Can we build Baymax?

Organizers

Chris Atkeson, Carnegie Mellon University
Joohyung Kim, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Jinoh Lee, German Aerospace Center (DLR)
Katsu Yamane, Path Robotics Inc.
Alex Alspach, Toyota Research Institute

Christopher G. Atkeson

I am a Professor in the Robotics Institute and Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. My life goal is to fulfill the science fiction vision of machines that achieve human levels of competence in perceiving, thinking, and acting. A more narrow technical goal is to understand how to get machines to generate and perceive human behavior. I use two complementary approaches, exploring humanoid robotics and human aware environments. Building humanoid robots tests our understanding of how to generate human-like behavior, and exposes the gaps and failures in current approaches.

build-baymax.org

Joohyung Kim

Joohyung Kim is currently an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on design and control for humanoid robots, systems for motion learning in robot hardware, and safe human-robot interaction. He received BSE and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) from Seoul National University, Korea, in 2001 and 2012. He was a Research Scientist in Disney Research from 2013 to 2019. Prior to joining Disney, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University for the DARPA Robotics Challenge in 2013. From 2009 to 2012, he was a Research Staff Member in Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, Korea, developing biped walking controllers for humanoid robots.

KIMLAB (Kinetic Intelligent Machine LAB)

Jinoh Lee

Jinoh Lee is a Research Scientist with the Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics, German Aerospace Center (DLR), Germany. He received the B.S. degree in mechanical engineering from Hanyang University, Seoul, South Korea, in 2003 (awarded Summa Cum Laude), and the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical engineering from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, South Korea, in 2012. Prior to joining DLR in 2020, he held the Research Scientist position at the Department of Advanced Robotics, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), Italy. His professional focus is on robotics and control engineering, which include manipulation of highly redundant robots such as dual-arm and humanoids, robust control of nonlinear systems and compliant robotic system control for safe human-robot interaction.

Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics

Katsu Yamane

Dr. Katsu Yamane is a Principal Research Scientist at Path Robotics Inc. He received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering in 1997, 1999, and 2002 respectively from the University of Tokyo, Japan. Prior to joining Path Robotics in 2022, he held research scientist positions at Bosch Research North America, Honda Research Institute USA, and Disney Research, Pittsburgh. He was also an Associate Professor at the University of Tokyo, and a postdoctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University. While his current research focuses on manipulation planning and control for manufacturing, he is still passionate about humanoid robot control and motion synthesis, physical human-robot interaction, character animation, and human motion simulation.

katsuyamane.com

Alex Alspach

Alex designs and builds soft systems for sensing and manipulation at Toyota Research Institute (TRI), where he currently leads the Whole-Body Manipulation Team. He earned his bachelor's and master's degrees at Drexel University with time spent in the Drexel Autonomous Systems Lab (DASL) and KAIST's HuboLab. After graduating, Alex spent two years at SimLab in Korea developing and marketing tools for manipulation research. While there, he also worked with a production company to develop artists' tools for animating complex, synchronized industrial robot motions. Prior to joining TRI, Alex developed soft huggable humanoid robots and various other creative robotic systems at Disney Research with Joohyung and Katsu!