IEEE JRACS Seminar: NASA-GM Robonaut 2 – The Advent of the Robotics & Automation Revolution

Dear IEEE Society Members,

This is an announcement for an IEEE JRACS Chapter meeting and monthly Technical Seminar.
If you are planning to attend please register using the link below.

This is an open event, so please feel free to forward this information to your colleagues or anyone that could be interested in the topic.

Meeting Agenda:

11:30am Networking & Registration
11:45pm Technical Presentation
12:30pm Q&A
12:45pm Adjourn

Best,

IEEE Joint Robotics & Automation – Controls Systems (JRACS) Society
IEEE Huntsville Section, Huntsville, AL

IEEE Joint Robotics & Automation – Controls Systems (JRACS) Chapter Seminar

NASA-GM Robonaut 2: The Advent of the Robotics & Automation Revolution

By Leandro G. Barajas Ph.D., PMP

Location:
Dynetics, Inc.
Solutions Complex, Main Conference Room
1004 Explorer Blvd.
Huntsville, AL 35806

Date:
Friday October 19, 11:30am-12:45pm

Please RSVP by COB on 10/17/2012
https://meetings.vtools.ieee.org/meeting_view/list_meeting/14811
and under “Menu Selection” provide your US Citizenship Status

Lunch will be provided

Abstract:

Reaching the technological revolution of the Neolithic took modern humans over 200,000 years. Another 12,000 years later, in the 18th and 19th centuries, the Industrial Revolution brought unprecedented advances in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, science and technology. In the last century alone we have gone through the Atomic, Jet, and Space Ages, and we are now in the midst of the Information Age. The next major technological milestone still to come, “The Robotics & Automation Revolution”, will not take millennia, centuries or even decades, it will be upon us in only a few years. This Cybernetic Singularity will not just be a tipping point but a process where humanity will continuously augment its physical, mental, emotional and social capabilities via effective machine-brain interfaces to a level that they become fully embodied and therefore indistinguishable from its own.

From the large scale manufacturing point of view, the main areas of immediate technological development that will enable this transformation include the mastering of high level & intuitive human-robot interfaces, flexible & robust perception, highly flexible & dexterous robots/automation/end-effectors, safe integration & harmony with humans, and distributed robotic intelligence that can learn from social interaction. By changing paradigms from robots programmed offline, to tele-operated robots, to learning robots, to thinking robots and eventually to autonomous robots, we aim to enhance and complement the role of humans on the production line by reducing or eliminating worker time spent on routine, non-critical, dangerous, or repetitive functions as well as by compensating for human physical, environmental, and cognitive limitations. Exemplifying this approach, General Motors and NASA partnered to develop Robonaut 2 (R2), the first humanoid robot in space. R2 took flight aboard the STS-133 Shuttle Discovery and became a permanent resident of the International Space Station.

Speaker Bio:

Dr. Leandro G. Barajas is a Senior Engineer and Project Manager at the Unmanned Systems and Aerodynamics Department, at Dynetics, Inc. Previously, he was a Staff Researcher at the Advanced Robotics Group, Manufacturing Systems Research Laboratory at General Motors Global R&D Center in Warren, MI, USA. He received the Honor Degree in Electronics Engineering as Valedictorian from the Universidad Distrital F.J.C., Bogotá, Colombia, in 1998. He received M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), Atlanta, GA in 2000 and 2003, respectively.

Dr. Barajas has worked on the areas of unmanned systems, robotics & automation and intelligent perception where was responsible for designing and leading the global development of an integrated cross-platform framework for automotive assembly robot control. This framework encompasses robot vision, robot & automation control, high-level intelligent & flexible perception, human-robot interaction & learning, and highly flexible & dexterous robots/end-effectors. He has authored over 60 technical publications and 50 invention disclosures that in turn have been translated into over 30 patents & patent applications.

Dr. Barajas has been distinguished with over 40 corporate, academic and professional awards including: 4 “Boss” Kettering Awards (GM’s top technical honor), 3 McCuen Awards (GM R&D’s top honor), Chairman Honors Award (GM’s top corporate honor), GM R&D “Spark Plug” Award, Elected IEEE Senior Member, SME Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award, IEEE Robotics & Automation Early Career Award, Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC) Award for Excellence in Technology Transfer, the NASA JSC’s Exceptional Software Award and the NASA Exceptional Space Act Award for the development of Robonaut 2.

To be added or removed from the IEEE Huntsville Section email list, just send an email to L.G.Barajas@ieee.org with ADD or REMOVE as the subject line.

IEEE Joint AESS and JCAM Seminar

Wednesday, October 24th, 2012

Dr. William D. Blair, Georgia Tech Research Institute

“Design of Nearly Constant Velocity Track Filters for Tracking Maneuvering Targets”

11:30am – 1:00pm

Location: Dynetics – Solutions Complex Main Conference Room

1004 Explorer Boulevard (in Research Park)

See map at: http://www.dynetics.com/pdf/HuntsvilleAlabama.pdf

Lunch will be provided to Attendees

RSVP to Charlene Neely (by COB on 10/22/2012) at: Charlene.Neely@dynetics.com

(Please send US Citizenship information with RSVP – YES or NO)

Bio: William Dale Blair, Ph.D., is a principal research engineer with GTRI and currently serves as the Technical Director for the C2BMC Knowledge Center of the Missile Defense Agency (MDA). Since joining GTRI in 1997, Dr. Blair has led a multi-organizational team in the development of multiplatform-multisensor-multitarget benchmarks to both air defense and ballistic missile defense. His projects at GTRI focus mostly the modeling and simulation and algorithm assessment associated with the sensor netting for the battle management, command, and control for the ballistic missile defense system. Dr. Blair’s research is reported in over two hundred articles which include 38 refereed journal articles. Dr. Blair served as the Editor for Radar Systems for IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems (T-AES) 1996-99 and Editor-In-Chief (EIC) for IEEE T-AES from 1999-2005. Dr. Blair is a Fellow of the IEEE and recipient of the 2001 IEEE Nathanson Award for Outstanding Young Radar Engineer. He originated and coordinates four short courses, Target Tracking in Sensor Systems, Target Tracking Concepts, Advanced Target Tracking for Air Defense and Advanced Target Tracking for Ballistic Missile Defense, for the Professional Education Department of the GIT. Dr. Blair is coeditor and coauthor of the book, Multitarget-Multisensor Tracking: Advances and Applications III, and the author of chapter 19 “Radar Tracking Algorithms” and coauthor of chapter 18 “Radar Measurements” of the new edition of Principles of Modern Radar. He has also served as the coordinator of the ONR/GTRI Workshop on Target Tracking and Sensor Fusion for 1998 through 2011. He was recently elected to the Board of Governors (BoG) for the IEEE Aerospace and Electronics Systems Society (AESS) for 2012-2015. Dr. Blair was elected by an open vote of the members of AESS. He previously served on the BOG of IEEE AESS from 1998-2003 and 2005-2010.

Abstract: The design of Kalman filters for tracking maneuvering targets has been an open problem for more than 40 years. When tracking maneuvering targets with conventional algorithms, the process noise variance used in the Kalman filter is selected vaguely in relation to the maximum acceleration of the target. More recently, the process noise standard deviation for the nearly constant velocity Kalman filter was selected to be greater than one half the maximum acceleration of the target and less than the maximum acceleration. In the presentation, the deterministic tracking index is introduced and used to develop a relationship between the maximum acceleration of the target and the process noise variance that minimizes the maximum mean squared error (MMSE) in position. A lower bound on the process noise variance is also expressed in terms of the maximum acceleration and deterministic tracking index. Both of these results are developed for sustained maneuvers in that all of the transient effects of the maneuver have diminished. The results for sustained maneuvers are extended to brief maneuvers. For each case, the process noise variance is expressed in terms of the maximum acceleration, duration of the maneuver in number of measurements, and deterministic tracking index for both the discrete white noise acceleration and continuous white noise acceleration models for nearly constant velocity motion. With the use of Monte Carlo simulations, the method for choosing process noise variance for tracking maneuvering targets is demonstrated to be effective for both sustained and brief maneuvers. The design of nearly constant velocity filters for radar tracking will also be discussed along with an example. Finally, the use of these design methods in the design of the interacting multiple model (IMM) estimator for tracking maneuvering targets is also discussed.

** SAVE THE DATE **

Tuesday, November 13^th, 2012

Distinguished Lecturer – Fred Daum

“Particle Flow for Nonlinear Filters and Bayesian Decisions”

11:00am – 1:00pm

Location: Dynetics – Solutions Complex Main Conference Room

1004 Explorer Boulevard (in Research Park)

See map at: http://www.dynetics.com/pdf/HuntsvilleAlabama.pdf

Lunch To Be Catered By: (TBD)

RSVP to Charlene Neely (by noon on 11/12/2012) at: Charlene.Neely@dynetics.com

(Please send US Citizenship information with RSVP – YES or NO)

Bio: Fred Daum is an IEEE Fellow, a principal Fellow at Raytheon, a Distinguished Lecturer for the IEEE and a graduate of Harvard University. Fred was awarded the Tom Phillips prize for technical excellence, in recognition of his ability to make complex radar systems work in the real World.

He developed, analyzed and tested the real time algorithms for essentially all the large long range phased array radars built by the USA in the last four decades, including: Cobra Dane, PAVE PAWS, Cobra Judy, BMEWS, THAAD, ROTHR, UEWR, and SBX, as well as several shipboard firecontrol systems and air traffic control systems. These real time algorithms include: extended Kalman filters, radar waveform scheduling, Bayesian discrimination, data association, discrimination of satellites from missiles, calibration of tropospheric and ionospheric refraction, and target object mapping. Fred’s exact fixed finite dimensional nonlinear filter theory generalizes the Kalman and Beneš filters.

He has published nearly one hundred technical papers, and he has given invited lectures at MIT, Harvard, Yale, Caltech, the Technion, Brown, Georgia Tech., Univ. of Connecticut, Univ. of Minnesota, Melbourne Univ., Univ. of Toulouse, Univ. of New South Wales, Univ. of Canterbury, Univ. of Illinois at Chicago, Washington Univ. at St Louis, McMaster Univ., Boston Univ., Northeastern University and Rutgers.

Abstract: We have invented a new nonlinear filter theory that is roughly ten orders of magnitude faster than standard particle filters for the same accuracy. Moreover, our filter beats the extended Kalman filter accuracy by several orders of magnitude for difficult nonlinear problems. This theory can be applied to essentially any estimation or decision problem, including: tracking, guidance and navigation, control, robotics, Bayesian decisions, predicting the weather and the stock market. We show many numerical results for various nonlinearities, with both stable and unstable plants, varying process noise, measurement noise, initial uncertainty of the state vector, and dimension of the state vector from d = 1 to 30. Our theory uses particle flow (like physics) to compute Bayes’ rule, rather than a pointwise multiply. We do not use resampling of particles or proposal densities or importance sampling or any Markov chain Monte Carlo method. But rather, we design the particle flow with the solution of a linear first order highly underdetermined PDE, like the Gauss divergence law in electromagnetics. The talk explains what a particle filter is, and why engineers like particle filters, but we also explain the curse of dimensionality. We explain particle degeneracy and how we solve it with a simple cartoon. This talk is for normal engineers who do not have nonlinear filters for breakfast.

IEEE GOLD & Student Chapters Fall Picnic/Social!

IEEE Graduates of the Last Decade (GOLD) members and University IEEE Student Chapters are hosting a Fall Picnic…

Let’s come out to celebrate the fall season with some food, folks, and fun!!!

All are welcome to attend. The event will be catered by Smokey’s Bar-B-Que.

Networking, Socializing and Activities for all…..

$5.00 per person (for Non-GOLD members)

Free (for IEEE GOLD members and IEEE Students members)

IEEE Fall Picnic/Social

Saturday, September 29^th, 2012

11:00am – 3:00pm

University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAHuntsville)

Shelby Center – Courtyard (Located in the rear)

RSVP by 9/28/2012 with # of persons attending to: Sonya.Dillard@ieee.org

Click on link for campus map (for Shelby Center location).

This is an event, you don’t want to miss!!!!!

Metasurfing Wave Antennas

Dr. Stefano Maci, IEEE AP-S Distinguished Lecturer

Date: July 6, 2012
Time: 11:00 -13:00
Place: Dynetics Solutions Complex, 1002 Explorer Blvd., Cummings Research Park, Huntsville, AL 35806

Meeting Flyer

Complementary Lunch for all Registered Attendees!!

Space is limited
To reserve your seat, please RSVP Eric Grigorian at egrigorian@ieee.org by 16:00 on 7/3/12. For RSVP, please include your U.S. citizenship status so that Dynetics can appropriately prepare for your visit to the facility.

Abstract

Metasurfaces constitute a class of thin metamaterials, which can be used from microwave to optical frequencies to create new electromagnetic engineering devices. They are obtained by a dense periodic texture of small elements printed on a grounded slab without or with shorting vias. These have been used in the past for realizing electromagnetic bandgaps (EBG) or equivalent magnetic-walls. Changing the dimension of the elements, being the sub-wavelength 2D-periodicity equal, gives the visual effect of a pixelated image and the electromagnetic effect of a modulation of the equivalent local reactance. The modulated metasurface reactance (MMR) so obtained is able to transform surface or guided waves into different wavefield configurations with required properties. This MMR-driven wavefield transformation is referred to as “Metasurfing”. The MMR allows in fact a local modification of the dispersion equation and, at constant operating frequency, of the local wavevector. Therefore, the general effects of metasurface modulation are similar to those obtained in solid (volumetric) inhomogeneous metamaterial as predicted by the Transformation Optics; namely, re-addressing the propagation path of an incident wave. However, significant technological simplicity is gained.

When the MMR is covered by a top ground plane (Parallel-plate waveguide Metasurfing) the real part of the Poynting vector follows a generalized Fermat principle as happen in ray-field propagation in inhomogeneous solid medium. This may serve for designing lenses or point-source driven beam-forming networks. When the MMR is uncovered, wave propagation is accompanied by leakage; i.e., a surface wave is transformed into a leaky-wave, and the structure itself becomes an extremely flat antenna. In every case, introducing slots in the printed elements allows a polarization control. In such cases, the metasurface associated with can be described by an anisotropic surface impedance.

In this lecture, after illustration of the design method of metasurfing-wave antennas, various examples are presented and discussed, including Luneburg lenses, Maxwell’s Fish-eyes, isoflux antennas, Doppler-guide antennas and new transmission lines.

Speaker Biography

Dr. Stefano Maci is a Professor at the University of Siena (UNISI), with scientific responsibility of a group of 15 researchers (http://www.dii.unisi.it/~lea/). He is the Director of the UNISI PhD School of Information Engineering and Science, which presently includes about 60 PhD students. His research interests include high-frequency and beam representation methods, computational electromagnetics, large phased arrays, planar antennas, reflector antennas and feeds, metamaterials and metasurfaces.

Since 2000, he was responsible of 5 projects funded by the European Union (EU); in particular, in 2004-2007 he was WP leader of the Antenna Center of Excellence (ACE, FP6-EU) and in 2007-2010 he was International Coordinator of a 24-institution consortium of a Marie Curie Action (FP6). He also carried out several projects supported by the European Space Agency (ESA-ESTEC), the European Defense Agency (EDA), the US-Army Research Laboratory (ARL), and by
various industries and research institutions: EADS-MATRA, (Tolosa, Francia), IDS (Pisa, Italia), TICRA (Copenhagen), ALENIA MARCONI SYSTEM (Rome, Italy), SAAB-ERICSON SPACE (Gotheborg, Svezia), THALES (Paris, France), TNO (L’Aia, Olanda), OTO MELARA (La Spezia, Italia), OFFICINE GALILEO (Florence, Italy), SELEX Communication (Rome), Thales Alenia Space (Rome).

Since 2001 he was a member the Technical Advisory Board of 11 international conferences, member of the Review Board of 6 International Journals; in the same period, he organized 23 special sessions in international conferences, and he held 10 short courses in the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society (AP-S) symposia about metamaterials, antennas and computational electromagnetics. He was an Associate Editor of IEEE Trans on EMC and of IEEE Trans. on AP and two times Guest Editor of special issues of the latter journal. In 2003 he was elected Fellow of IEEE.

In 2004 he founded the European School of Antennas (ESoA), a PhD school that presently comprises 30 courses on Antennas, Propagation, Electromagnetic Theory, and Computational Electromagnetics. ESoA counts about 150 among the best teachers of Europe (which include eleven IEEE Fellows) and it is frequented by an average of 220 students per year. The ESoA consortium presently comprises 33 European research centers and offers 12 one-week courses per year.

In 2005-2007, he was Italian National representative of the NATO SET-TG 084 “Emerging Technology for Sensor and Front-ends”, and he is presently involved as
co-representative in the NATO SET-181 RTG on “Metamaterials for Defense and Security Applications”. Dr. Maci was co-founder of two spinoff-companies and since 2008 and he is honorary President of LEAntenne e Progetti SPA (Valeggio sul Mincio, VE).

Dr. Maci is presently Director of ESoA, a member of the Board of Directors of the European Association on Antennas and Propagation (EuRAAP), a member of the Technical Advisory Board of the URSI Commission B, a member elected of the AdCom of IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society, a member of the Governing Board of the European Science Foundation (ESF) Project “NewFocus”, a member of the Governing board of the FP7 coordination action “CARE” (Coordinating the Antenna Research in Europe), a member of the Award Committee of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society (AP-S), a member of the Antennas and Propagation Executive Board of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET, UK), and a member of the Focus Group on METAMATERIALS in the Finmeccanica project “Mind-Share”.

His research activity is documented in 10 book chapters, 110 papers published in international journals, (among which 76 on IEEE journals), and about 300 papers in proceedings of international conferences.

Huntsville Association of Technical Societies (HATS) 29th Annual Professional of the Year (POY) Banquet

The Huntsville Association of Technical Societies will hold the 2012 Professional of the Year (POY12) Banquet on June 26. Tim Pickens, Huntsville “Rocket Man,” will serve as keynote speaker, and Greg Screws, WHNT news anchor, will host the event as master of ceremonies.

The event begins at 5:30 pm at Bridge Street’s Westin Hotel. Join us at the POY Banquet and network with members from other technical societies, spouses, and friends, and join HATS member societies in recognizing each respective Professional of the Year. HATS will present presented the Moquin Award to one Professional of the Year from this years awardees, named after Joseph C. Moquin and honoring him for lifelong community support of Huntsville area technologists.

Attendance cost is $25 per person for dinner and an evening of celebrating significant contributions across technical disciplines at the Westin. IEEE Huntsville Section has booked tables and is making a limited number of seats available to Section members and registered guests on a first-come, first-served basis. Contact Dr Willie Fitzpatrick at wfitzpatrick@ieee.org to RSVP if you would like to attend the banquet.

IEEE Professional of the Year, 2012

IEEE Section is honoring Dr. Bob Berinato, Dynetics Chief Scientist, as our 2012 POY.

Dr. Berinato has been employed at Dynetics, Inc., in Huntsville, AL, since 1985 and is currently responsible for analysis of optical, radar, and signal processing systems.

Dr. Bob Berinato came to Huntsville in 1985 after graduating from Georgia Tech with BS Degrees in Applied Physics and Mechanical Engineering. He has been employed at Dynetics since 1985, and currently serves as Chief Research Scientist. His responsibilities include management of Dynetics’ Internal Research and Development program, and providing customer support in the areas of sensor technology and signal processing.

Throughout his professional career, Bob has engaged in part-time graduate work at UAHuntsville, earning his MS and PhD in Electrical Engineering in 1987 and 1993, respectively, and his MS in Applied Mathematics in 2007. He serves as an adjunct associate professor in the ECE Department, and has taught 14 different courses in the communications and signal processing areas since 1995. He has also taught 6 continuing education short courses to the local community.

Bob currently serves as the chairman of the local IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society, is participating in the Huntsville Chamber of Commerce’s Technology Committee, is a board member of The Schools Foundation, and is a member of Leadership Huntsville / Madison County Class 24.

Dr. Berinato received his BS degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Physics from Georgia Tech (1985), his MS and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) in 1987 and 1993, respectively, and is currently in the graduate Applied Math program at UAH.

Dr. Berinato is also an Adjunct Associate Professor at UAH teaching courses in Electrical Engineering, and has taught short courses in radar systems, optical and infrared systems, missile seekers, and sensor fusion. Please come join us in honoring our IEEE Professional of the Year and networking with other Section professionals!!

POY Background and Details

The Professional of the Year (POY) banquet provides HATS member organizations the opportunity to publicly recognize one of their own for exceptional professionalism. Each member organization selects a POY and the HATS Awards committee selects one of the POYs as the recipient of the Joseph C. Moquin Award based upon evidence of technical contributions and community service.

Date: Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Time: 5:30-8:00PM (dinner at 6:00PM)
Place: The Westin-Huntsville 6800 Governors West, NW

Master of Ceremonies

Greg Screws co-anchors WHNT News 19 at 6:00 p.m. with Elise Morgan. He and Clarissa McClain also co-anchor WHNT News 19 at 9:00 p.m. on WHNT2. If there is a topic that requires an opinion, Greg will give you one. His favorite saying is “Right or wrong, I am rarely in doubt.”

After leaving Hartselle and realizing higher education was a challenge in addition to being a goal, Greg went to the University of Alabama. His “brush with greatness moment” at the University of Alabama was seeing Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant in a Shoney’s Restaurant. Greg majored in Communications at Alabama and worked at WCFT television before moving to WVTM in Birmingham. Greg’s stop in Birmingham television sparked his love of NASCAR and is also where he realized weathermen rarely pick up the check at lunch.

Greg’s daughter Emily just turned 21 years old, and is a junior at Alabama. Once Greg asked if she wanted to work in television and Emily said “you have to be kidding me.” Emily is a Marketing/Public Relations major at Alabama and is very patient when her father calls her at least three times a day.

Greg is very much in demand as a public speaker. His life experience of covering news, sports, personalities and overcoming life’s difficulties makes for great after dinner and public speaking.

Featured Speaker

Tim Pickens, Dynetics’ chief propulsion engineer and commercial space advisor and Team leader for the Rocket City Space Pioneers

If you haven’t heard Tim Pickens speak yet, this is an event you don’t want to miss! Tim Pickens is commercial space advisor and chief propulsion engineer at Dynetics and team leader for the Rocket City Space Pioneers, a team led by Dynetics that is competing in the $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE.

Dynetics brought Pickens on board in December 2009 as part of the purchase of the space company he started, Orion Propulsion Inc. With his expertise and vision in the space industry, particularly in the commercial arena, Pickens is responsible for developing innovative space product solutions and expanding Dynetics’ commercial space business.

Pickens started and grew Orion to be a $6.4 million company with 40 employees within five years. Pickens worked in all areas of Orion to run a lean and innovative start-up.

Pickens’ most recent role at Orion was as CEO, as well as the program manager for the development of the reaction control thrusters for the Bigelow Aerospace Sundancer module. These thrusters operate combusting hydrogen and oxygen produced from waste byproducts, a technology that offers the state of the art in space-living recycling.

Before founding Orion, Pickens worked for small hardware-rich aerospace companies in Huntsville, as well as serving as lead propulsion engineer at Scaled Composites on SpaceShipOne, winner of the $10 million X PRIZE.

In addition to being a propulsion engineer, Pickens is an inventor, innovator and educator in his spare time. He has been featured in Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, CNN online articles, and on The Daily Show. Features include his serious company innovations, as well as his fun home hobby efforts such as rocket trucks, rocket bikes and suitcase rockets. He is currently building/testing a jet pack belt that can be seen from time to time flying in Alabama lakes.

Pickens is asked to speak at space and entrepreneurial conferences all over the country to share his views on commercial space and offer his perspective for space start-up businesses.