Robots Come to Hunter College, Courtesy of Professors Stamos, Epstein and Hajiliadis

Professors Ioannis Stamos (Computer Science), Susan Epstein (Computer Science), and Olympia Hajiliadis (Mathematics & Statistics) recently welcomed Hunter's first research robots to campus, thanks to a Major Research Instrumentation grant from the National Science Foundation. Equipped with laser scanners, cameras and sound, their two robots now provide a real-world testing ground for the team's extensive prior work on cognitively-based navigation, 3-D range scan processing, and real-time object identification. Together with their students, their research aims both to increase the image-understanding capabilities of mobile robots, and to create a mobile intelligence that can accompany people, assist them, and explain its reasoning.