Howie Choset is a Professor of Robotics at Carnegie Mellon
University. Motivated by applications in confined spaces, Choset has created
a comprehensive program in snake robots, which has led to basic
research in mechanism design, path planning, motion planning, and
estimation. These research topics are important because once the robot
is built (design), it must decide where to go (path planning),
determine how to get there (motion planning), and use feedback to
close the loop (estimation). By pursuing the fundamentals, this research
program has made contributions to coverage tasks, dynamic climbing, and
mapping large spaces. Already, Choset has directly applied this
body of work to challenging and strategically significant problems in
diverse areas such as surgery, manufacturing, infrastructure
inspection, and search and rescue. Choset directs the Undergraduate
Robotics Minor at Carnegie Mellon and teaches an overview course on
Robotics which uses series of custom developed Lego Labs to complement
the course work.
Professor Choset's students have won best paper awards at the RIA in
1999 and ICRA in 2003; his group's work has been nominated for best papers
at ICRA in 1997, IROS in 2003 and 2007, and CLAWAR in 2012 (best biorobotics
paper, best student paper); won best paper at IEEE Bio Rob in
2006; won best video at ICRA 2011; and was nominated for best video
in ICRA 2012. In 2002 the MIT Technology
Review elected Choset as one of its top 100 innovators in the world
under 35. In 2005, MIT Press published a textbook, lead authored by
Choset, entitled "Principles of Robot Motion." Recently, Choset
co-founded a company called Medrobotics (formerly Cardiorobotics) which makes a small
surgical snake robot for minimally invasive surgery.