[IxDA Pittsburgh] Matt Powers - Smart and Beautiful: Designing Robots and Intelligent Machines, Thursday, January 24.

Robots have been imagined in popular science fiction for decades. These devices have always fascinated us and held great promise as a technology. Real robots have been a long time coming, and sometimes it seems like robots have gone the way of the flying car and the hoverboard. However, practical, useful robots are on the horizon and robotic technologies are already in some of the devices we use in our daily lives. If these devices are going to succeed, we need to step back and think about the design implications of robots and intelligent machines working in our world. Not only does this include considering the physical and interaction design, but also the robot’s impact on our social ecosystem. In doing so, we can help focus the engineering problem space and bring advanced technologies out of the lab and into the world.

Please join IxDA Pittsburgh for a lecture on Designing Robots and Intelligent Machines by Matt Powers. Matt is interested in how robots and intelligent machines can solve real human problems and work with people to accomplish complex tasks. At Carnegie Mellon University's National Robotics Engineering Center, he applies theoretically inspired solutions to real-world robotics systems. He has over 10 years' experience in robotics, machine learning and computational intelligence, is a veteran of several high-profile DARPA research programs including the LAGR and LS3 programs, and served as control lead for Georgia Tech's DARPA Urban Challenge entry. Matt holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Georgia Tech.

Matt's talk includes a case study of a collaboration between CMU's National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC) and the local design firm DEZUDIO More information on the project can be found here: http://www.rec.ri.cmu.edu/about/news/12_05_ls3.php. NREC will host the event and DEZUDIO will provide refreshments.

Date: Thursday, January 24th
Time: 6:30 to 8pm
Location: NREC is located at Ten 40th Street Pittsburgh, PA 15201. http://www.rec.ri.cmu.edu/about/visitors/directions/