Planning and Controls at Cruise Automation
Thursday, December 1, 2022 @ 10:00 a.m.
Stanley Hall 105
Brandon Basso – Senior Director, Planning and Controls
Nenad Uzonovic – Principal Engineer, Maneuver Planning
Fred Tschanz – Staff Engineer, Motion Planning and Controls
Nitin Kapania – Engineering Manager, Controls
Abstract: Cruise LLC is a self-driving car company headquartered in San Francisco, California. Cruise has been testing and developing autonomous car technology on the road in California, Arizona, and Austin to navigate some of the most challenging and unpredictable driving environments. In 2022, Cruise began launching fared public rides in San Francisco with plans to expand in 2023. In this guest lecture, four engineering leaders will discuss the Planning and Control architecture at Cruise, with the emphasis on how safe and efficient trajectories are synthesized in real-time for urban driving.
Biographies: Brandon Basso has been working in the field of autonomous vehicles and robotics for over 15 years. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Columbia University and a PhD from UC Berkeley in Control Theory, where he studied under Karl Hedrick. Brandon’s graduate work in Reinforcement Learning applied to classic vehicle routing problems on drones led to him starting 3D Robotics North America. At 3DR as VP of software engineering he shipped multiple developer and commercial drone products, including the Pixhawk autopilot, 3DR Solo. Brandon then worked at Uber ATG as a Director in software engineering where over 4 years he led highway driving, autonomy capabilities development, simulation, and core frameworks. Brandon joined Cruise in 2021 as the Director of Planning and Controls.
Nenad Uzonovic is the technical lead of the core decision engine in Cruise AVs, the Non-Convex Solver (NCS). He has been working on planning and decision making in self-driving cars since 2005. Before Cruise, he held roles at Tesla, GoPro, and Robotic Research in Washington, DC. In his free time, Nenad enjoys outdoors with his wife and two kids, sports (rowing, kitesurfing, ran first marathon this year), or sipping a cup of espresso.
Fred Tschanz received a PhD in Dynamic Systems & Control from ETH Zurich in 2012. His PhD research on the topic of pollutant emission control in diesel engines was conducted at the Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control under Prof. Lino Guzzella. After his PhD, Fred joined Honeywell Automotive Software in Vancouver, BC, followed by a position at a CNH Industrial R&D center in Switzerland. In 2016, Fred joined the Vehicle Control team at Uber ATG where he was a TLM working on a variety of controls related topics. At Cruise Automation, he is currently a Staff Engineer within Motion Planning and Controls spearheading development of fail-safe control architectures for all-speed, all-weather driving.
Nitin Kapania is an Engineering Manager at Cruise focused primarily on Controls, including broader involvement in development of the company’s next generation Origin platform. He received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University with Dr. Chris Gerdes, where his research focused on motion planning and control at the limits of vehicle handling. After completing his PhD, he joined Bain and Company as a management consultant focused on corporate strategy for technology firms, and also completed a postdoctoral fellowship at UC Berkeley. In 2019, he joined the Vehicle Controls team at Cruise Automation.
Hosted by: Professor Francesco Borrelli, 5133 Etcheverry Hall, (510) 643-3871, fborrelli@berkeley.edu
Shape-Shifting Soft Robots That Adapt to Changing Tasks and Environments
Thursday, December 1, 2022 @ 11:10 a.m.
3110 Etcheverry Hall
Dr. Rebecca Kramer-Bottiglio – John J. Lee Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science; Yale University
Abstract: Soft robots have the potential to adapt their morphologies, properties, and behavioral control policies in response to different environments, tasks, or perturbations. Leveraging insights from regenerating, metamorphosing, and generally adaptive animals, this talk will cover a series of shape-changing soft robots capable of editing their physical structure to perform tasks more efficiently under changing task demands or in multiple environments, as well as the multifunctional materials that enable adaptive morphogenesis.
Biography: Rebecca Kramer-Bottiglio is the John J. Lee Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at Yale University. Focusing on the intersection of materials, manufacturing, and robotics, her group is deriving new multifunctional materials that will allow next-generation robots to adapt their morphology and behavior to changing tasks and environments. She is the winner of multiple early career awards including the NSF Career Award, the NASA Early Career Award, the AFOSR Young Investigator Award, and the ONR Young Investigator Award. She was named to the Forbes “30 under 30” list for her approach to manufacturing liquid metals through printable emulsions and scalable sintering methods. She received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) award, the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on outstanding scientists and engineers beginning their independent careers, for her development of robotic skins that turn inanimate objects into multifunctional robots. She serves as an Associate Editor of Soft Robotics and IEEE T-RO and was General Chair of the IEEE International Conference on Soft Robotics (RoboSoft) in both 2020 and 2021. She was named an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer in 2019, and she is a recipient of the 2022 National Academy of Engineering (NAE) Gilbreth Lectureship. She also serves on the Technology, Innovation & Engineering Committee of the NASA Advisory Council.
Hosted by: Assistant Professor Hannah Stuart, 5138 Etcheverry Hall, 510-643-9786, hstuart@berkeley.edu
Modeling Deformations of Active Rods and Plates
Thursday, December 1, 2022 @ 4 p.m.
3110 Etcheverry Hall
Dr. Kevin Korner – Post-Doctoral Researcher; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Abstract: Slender structures are mechanical components which have at least one spatial dimension much smaller than another. Some canonical examples are beams, rods, ribbons, plates, and shells. Although these systems have been studied for many centuries, the focus of development has generally been limited to small strains and the onset of buckling modes. Outside of this regime, both geometric and material non-linearities contribute significant complexity to the analytical and computational techniques which can be applied to these problems. Despite this, large deformations demonstrate tremendous potential in engineering applications, particularly with soft materials. This work examines various methods of modeling slender structures. We focus on large strain behaviors, often accentuated by spontaneous strains generated with active materials. These systems demonstrate a wide range of interesting and useful behaviors, such as bifurcations, snap-through, and cyclic deformations.
Biography: Kevin Korner is currently a Post-Doctoral researcher in the Physical and Life Sciences division at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. His research interests revolve around various topics in non-linear mechanics and computational modeling. The goal is to utilize novel mathematical methods, particularly those motivated by recent advances in optimization and computational resources to study complex problems in mechanics, particularly deformations at extreme conditions. During his PhD, he studied various behaviors associated with thin structures such as rolling, snap-through, and bifurcations, such as those seen in soft, active materials. Korner received his BS in Mechanical Engineering from UC Berkeley (2016), MS in Mechanical Engineering from Caltech (2018), and PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Caltech (2022).
Hosted by: Professor James Casey, 6125 Etcheverry Hall, 510-642-2863, jimcasey@berkeley.edu
Soft-Bodied Wireless Miniature Medical Robots Inside Our Body
Monday, December 5, 2022 @ 3 p.m.
3110 Etcheverry Hall
Dr. Metin Sitti – Director, Physical Intelligence Department; Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems
Abstract: Wireless miniature medical robots have the unique capability of navigating, operating and staying inside risky and currently hard- or impossible-to-reach tight spaces inside the human body. On the other hand, soft-bodied robots have the unique capabilities of shape programming, physical adaptation, safe interaction, and multifunctional diverse behaviors. Combining the strengths of both systems, this presentation reports on novel soft-bodied wireless miniature medical robots with magneto-elastic active materials, actuated and controlled by external magnetic fields. First, I will present our biologically inspired magneto-elastic soft-bodied mobile millirobots: Wormmate, a sheet-shaped soft millirobot with over nine different locomotion modes to navigate in confined spaces inside our body, multifunctional baby jellyfish- and zebra fish larva-inspired soft swimmers, and artificial cilia arrays with metachronal coordination for transporting biofluids and objects effectively. Next, I will introduce a jig-assisted 3D assembly method to create the most advanced soft miniature robots with diverse multimaterials and complex magnetic programming for medical device applications. As example minimally invasive wireless soft medical devices, a soft peristaltic pump, a tubular surface-anchoring device, and an on-demand drug-releasing microcapsule are demonstrated. Finally, a wireless stent-like soft robot is demonstrated for minimally invasive deep brain vasculature applications, such as aneurysm, stroke and brain tumor treatment. Such wireless soft robots are guided under ultrasound and x-ray imaging to achieve various local on-demand medical functions, such as drug delivery, liquid biopsy, stem-cell treatment, embolization, clot opening, and hyperthermia.
Biography: Metin Sitti is the Director of the Physical Intelligence Department at Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart, Germany. He is also a Professor at ETH Zurich, Switzerland and Koç University, Turkey as side appointments, and he was a Professor at Carnegie Mellon University (2002-2014) and a research scientist at UC Berkeley (1999-2002) in USA before moving to Europa. He received his BSc (1992) and MSc (1994) degrees from Boğaziçi University, Turkey, and PhD degree from University of Tokyo, Japan (1999). His research interests include small-scale mobile robotics, bio-inspiration, wireless medical devices, and physical intelligence. He is an IEEE Fellow. He received the Highly Cited Researcher recognition (2021, 2022), Breakthrough of the Year Award in the Falling Walls World Science Summit (2020), ERC Advanced Grant (2019), Rahmi Koç Science Medal (2018), SPIE Nanoengineering Pioneer Award (2011), and NSF CAREER Award (2005). He received over 15 best paper and video awards at major conferences. He has supervised and mentored over 70 (26 current) PhD students and 70 (15 current) postdocs, where over 45 of his group alumni are professors around the world. He has published 2 books and over 350 journal articles, and has over 12 issued and 18 pending patents. He founded Setex Technologies Inc. to commercialize his lab’s gecko-inspired microfiber adhesive technology. He is the editor-in-chief of Progress in Biomedical Engineering and Journal of Micro-Bio Robotics, and associate editor in Science Advances and Extreme Mechanics Letters journals.
Hosted by: Associate Professor Koushil Sreenath, 5132 Etcheverry Hall, koushils@berkeley.edu
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