Robotics

About

Robotics is an interdisciplinary field that involves mechatronic design, control, motion planning, computer vision, machine learning and among others. The goal of robotics is to design and develop machines that can help and assist humans in many situations and for many purposes including manufacturing processes, dangerous environments (including inspection of radioactive materials, bomb detection and deactivation), or where humans cannot survive (e.g. in space, underwater, in high heat, and clean up and containment of hazardous materials and radiation). Today, robotics is a rapidly growing field, as technological advances continue; researching, designing, and building new robots serve various practical purposes, whether domestically, commercially, or militarily.

Research in Robotics at the USC Viterbi Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering spans many different areas including motion planning, robot learning and control, robot manipulation, bio-inspired robotics, and human-robot collaboration. Browsing through the websites of our faculty and research labs, you will find a wide range of applications where robotics research in our department is enabling scientific discovery and technological breakthroughs, such as: motion planning for high degrees of freedom robotic systems; physics aware decision making for multi-robot systems; motion planning and task planning for mobile manipulators; robotic additive manufacturing; robotic composite layup; human robot collaboration on assembly operations; design and control of different bio-inspired robots such as quadruped robots, bipedal robots, starfish robots, robotic birds, micro flying robots, etc.; motion planning and control of mobile robots such as unmanned surface vehicles (USVs), unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), or self-driving cars; advanced learning and control development for dynamic robotics; and more.

Published on March 30th, 2017Last updated on June 27th, 2023