Research

NSTGRO

Since August 2020, I have been funded as a NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Opportunity (NSTGRO) student researcher. This funding gives me the opportunity to work alongside the NASA Johnson Space Center Valkyrie and Dexterous Robotics Teams. I also get to spend 10 weeks onsite applying my research to ongoing projects. Sincere thank you to my grant research collaborators, Joshua Mehling and Shaun Azimi. I briefly describe my NSTGRO research below. Please contact me for more information.

Year 1 (August 2020 - August 2021)

I implemented a whole-body inverse kinematics (IK) solver as well as several composable potential field controllers for multi-objective control on the Valkyrie robot.

Year 2 (August 2021 - August 2022)

I ran experiments on Valkyrie to demonstrate the power of composable semantic frames (CSFs) for commanding robots to perform tasks through restricted language. CSFs ground commands in robot control primitives and high-level commands can be composed from lower-level commands. This means that high-level commands can be grounded in robot action while abstracting the execution details from users. We are submitting this work to ICRA 2023.

I also designed a user study to compare the cognitive load experienced when performing shared autonomy tasks in keyboard-and-mouse desktop control interface RViz and a virtual reality (VR) interface. The goal of this user study is to determine the strengths of two interfaces for shared autonomy tasks. The data collected will also be used to perform Fitts' law inspired analyses and determine what human factors affect task performance in 3D object manipulation tasks. We are submitting a workshop paper on our user study design to the Extended Reality (XR) and Robotics Workshop at IROS 2022.

Year 3 (August 2022 - August 2023)

I will be recruiting participants for our designed RViz/VR user study. Details coming soon.

Pathways Intern

Since November 2021, I have been a NASA Pathways Intern. This internship gives me the opportunity to spend at least two semesters working onsite as a civil servant. In conjunction with my role as a NSTGRO research student, I have worked with the NASA JSC Valkyrie and Dexterous Robotics Teams. Sincere thank you to my Pathways mentors, Steven Jens Jorgensen and Shaun Azimi. I briefly describe my Pathways tours below. Please contact me for more information.

Winter 2022 Tour

Under the mentorship of Steven Jens Jorgensen, I was tasked with incorporating the software backend for interactive affordance template (AT) registration and stance generation into the Valkyrie virtual reality (VR) interface. This work involved writing a number of ROS nodes that served as the middle-ground between the VR interface in Unity and the algorithm implementation in Python. I considered user experience and UI design to determine how we expect robot operators would interact with these tools in VR. We ended up with a human-in-the-loop object manipulation pipeline that allowed operators to register an object, generate stances for reaching that object, and then grab the object through teleoperation. My mentor recognized me for my work through a NASA JSC ER Individual Excellence Award.

Spring/Summer 2023 Tour

Details coming soon.