Robotics

Georgia Tech Part of $5 Million Grant-Funded Center to Advance Robotics in Poultry Processing

admin — Fri, 10 Mar 2023 20:01:03 +0000

Georgia Tech Part of $5 Million Grant-Funded Center to Advance Robotics in Poultry Processing admin Fri, 03/10/2023 - 15:01

This news release first appeared in the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture newsroom, and has been tailored for Georgia Tech readers.

Researchers at Georgia Tech, the University of Arkansas System, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and Fort Valley State University in Georgia were awarded a $5 million grant to increase use of artificial intelligence and robotics in chicken processing to reduce waste in deboning and detect pathogens.

The grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture will establish the Center for Scalable and Intelligent Automation in Poultry Processing. The center, led by the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, will join researchers from five institutions in three states in efforts to adapt robotic automation to chicken meat processing.

Douglas Britton, manager of the Agricultural Technology Research Program at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), said his team was very excited to work on this project with experts at the four other institutions.

“The ultimate goal is to drive transformational innovation into the poultry and meat processing industry through automation, robotics, AI, and VR technologies,” Britton said. “Building on years of work in the GTRI Agricultural Technology Research Program, we are pleased to see that the USDA-NIFA has chosen this team to continue these efforts.”

Georgia Tech is a major partner in the project, and was awarded $2 million to focus on automating the processing lines that turn chickens into meat, said Jeyam Subbiah, professor and head of the food science department for the Division of Agriculture and the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences at the University of Arkansas, and director of the project. The grant is for four years.

The Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station, the research arm of the Division of Agriculture, will receive $2.2 million from the grant primarily to focus on food safety automation for poultry processing plants.

The remaining grant money will be divided between Julia McQuillan, Willa Cather professor of sociology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and Brou Kuoakou, associate dean for research at Fort Valley State University in Georgia.

Jeff Buhr, a USDA Agricultural Research Service scientist, will contribute his expertise in broiler physiology to guide robotic deboning of meat, Subbiah said.

Georgia is the nation’s top broiler producer. Arkansas is number 3, according to 2021 figures from USDA.

Meeting the challenge

The recent impetus to automate chicken processing began with the Covid-19 pandemic, Subbiah said. The illness spread quickly among workers on the processing line. Since the worst of the pandemic, the poultry industry, like many others, has been having trouble hiring enough workers.

“Poultry processing lines began 70 to 80 years ago,” Subbiah said. “Since then, there have been only incremental changes in technology. Today, there’s a need for transformative change.”

Humans can feel when a knife hits a bone. In contrast, existing automation in poultry processing, like deboners, wastes a lot of meat.

“Human deboners leave about 13 percent of meat on the bones,” Subbiah said. “Automated deboners leave 16 to 17 percent. On an industrial scale, that’s a significant loss in value. We will use artificial intelligence and virtual reality to improve precision and reduce wastage.”

Automation can relieve labor shortages, Subbiah said. It also allows plants to locate in rural areas with a smaller labor force but nearer poultry houses and with lower property costs.

Initially, people working remotely may help advance robotic processing. Subbiah envisions workers logging on from home with virtual-reality goggles and haptics gloves to control robots located miles away.

While working remotely, the labor force will teach artificial intelligence how to cut up chickens of varying sizes and shapes.

“Automated machines right now are programmed to debone or cut up chickens based on an average size and shape. But no chicken is that size or shape,” Subbiah said. “Robot-wielded knives cut meat poorly. The machines have to learn how to adjust to the reality of random sizes and shapes.”

Georgia Tech’s participating scientists are all part of GTRI:

Douglas Britton, manager of the Agricultural Technology Research Program
Colin Trevor Usher, senior research scientist and branch head of robotics systems and technology, Agricultural Technology Research Program
Ai-Ping Hu, principal research engineer, Agricultural Technology Research Program
Konrad Ahlin, research engineer, Intelligent Sustainable Technologies Division
Michael Park, research engineer, Intelligent Sustainable Technologies Division
Benjamin Joffe, research scientist, Intelligent Sustainable Technologies Division
Shreyes Melkote, the Morris M. Bryan, Jr. Professorship in Mechanical Engineering, associate director of the Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute and executive director of the Novelis Innovation Hub

“We are thrilled to partner with our colleagues here in the Division of Agriculture, as well as our colleagues at Georgia Tech and the other participating institutions on this exciting project,” said David Caldwell, head of the Division of Agriculture’s poultry science department and director of the Center of Excellence for Poultry Science.

“We expect the findings from these coordinated research projects will be impactful for our stakeholders in the commercial poultry industry here in Northwest Arkansas and throughout the entire industry,” Caldwell said. “This project will help keep moving technology forward in processing and food safety of poultry.”

For more information about the project, see the original press release on the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture website.

Summary sentence

Researchers at Georgia Tech and four other institutes were awarded the grant to increase use of artificial intelligence and robotics in chicken processing.

Dateline

Fri, 03/10/2023 - 12:00

Contact

Catherine Barzler, Senior Research Writer and Editor

Location

Atlanta, GA

Associated importer

Keywords

go-researchnews

News room topics

Business and Economic Development

Science and Technology

Core research areas

Manufacturing, Trade, and Logistics

Robotics

Mercury ID

666614

Source updated

Fri, 03/10/2023 - 14:54

Robot Provides Unprecedented Views Below Antarctic Ice Shelf

admin — Fri, 03 Mar 2023 22:59:05 +0000

Robot Provides Unprecedented Views Below Antarctic Ice Shelf admin Fri, 03/03/2023 - 17:59

The following story by James A. Dean, Cornell Chronicle, first appeared in the Cornell University newsroom.

High in a narrow, seawater-filled crevasse in the base of Antarctica’s largest ice shelf, cameras on the remotely operated Icefin underwater vehicle relayed a sudden change in scenery.

Walls of smooth, cloudy meteoric ice abruptly turned green and rougher in texture, transitioning to salty marine ice.

Nearly 1,900 feet above, near where the surface of the Ross Ice Shelf meets Kamb Ice Stream, a U.S.-New Zealand research team recognized the shift as evidence of “ice pumping” – a process never before directly observed in an ice shelf crevasse, important to its stability.

“We were looking at ice that had just melted less than 100 feet below, flowed up into the crevasse and then refrozen,” said Justin Lawrence, visiting scholar at the Cornell Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science. “And then it just got weirder as we went higher up.”

The Icefin robot’s unprecedented look inside a crevasse, and observations revealing more than a century of geological processes beneath the ice shelf, are detailed in “Crevasse Refreezing and Signatures of Retreat Observed at Kamb Ice Stream Grounding Zone,” published March 2 in Nature Geoscience.

The paper reports results from a 2019 field campaign to Kamb Ice Stream supported by Antarctica New Zealand and other New Zealand research agencies, led by Christina Hulbe, professor at the University of Otago, and colleagues. Through support from NASA’s Astrobiology Program, a research team led by Britney Schmidt, associate professor of astronomy and earth and atmospheric sciences at Cornell, was able to join the expedition and deploy Icefin. Schmidt’s Planetary Habitability and Technology Lab has been developing Icefin for nearly a decade, beginning at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Combined with recently published investigations of the fast-changing Thwaites Glacier – explored the same season by a second Icefin vehicle – the research is expected to improve models of sea-level rise by providing the first high-resolution views of ice, ocean and sea floor interactions at contrasting glacier systems on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

Thwaites, which is exposed to warm ocean currents, is one of the continent’s most unstable glaciers. Kamb Ice Stream, where the ocean is very cold, has been stagnant since the late 1800s. Kamb currently offsets some of the ice loss from western Antarctica, but if it reactivates could increase the region’s contribution to sea-level rise by 12%.

“Antarctica is a complex system and it’s important to understand both ends of the spectrum – systems already undergoing rapid change as well as those quieter systems where future change poses a risk,” Schmidt said. “Observing Kamb and Thwaites together helps us learn more.”

NASA funded Icefin’s development and the Kamb exploration to extend ocean exploration beyond Earth. Marine ice like that found in the crevasse may be an analog for conditions on Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, the target of NASA’s Europa Clipper orbital mission slated for launch in 2024. Later lander missions might one day search directly for microbial life in the ice.

Icefin carries a full complement of oceanographic instruments on a modular frame more than 12 feet long and less than 10 inches in diameter. It was lowered on a tether through a borehole the New Zealand team drilled through the ice shelf with hot water.

During three dives spanning more than three miles near the grounding zone where Kamb transitions to the floating Ross shelf, Icefin mapped five crevasses – ascending one – and the sea floor, while recording water conditions including temperature, pressure and salinity.

The team observed diverse ice features that provide valuable information about water mixing and melt rates. They included golf ball-like dimples, ripples, vertical runnels and the “weirder” formations near the top of the crevasse: globs of ice and finger-like protrusions resembling brinicles (brine icicles).

Ice pumping observed in the crevasse likely contributes to the relative stability of the Ross Ice Shelf – the world’s largest by area, the size of France – compared to Thwaites Glacier, the researchers said.

“It’s a way these big ice shelves can protect and heal themselves,” said Peter Washam, a polar oceanographer on the Icefin science team and the paper’s second author. “A lot of the melting that happens deep near the grounding line, that water then refreezes and accretes onto the bottom of the ice as marine ice.”

On the sea floor, Icefin mapped parallel sets of ridges that the researchers believe are impressions left behind by ice shelf crevasses – and a record of 150 years of activity since the Kamb stream stagnated. As its grounding line retreated, the ice shelf thinned, causing the crevasses to lift away. The ice’s slow movement over time shifted the crevasses seaward of the ridges.

“We can look at those sea floor features and directly connect them to what we saw on the ice base,” said Lawrence, the paper’s lead author, now a program manager and planetary scientist at Honeybee Robotics. “We can, in a way, rewind the process.”

In addition to Lawrence, Washam and Schmidt, Cornell co-authors of the research are Senior Research Engineers Matthew Meister, who led the Icefin engineering team, and Andrew Mullen; Research Engineer Daniel Dichek; and Program Manager Enrica Quartini. Schmidt’s team also includes Research Engineer Frances Bryson, and at Georgia Tech, doctoral students Benjamin Hurwitz and Anthony Spears.

Also contributing were partners from New Zealand at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA); University of Auckland; University of Otago; and Victoria University of Wellington.

NASA supported the research through the Planetary Science and Technology from Analog Research program’s Project RISE UP (Ross Ice Shelf and Europa Underwater Probe), and the Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology program. Additional support came from New Zealand’s Antarctic Science Platform, the U.S. Antarctic Program and Victoria University of Wellington’s Hot Water Drilling initiative.

Summary sentence

The Icefin robot’s unprecedented look inside a crevasse, and observations revealing more than a century of geological processes beneath the ice shelf, are detailed in a new paper in Nature Geoscience.

Summary

Dateline

Fri, 03/03/2023 - 12:00

jess@cos.gatech.edu

Contact

Cornell University:
Writer: James A. Dean, Staff Writer, Cornell Chronicle
Media Contact: Jeff M. Tyson, Media Relations, Cornell University

Georgia Institute of Technology:
Jess Hunt-Ralston
Director of Communications
College of Sciences at Georgia Tech

Keywords

School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

icefin

Britney Schmidt

Justin Lawrence

Benjamin Hurwitz

Anthony Spears

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cos-climate

cos-planetary

Ocean Science and Engineering (OSE)

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Earth and Environment

Core research areas

Robotics

Systems

Mercury ID

666418

Source updated

Fri, 03/03/2023 - 16:25

Tiny Limbs and Long Bodies: Coordinating Lizard Locomotion

bwaye3 — Tue, 19 Jul 2022 14:50:18 +0000

Tiny Limbs and Long Bodies: Coordinating Lizard Locomotion bwaye3 Tue, 07/19/2022 - 10:50

Snakes and lizards have distinct body movement patterns. Lizards bend from side to side as they retract their legs to walk or run. Snakes, on the other hand, slither and undulate, like a wave that travels down the body. However, there are species of lizards that have long, snakelike bodies, and limbs so tiny even scientists have wondered about their purpose. Understanding how these hybrid-looking lizards move could provide insight into why an evolutionary transition from lizardlike to snakelike motion occurred.

Using biological experiments, robot models, and a geometric theory of locomotion from the 1980s, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology investigated how and why intermediate lizard species, with their elongated bodies and short limbs, might use their bodies to move. Led by living systems physics professor Daniel Goldman, the research team studied body-limb coordination in a diverse sample of lizard bodies. Their multidisciplinary approach uncovered the existence of a previously unknown spectrum of body movements in lizards, revealing a continuum of locomotion dynamics between lizardlike and snakelike movements. Their findings, published in the June issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, deepen the understanding of evolution’s implications for locomotion, and have additional applications for advanced robotics designs.

“We were interested in why and how these intermediate lizards use their bodies and limbs to move around in different terrestrial environments,” Goldman said. “This is a fundamental question in locomotion biology and can inspire more capable wiggling robots.”

A Multidisciplinary Approach

Baxi Chong, a Ph.D. student in Goldman’s lab and first author of the paper, became interested in the short-limbed, elongated lizard species Brachymeles at a presentation by Philip Bergmann, associate professor of evolutionary biology at Clark University, in which Bergmann discussed the evolution of the species. Chong, a theoretician, had a tool in mind that he believed could help explain how the rare lizard moved, so he reached out to Bergmann to collaborate. Bergmann sent footage of the lizards in the wild to Goldman’s lab for analysis.

Eva Erickson, a recent graduate from Georgia Tech and Goldman’s lab, then applied new artificial intelligence techniques to analyze the lizards’ body movement in Bergmann’s videos as well as other lizard species. Known as neural network tracking, the software uses AI to identify features of images — such as legs and bodies — and track those features and their movements.

It has typically been thought that organisms either wiggle like snakes, bend like lizards, or use no body bending at all. When analyzing the footage, however, the researchers saw a wide variety of snakelike waves (traveling waves) and lizardlike movements (standing waves) represented across a diversity of lizard species.

“Markerless animal pose estimation software has been greatly improving, allowing much greater insight into the kinematics of organisms,” said Erickson, who will enter a Ph.D. program at Brown University in Fall 2022. “Through tracking videos with the program DeepLabCut, we found that these species perform a diverse array of wave patterns as they locomote.”

The next question was how to make sense of the diversity of wave patterns. According to Chong, while there are endless ways to think about the waves and what they mean, the information is so complex that it is nearly impossible for humans to understand without using laborious and time-consuming equations.

Instead, Chong used a mathematical technique developed by particle physicists and control theorists in the last decades. While the theory, now referred to in the locomotion field as geometric mechanics, was initially introduced to study idealized locomotion — to understand how three connected points might swim in water — Chong adapted the theory to include the concept of legs.

Using geometric mechanics, Chong produced diagrams that visualized the body-limb coordination data, replacing complicated calculations with much simpler diagrammatic analysis. They were able to both see and show the advantage of snakelike waves in short-limbed elongate lizard locomotion and predict that the advantage arises as the primary thrust generation shifts from the limbs to the body.

“The advantage of geometric mechanics is that we don't have to explore every possibility of locomotion to determine which one is the best,” Chong said.

Findings from the neural network tracking and geometric mechanics enabled the group to form a theory: that the style of lizard movement — whether they move using standing waves to run or a traveling wave to slither — is closely related to degree of limb size and body elongation.

Testing the Theory With Real and Robotic Lizards

The researchers tested the theory in two ways. First, they changed the environment, putting sand-dwelling lizards in what they would never come across naturally: sand with air blowing up through it. They observed that short-bodied lizards with strong legs were forced to wiggle their way out, in a movement known as “terrestrial swimming.” Essentially, they were able to trick lizards into using snakelike locomotion to move, further supporting the existence of a spectrum of locomotion patterns.

The team then built a robot model to investigate the advantages of lizardlike and snakelike body movements in the intermediate lizard species. Known as a robophysical model, the robot functions as a physicist’s model of a living system that can also be used to vary parameters such as limb length and how the lizard’s body drags on the ground. With such capabilities, they can test the predictions of their theoretical model while also gaining understanding of the biological system.

The team then built a robot model to investigate the advantages of lizardlike and snakelike body movements in the intermediate lizard species. Known as a robophysical model, the robot functions as a physicist’s model of a living system. With the robot, they can test the predictions of their theoretical model while also gaining insights into the intermediate lizard’s biology and locomotion.

“We built the robophysical model to be reconfigurable — we can vary limb length and change how the lizard robot propels itself with the addition and removal of a belly plate,” said Tianyu Wang, a robotics Ph.D. student and member of Goldman’s lab. “We then used the robot to run similar experiments in sand while tracking its motions and performance.”

The researchers found that, when more body weight was distributed on the belly rather than the limbs, snakelike body movement had the clear advantage in getting lizards where they need to be — even for those lizards with the strongest legs.

Overall, the team observed that the degree of body elongation and limb reduction in lizards is directly related to how body and limb movements are coordinated, indicating a closely intertwined continuum between body shapes and locomotion style. The researchers even found the tiny limbs to be of significant use to the lizards, not only with propulsion, but also with lifting their bellies off the ground.

Insights

The researchers’ findings enabled them to conclude that evolution was not just acting to lengthen bodies or shorten limbs, but both — and in a highly coordinated and functional way.

“Our work really helps explain why these intermediate species are able to compete with other species and persist in their own right for millions of years,” Bergmann said. “They aren’t evolving to be snakelike but are completely functional species with their own ecological roles.”

Also, roboticists can apply concepts discovered in the researchers’ work. For example, using the findings from Goldman’s lab, roboticists have created snake-, lizard-, and amphibian-inspired robots that could one day be used in search and rescue operations.

“With the robophysical models, we can develop principles that can also inform the next generation of robots that might have to crawl around in rubble or move around in extraterrestrial environments like the surface of moons or planets,” Goldman said.

Finally, an important aspect of the study was its multidisciplinary approach. By taking videos from an evolutionary biologist, applying AI tracking software and geometric mechanics to understand movement, and building a robophysical model to test their hypothesis, each student brought individual expertise to bear on the research question.

“I have to say, this really was an awesome student-led project,” Goldman said.

Citation: Baxi Chong, Tianyu Wang, Eva Ericksoa, Philip J. Bergmann, and Daniel I. Goldman, “Coordinating tiny limbs and long bodies: Geometric mechanicsof lizard terrestrial swimming,” PNAS, June 2022.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2118456119

Funding: NSF–Simons Southeast Center for Mathematics and Biology (Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative Grant 594594), NSF Grant IOS-1353703, President’s Undergraduate Research Awards at Georgia Institute of Technology, and Army Research Office Grant W911NF-11-1-0514.

Writer: Catherine Barzler

Video: Steven Norris and Evan Atkinson

Photos: Philip Bergmann and Steven Norris

Media Contact: Catherine Barzler | catherine.barzler@gatech.edu

###

The Georgia Institute of Technology, or Georgia Tech, is a top 10 public research university developing leaders who advance technology and improve the human condition. The Institute offers business, computing, design, engineering, liberal arts, and sciences degrees. Its nearly 44,000 students, representing 50 states and 149 countries, study at the main campus in Atlanta, at campuses in France and China, and through distance and online learning. As a leading technological university, Georgia Tech is an engine of economic development for Georgia, the Southeast, and the nation, conducting more than $1 billion in research annually for government, industry, and society.

Summary sentence

Using biological experiments, robot models, and a geometric theory of locomotion, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology investigated how and why intermediate lizard species, with their elongated bodies and short limbs, might use their bodies

Dateline

Fri, 07/15/2022 - 12:00

catherine.barzler@gatech.edu

Contact

Catherine Barzler, Senior Research Writer/Editor

Location

Atlanta, GA

Associated importer

News room topics

Science and Technology

Categories

Research

Core research areas

Bioengineering and Bioscience

Robotics

Mercury ID

659425

Source updated

Fri, 07/15/2022 - 11:30

Tiny Limbs and Long Bodies: Coordinating Lizard Locomotion

bwaye3 — Tue, 19 Jul 2022 14:50:18 +0000

Tiny Limbs and Long Bodies: Coordinating Lizard Locomotion bwaye3 Tue, 07/19/2022 - 10:50

A Multidisciplinary Approach

“The advantage of geometric mechanics is that we don't have to explore every possibility of locomotion to determine which one is the best,” Chong said.

Testing the Theory With Real and Robotic Lizards

The team then built a robot model to investigate the advantages of lizardlike and snakelike body movements in the intermediate lizard species. Known as a robophysical model, the robot functions as a physicist’s model of a living system. With the robot, they can test the predictions of their theoretical model while also gaining insights into the intermediate lizard’s biology and locomotion.

Insights

The researchers’ findings enabled them to conclude that evolution was not just acting to lengthen bodies or shorten limbs, but both — and in a highly coordinated and functional way.

“I have to say, this really was an awesome student-led project,” Goldman said.

Writer: Catherine Barzler

Video: Steven Norris and Evan Atkinson

Photos: Philip Bergmann and Steven Norris

Media Contact: Catherine Barzler | catherine.barzler@gatech.edu

###

Summary sentence

Using biological experiments, robot models, and a geometric theory of locomotion, researchers investigate how and why intermediate lizard species, with their elongated bodies and short limbs, might use their bodies to move.

Summary

Dateline

Fri, 07/15/2022 - 12:00

catherine.barzler@gatech.edu

Contact

Catherine Barzler, Senior Research Writer/Editor

Location

Atlanta, GA

Associated importer

News room topics

Science and Technology

Categories

Research

Core research areas

Bioengineering and Bioscience

Robotics

Mercury ID

659439

Source updated

Fri, 07/15/2022 - 17:31

Amazon Robotics Gift Supports Georgia Tech’s Advanced Technology Development Center

bwaye3 — Wed, 15 Jun 2022 14:15:59 +0000

Amazon Robotics Gift Supports Georgia Tech’s Advanced Technology Development Center bwaye3 Wed, 06/15/2022 - 10:15

To help support the growth of startups and individuals working to advance automation and robotics, Amazon Robotics today announced it is providing a substantial investment over three years to the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC).

ATDC is Georgia’s technology startup incubator and helps entrepreneurs across the state build, launch, and scale successful companies. The goal of the gift is to accelerate growth of automation and robotics by leveraging staff and resources at ATDC in collaboration with Amazon.

“Our mission is to support infrastructure for startups and to help foster compelling startup companies with tremendous talent that solve big problems,” said Thomas Felis, director of robotics strategy for Amazon Global Robotics. “Equally important to us is Georgia Tech’s track record of working with and supporting entrepreneurs from diverse and underrepresented backgrounds.”

The funding includes allocation for an ATDC full-time automation and robotics catalyst to recruit and coach companies focused on automation and robotics. The catalyst will identify relevant startups and help onboard them into ATDC’s startup pipeline and portfolio.

“Georgia Tech is a leader in robotics research, and we are excited to have Amazon support our startup mission at ATDC to bring entrepreneurial ideas to life and to market,” said John Avery, ATDC director. “Innovation can come from anywhere and everywhere, and this collaboration reflects our commitment to support diverse startup founders.”

This effort will also support Georgia Tech’s ongoing robotics research, including the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines.

The Amazon sponsorship expands ATDC’s targeted vertical focus areas to seven, including financial, health, and retail technology, 5G, logistics and supply chain, and advanced manufacturing.

ATDC will also work with Amazon to identify specific areas of technical interest with the aim of developing virtual and physical events to attract relevant startups.

To apply to join the robotics and automation incubator, click here.

Summary sentence

Funding will go toward assisting diverse entrepreneurs in the fields of robotics and automation.

Dateline

Tue, 06/14/2022 - 12:00

peralte@atdc.org

Contact

Peralte C. Paul
peralte.paul@comm.gatech.edu
404.316.1210

Location

Atlanta, GA

Associated importer

Keywords

Amazon

atdc

robotics

automation

go-researchnews

News room topics

Business and Economic Development

Categories

Business

Robotics

Core research areas

Robotics

Mercury ID

658858

Source updated

Tue, 06/14/2022 - 13:03

Faces of Research: Meet Kinsey Herrin

bwaye3 — Fri, 13 May 2022 17:40:14 +0000

Faces of Research: Meet Kinsey Herrin bwaye3 Fri, 05/13/2022 - 13:40

The Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines at Georgia Tech supports and facilitates the operation of several core research facilities on campus. This allows faculty, students, and collaborators to advance the boundaries of robotics research.

This installment of the Faces of Research Q&A series is with Kinsey Herrin

What is your field of expertise and why did you choose it?
I’m a prosthetist/orthotist and conduct research in the field of prosthetics, orthotics/exoskeletons, and rehab robotics. Our goal is to make it easier for people with mobility challenges to live more independent lives by helping them move more easily in the real world. The change we see through our technology sometimes is amazing — people with amputations can go upstairs, step-over-step instead of stiff legged, and kids with walking disabilities start to have more normal walking patterns. As a kid, I always wanted to help people and this profession is the perfect blend of medicine, science, and art — all things that I love plus the added benefit of getting to be around some really incredible people.

What makes Georgia Tech Research institutes unique?
We’re trying to advance technology outside of the lab and into the real world where it can make an impact on real users. That means not only assessing how our users perform with the technology — does it actually make them walk faster, with a more natural and easy gait — but also assessing a user’s own perspective on technology and using all of that data to keep improving the end results. Our facilities and resources are incredible. I often feel I have access to a dream playground for a research prosthetist/orthotist. On top of all of that, our faculty and students are not only extremely talented and at the top of their fields, but I think there is a deeper passion for pursuing this goal to make mobility easier for people with physical challenges.

What impact is your research having on the world? 
I see our work as having an impact on all people with mobility challenges. We are trying to make the world a better place for them by challenging the status quo and saying what clinicians can currently provide is still not good enough. We can still do more to return people to a new normal after amputation, stroke, brain, and spinal cord injuries. When people can access their own environment independently, it has overwhelmingly positive impacts on their quality of life. I think our research is making great strides toward making that possible.

What do you like to do in your spare time when you are not working on your research or teaching?
I enjoy being outdoors with my husband and son any chance we get. We love pretty much everything about being on or near water — fishing, kayaking, canoeing, swimming, and camping. I also have nine backyard chickens and a dog that are hilarious and fun additions to the Herrin chaos.

Summary sentence

Senior Research Scientist, Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering

Dateline

Fri, 05/13/2022 - 12:00

peralte.paul@comm.gatech.edu

Location

Atlanta, GA

Associated importer

Keywords

go-researchnews

News room topics

Science and Technology

Categories

Robotics

Core research areas

Robotics

Mercury ID

658195

Source updated

Fri, 05/13/2022 - 10:50

Robotics

Georgia Tech Part of $5 Million Grant-Funded Center to Advance Robotics in Poultry Processing

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Robot Provides Unprecedented Views Below Antarctic Ice Shelf

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Tiny Limbs and Long Bodies: Coordinating Lizard Locomotion

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Tiny Limbs and Long Bodies: Coordinating Lizard Locomotion

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Amazon Robotics Gift Supports Georgia Tech’s Advanced Technology Development Center

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Faces of Research: Meet Kinsey Herrin

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