Matthew T. Mason
Professor Emeritus, Robotics and Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University
Chief Scientist, Berkshire Grey

Administrative assistant:

Jean Harpley
(412) 268-3802
jean@cs.cmu.edu

Research

I work on manipulation, mainly robotic manipulation, but I have mostly retired from Carnegie Mellon.

Here are some documents and videos related to manipulation:

• 14 second video clip. Child J, host. 1963. The potato show. The French Chef, season 1, episode 22, aired June 22.
• FRIDA assembling E-Stop (Lund University)
• Vicki the chimpanzee videos:
  v14_4 v15_3 v1_4 v26_4 v3_3 v4_3 v5_4 v7_4 v8_4 v9_3
• Sony SMART cell and APOS parts orienting system smartAssyS smartOrientWhiteS
• Cup stacking
• Aibo Pedipulation video (courtesy of Ethan Tira-Thompson)
• Some ape and monkey stuff I've collected:
  
  1. Termite fishing
  2. Notes on chimp vs human genome. Locomotion implications of Lucy's butt. Marzke interview touching on chimp throwing and Lucy throwing.
  3. Humans vs baboons I.
  4. Humans vs baboons II.
  5. Monkeys vs humans I.
  6. Monkeys vs humans II.

Recent work. I haven't maintained this website for several years. I hope to rectify that soon. Below is some older stuff.

Simple Hands. My primary focus for five years or so was simple hands. I think simple hands are better than complex anthropomorphic hands, both for research purposes and for near-term practical use. The main reason is that the dexterity of a hand is mostly about the brain, not the hand. Our approach mixes a strong dose of machine learning into the traditional brew of AI, control and mechanical design. Here's a good look at some of our most recent stuff:

If you're curious, there are publications here. Probably the first one to read is the 2012 IJRR paper Autonomous Manipulation with a General-Purpose Simple Hand. Also see related papers from IJRR 2014 and ICRA 2014. The two papers published in ICRA 2013 and RSS 2011 each won best student paper awards. The project began with NSF funding, continued with funds from the Army Research Office and ABB, and just recently won another NSF award. This is a collaboration with MIT Professor Alberto Rodriguez and CMU Professors Mike Erdmann and Sidd Srinivasa.

Older projects. For older projects, check out the Manipulation Lab music video, with a funky sound track by Eldridge Gravy and the Court Supreme:

or the Mobipulator video:

Teaching

I teach 16-741 Mechanics of Manipulation annually in the Fall term. The course web page is here.

I used to teach 15-384, an undergraduate class on manipulator kinematics, control and programming. We had some fun course projects like robots throwing darts, or bowling.

I also used to teach the robotics section of Andrew's Leap, a summer program for high school students. One time we built a robot that dangled a dollar on a string from a balcony to lure humans, then dropped water balloons on them. That was 1996. Here's the video.