U of M licenses technology to monitor crop nitrogen to ag-tech firm Sentera
Feb. 27, 2018
Sentera, a Minneapolis-based supplier of technology solutions to the agriculture industry, has signed an agreement to bring University of Minnesota-developed corn nitrogen deficiency technology to the market...
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$10M in private support will fund new robotics labs
June 21, 2017
Work will begin this winter on renovating the first two floors of Shepherd Laboratories building for robotics research, thanks to $10M in private support.
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Lab Featured in RCJudge
May 11, 2017
Dr. Nikolaos Papanikolopoulos, is the director of the Center for Distributed Robotics in Minnesota. He along with several others work on specialized robots which can adapt to their surroundings
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SUAV:Q featured in New Scientist
February 24, 2017
A shape-shifting drone takes off like a helicopter and transforms into a plane in mid-air to fly all day on solar power. The drone is designed to provide affordable aerial surveys for farmers, so they can see where to irrigate and use fertiliser and herbicide only where needed.
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Lab Director Awarded McKnight Professorship
August 22, 2016
Department of Computer Science and Engineering Professor Nikolaos Papanikolopoulos has been awarded the prestigious McKnight Presidential Professorship by University President Eric Kaler. The professorship is among the highest honors for faculty at the University.
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The Adelopod is a small two-armed tumbling robot developed by the University of Minnesota Center for Distributed Robotics. Tumbling is achieved through the use of two rigid arms that rotate about its body. Another degree of freedom is achieved by each arm by adjusting the plane in which that arm rotates.
Tumbling is a largely unexplored method of locomotion where the robot controls its orientation in order to achieve consecutive forward falls through its environment, thus producing net displacement. It is desirable for robotic locomotion for a number of reasons including inherent stability, high mobility, and low hardware complexity.
Brett Hemes and Nikolaos Papanikolopoulos "Frictional step climbing analysis of tumbling locomotion" IEEE Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2012
Brett Hemes, Dario Canelon, Justin Dancs and Nikolaos Papanikolopoulos "Robotic Tumbling Locomotion" IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2011
Brett Hemes and Nikolaos Papanikolopoulos "A New Modular Schema for the Control of Tumbling Robots" IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) 2009
Brett Hemes, Nikolaos Papanikolopoulos, Barry O'Brien "The Adelopod Tumbling Robot" IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2009
Brett Hemes, Duc Fehr, Nikolaos Papanikolopoulos "Motion Primitives for a Tumbling Robot" IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) 2008