Figueroa Robotics Lab

Welcome to the Figueroa (Human-Centered) Robotics Lab!

Our group develops the physical and perceptual adaptive intelligence needed for robots to learn from and interact with humans while being able to adapt to a wide-range of capabilities and needs; from able-bodied humans that seek to teach robots to accomplish cumbersome dexterous manipulation tasks in factories and at home to mobility-impaired humans that require physical assistance in simple activities of daily living, from reaching, lifting and carrying objects to targeted physical therapy exercises and rehabilitation. In particular, we develop tightly coupled learning, control and robust estimation algorithms to achieve fluid human-robot collaborative autonomy with safety, efficiency and robustness guarantees. This involves research at the intersection of machine learning, control theory, perception, biomechanics and psychology - combined through a physical human-robot interaction perspective.

selected publications

PhysRev

Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete?

A. Einstein^*†, B. Podolsky^*, and N. Rosen^*

Phys. Rev., New Jersey. More Information can be found here , May 1935

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In a complete theory there is an element corresponding to each element of reality. A sufficient condition for the reality of a physical quantity is the possibility of predicting it with certainty, without disturbing the system. In quantum mechanics in the case of two physical quantities described by non-commuting operators, the knowledge of one precludes the knowledge of the other. Then either (1) the description of reality given by the wave function in quantum mechanics is not complete or (2) these two quantities cannot have simultaneous reality. Consideration of the problem of making predictions concerning a system on the basis of measurements made on another system that had previously interacted with it leads to the result that if (1) is false then (2) is also false. One is thus led to conclude that the description of reality as given by a wave function is not complete.