ABSTRACT
Prof. Napp will present research on reliably building support structures in cluttered and un-prepared environments using autonomous robots, both from a theoretical and practical perspective. The focus of the talk is modeling the physical world and the robot’s interactions with it, in such as way that allows the system to synthesize correct actions on the fly based on local sensor information. Ideally, autonomous construction systems should be able to use a wide variety of building materials, yet the ability to plan and act is closely tied to particular building materials. The talk will present some of the challenges of modeling different material types and how they affect a robot’s ability to formulate long-term plans.