Defense in the field - the future of software for robotics Matthew C. Jadud Faculty Candidate Olin College Needham, MA Friday, February 29, 2008 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. Fuller Labs 320 Abstract: Wright. Banks. Ripken. Smith. Great shortstops in baseball history. The shortstop is responsible for fielding more infield hits than any other position, covers second and third base in many infield plays, and is an all-around demanding defensive position. The DARPA grand challenges have demonstrated that navigation "in the wild" is far more tractable than previously thought, even with moderate computational resources. Contrast this with two open problems in robotics---manipulation and mobility---which are the very definition of a shortstop. This talk will discuss the role of human-centered design and parallel-safe languages in the pursuit of software engineering tools and practices that will lead us to robust, maintainable, and reliable software for the mobile and agile robotic shortstop of the future. ______ Before coming to New England to join Olin as a visiting professor, Matthew lived in Canterbury for five years, a beautiful city located in the Southeast of Old England. At the University of Kent, he pursued his Ph.D. in computer science education research, and afterward jumped into postdoctoral research exploring linguistic abstraction and its role in the development of parallel-safe embedded systems. This work is made manifest through his contributions to the Transterpreter project, a virtual machine for concurrent and parallel programming languages. Ultimately, the goal of these efforts is to develop usable, safe, and expressive languages to help advance the state of the art in robotics. Dr. Jadud received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Kent in Canterbury, England, his M.S. in Computer Science from Indiana University Bloomington, and his B.A. in Physics from Kenyon College. Travel, singing, and swimming rank high among the things that Matt likes to do when he "forgets" to recharge his laptop. Host: Michael Gennert Refreshments will be served Maintained by webmaster@cs.wpi.edu Last modified: February 21, 2008

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