML) techniques / artificial intelligence (AI).

This talk will explore the forefront of robotic manipulation with applications ranging from orbital robotics to agriculture and all the business opportunities that these achievements have generated.

Date: 22 November 2022, Tuesday
Time: 16:30-17:30
Venue: Block C2, Green Hall

Please, follow this link for registration: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScIWCcBEQn0O4AjmbHcZ4Vvfinja4N0OREboXUvi0UwpW6wjQ/viewform

We would be pleased to see you at our guest talk!