Autonomy

At the most general level, I am interested in the design and development of autonomous systems. I am particularly interested in the ways and degree that learning plays a role in autonomy.

At a philosophic level I believe that intelligence capable of autonomy requires embodiment. That is the ability to sense and affect the world in some way. This believe has lead to my specific interests in robotics and computer gaming.

Robotics

My most recent and extensive work in robotics is on collision-free motion planning for real-world robots with many degrees of freedom. This work requires research into improved planning algorithms, computer vision, workspace modeling, reasoning about uncertainty and the expected cost of future actions.

My future research in robotics will continue to address motion-planning in the real world, but also move beyond and explore what robots can achieve once they have the ability to successfully motion plan. How can they achieve manipulation skills on par with humans? How can they learn about their environment? How should they interact with humans?

Computer Games

Agents in computer games are really just virtual robots. However, they have the added restriction that interactions with these agents should be fun. I am interested in how techniques developed for robotics can be applied to computer games. For example, the application of motion planning techniques to enable more general and sophisticated animation of digital characters.

Additional interests in games include: emotive agents, adaptive computer games, mixed-mode real/virtual games and novel/avant-garde user interfaces.