This is a past event.

MAE Graduate Seminar Speaker Series

proudly presents

Geordan Gutow, PhD

Associate Professor

MAE, MTU

Abstract

A large part of what an engineer does is figure out how to turn desires stated in words into problems expressed as math. Often, the resulting math problem is a con- strained optimization problem, in which the engineer seeks to maximize or minimize a quantity (like profit or mass), while respecting constraints on the design of the engineered solution. This talk describes a number of seemingly disparate problems of interest to roboticists, ranging from control to state estimation and motion planning, and describes how they can be tackled as optimization problems using ideas from differential geometry, probability, and operations research. We show how optimization often serves as the unifying language to connect the interdisciplinary challenges inherent to robotics.

Bio

Dr. Gutow completed his PhD in 2022 at the Georgia Institute of Technology under Professor Jonathan Rogers, and his Bachelor’s degree in 2018 at Johns Hopkins University. His research focuses on developing robotics algorithms that can reason about the properties and capabilities of the embodiments on which they operate. Such algorithms are made tractable by finding ways to exploit structure in the underlying mathematics, particularly hybrid discrete-continuous formulations, upper and lower bounds, and convexity. Dr. Gutow’s work has received Best Paper nominations at DARS and ICRA, an Intelligence Community Postdoctoral Fellow-ship, an NSF GRFP Honorable Mention, and a Georgia Institute of Technology Presidential Fellowship.

Invited by: Radheshyam Tewari