The Department of Mechanical, Materials, and Aerospace Engineering presents their spring 2025 seminar series featuring guest speaker Abriana Stewart-Height, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who will present: “People Helping Robots, so Robots Can Help People.” This seminar is open to the public and will take place on Wednesday, March 5, 2025, from 12:45–1:45 p.m. in room 104 of the Rettaliata Engineering Center (auditorium).

Abstract

As climate change leads to more extreme weather, the environment is becoming increasingly dangerous for people to conduct critical field operations such as fire prevention, ocean exploration, environmental monitoring, and disaster response. Autonomous robots that operate in extreme environments—habitats characterized by harsh environmental conditions (e.g., temperature, pressure, terrain)—would greatly reduce injuries and deaths of human workers in these conditions. Mobile robots have made great strides toward stable locomotion and high-level sensing in unknown dynamic environments. Yet, these machines are not indestructible and increasing terrain complexity almost guarantees failure will occur. Using insights from rehabilitation and biology, I developed a unique approach to the problem of fault detection and recovery in legged systems. Exploration of extreme environments is a demanding process that requires more skill and knowledge than any singular machine can have. Shared autonomy holds great promise for pivotal field work by distributing tasks between humans and machines to accomplish a task. More specifically, my work examines uncertainty in object detection and autonomous navigation for the purpose of prompting robots to ask for help from other robots or humans. In this talk, I will first present my prior research in damaged legged systems and design adaptations for safer mobility. Followed by my current research interests in long-term autonomy in extreme environments.

Biography

Abriana Stewart-Height is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She is a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), which is co-advised by John Leonard (lead of the Marine Robotics Group) and Julie Shah (lead of the Interactive Robotics Group). She graduated from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of Maryland and completed her Ph.D. in electrical and systems engineering at University of Pennsylvania. Her research investigates fundamental challenges for making mobile robots more resilient and efficient in extremely harsh environments, with a human-(multi) robot collaborative approach. She explores the application of multi-robot teams to critical field operations (e.g., forestry, fire suppression, disaster response) that protect human lives and restore the environment.