Robotic grasping earned scientific award

For the 4th time the Swedish robotics initiative Robotdalen has announced the winner of our international research competition the Robotdalen Scientific Award, with a prize sum of 20.000 €. The winner of the Robotdalen Scientific Award 2010 is Matei Theodor Ciocarlie from Columbia University, USA, for his thesis on robotic grasping.

Ciocarlies research interests are robotic perception and action in unstructured environments, 3D-modelling and computer simulators for physical systems. He has received several awards for his work. Ciocarlie participated in the Robotdalen Scientific Award competition with his PhD-thesis Low-Dimensional Robotic Grasping: Eigengrasp Subspaces and Optimized Underactuation. The thesis aims at reducing the complexity associated with robotic grasping without compromising versatility. The jury’s statement was:

The thesis presents fundamental advances in robot hand grasp representation studied in the contexts of practical applications that strain the field's envelopes of understanding and performance. Ciocarlie first introduces simple low-dimensional hand posture subspaces that are nevertheless adequate to represent complex grasps. The work is illustrated and validated with an insightful blend of theoretical exposition and practical implementation. The jury was particularly impressed by the depth and breadth of the contributions, theoretical and practical, applicable to robot and prosthetic human hands, and general enough to encompass natural-world as well as laboratory and factory applications.

Honorary mentions for Spain and Scandinavia

Three finalists attended the prize ceremony and the other two finalists received 1000 € each as well as honorary mentions. They are:

• Uwe Mettin from NTNU (Norwegian University of Science and Technology) in Trondheim, Norway/Umeå University in Sweden, who participated with his thesis Principles for Planning and Analyzing Motions of Underactuated Mechanical Systems and Redundant Manipulators.

• Javier Civera from University of Zaragoza in Spain who participated with his PhD-Thesis Real-Time EKF-Based Structure from Motion.

The jury consists of researchers from USA, Canada, Belgium and Sweden.

Later on in September an interview with the winner will be published along with photos from the award ceremony and of the finalists and jury.