UMass Amherst Hosts Prestigious Northeast Robotics Colloquium

The Northeast Robotics Colloquium (NERC), a research meeting, networking event, job fair and showcase organized by Robotics @ UMass Amherst for the robotics community in the Northeastern United States and Canada, was held at UMass Amherst on Saturday, Sept. 28.

Three keynote speakers – Tapomayukh Bhattacharjee of Cornell University, Tesca Fitzgerald from Yale University, and Donghyun Kim of UMass Amherst – addressed the NERC’s 225 attendees in the Student Union Ballroom.

Kim, an assistant professor in the Manning College of Information & Computer Sciences (CICS) and the leader of the Dynamic and Autonomous Robotic Systems (DARoS) Laboratory, presented on “Advancing Legged Robots: Human Study to Innovation.” Specifically, Kim discussed his work on developing a robotic guide dog to serve the visually impaired as well as his work on developing a humanoid robot based on HyperLeg’s toe and ankle mechanism.

Fitzgerald presented on “Getting Robots to Ask Better Questions,” while Bhattacharjee presented on “Towards Robotics Caregiving: Building Robots that Work Alongside Human Stakeholders.”

The NERC event also featured two poster sessions and 13 abstract talks.

The Robotics @ UMass Amherst Cluster provides a unique collaborative research environment to nurture future robotics engineers with innovative ideas, broad and systematic perspectives, and a collaborative-research attitude. The cluster is supported by the CICS and the College of Engineering to strengthen the university’s research and teaching portfolio in this important discipline.