Bill Smart

This page lists the students that are currently working with me, and some of the students who have moved on to greener pastures. If you used to work in the lab, and aren't listed on this page, I apologize (but you already know what my memory is like). Email me and I'll add you.

Doctoral Students

Rob Glaubius

Rob is looking at various questions in the area of reinforcement learning value-function approximation. He is concentrating on problems with continuous state spaces, and his work focuses on how to choose a good approximation architecture for a given value-function approximation problem.
Projects: Non-bypassable Kernel Services for Execution Security, Aircraft Transparency Inspection.

Tom Erez

Tom is looking at the problem of using reinforcement learning to learn good gait controllers for robot systems with high-dimensional, continuous state and action spaces. In particular, he is interested in the use of shaping techniques to scaffold the learning process, allowing controllers for hard problems to be bootstrapped from soluitions to easier problems.
Projects: Optimization of Complex Biomechanical Systems.

Doug Few

Doug is looking at how to effectively control a mobile robot using signals recorded directly from the human brain. In particular, he is looking at how we can use shared autonomy to make up for the lack of fidelity in the control signals obtained from the cortical recordings. Doug is currently on leave, back at the Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory.
Projects: None in database.

Masters Students

Erik Karulf

Erik is heading the development of RIDE, a computer game interface for the control of mobile robots.
Projects: Computer Game Interfaces for the Control of Mobile Robots.

Undergraduate Students

Parker Dunton

Parker is leading the GUI development for RIDE.
Projects: Computer Game Interfaces for the Control of Mobile Robots.

Marshall Strother

Marshall is working on various aspects of RIDE, including the interface to Willow Garage's ROS software framework.
Projects: Computer Game Interfaces for the Control of Mobile Robots.

Alumni

Fritz Heckel

Fritz looked at how we can improve human-robot interaction by building and maintaining models of the human, based on sensor data and sound psychological models. In particular, was interested in how we can adapt formal theories of mind (in particular Baron-Cohen's and Leslie's) for practical use on a robot. Fritz left to pursue a Ph.D. at UNC Charlotte.
Projects: Software for Robots.

Stu Glaser

Stu earned a Masters degree by applying reinforcement learning techniques to the problem of controlling multiple mobile robots. He is currently working at Willow Garage.
Projects: None in database.

Eitan Marder-Eppstein

Eitan earned a Masters degree by building an interactive physics-based humanoid simulation, to be used for reinforcement learning research.
Projects: None in database.

Joe Izraelevitz

Joe worked as part of a team of undergraduates to design and implement a path-following system for one of our outdoor mobile robots. The goal was to have a system that can robustly follow all of the footpaths on the Washington University campus.
Projects: None in database.

Topher McFarland

Topher was the primary developer of Action Jackson, the robot abstract artist. He also worked on novel potential field navigation techniques for mobile robots. Topher is currently pursuing a Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University.
Projects: Action Jackson.

Tim Blakely

Tim worked in collaboration with faculty in the departments of Biomedical Engineering and Neurological Surgery to develop a direct brain-computer interface for a variety of robotic systems. His thesis looked at controlling a small robot arm using a variety of biosignals, and comparing the quality of the control to more standard methods, such as a joystick. He is currently working on a Ph.D. at the University of Washington.
Projects: None in database.

Chris Wilson

Chris did some groundbreaking work combining robotics with theater for his Masters thesis work. He successfully included a robot in a play staged for the Washington University community, an acting class, and a set of specially-written pieces to investigate if people react to robots and humans in the same way in a theatrical setting. He is currently a starving actor in Chicago.
Projects: Robots and Theatre.

Jim Stevens

Jim worked on RIDE, a computer game interface for the control of mobile robots.
Projects: Computer Game Interfaces for the Control of Mobile Robots.

Oren Kravetz

Oren worked on software that will allows us to control our Shadow robot hand directly with input from a Data Glove. He graduated in December 2008.
Projects: Control of a Robotic Hand Prosthesis Using Cortical Signals.