Dr. James J. Kuffner, Jr.
James J. Kuffner, Jr., Ph.D. is
Assistant Professor, The Robotics Institute, School of Computer
Science,
Carnegie Mellon University. He is also
AIST Research Fellow, Digital Human Lab, National Institute of Advanced
Industrial Science & Technology (AIST), Tokyo, Japan.
James coauthored
Planning among movable obstacles with artificial
constraints,
Hierarchical motion planning for self-reconfigurable
modular robots,
Online environment reconstruction for biped navigation,
The experimental humanoid robot H7 : A research platform for
autonomous
behavior,
A unified approach to inverse kinematics and path planning for
redundant manipulators,
Footstep Planning for the Honda ASIMO Humanoid, and
Performance benchmarks for path planning in high dimensions.
Read the
full list of his publications!
His ongoing research projects are:
Graphical Simulation of Robotic Systems
The goal of this research is to create graphical simulation software
for complex robots such as humanoids. Simulated control, 3D
perception, motion planning for obstacle avoidance, and algorithms for
integrating vision and planning can then be developed and tested safely
and at low cost.
Motion Planning for Humanoids
He is interested in developing algorithms to automatically generate
motion for tasks such as navigation and footstep planning, object
grasping and manipulation, as well as tasks that require full-body
dynamically-stable motion planning.
Self-Collision Detection for Complex Articulated
Structures
This research aims at developing algorithms for detecting and
preventing self-collisions, which occur when one or more of the links
of an articulated robot or character model collides with another link.
Classical Path Planning
The goal of this research is to develop practical and efficient
algorithms for solving path planning problems in high dimensions.
Applications include robotics, assembly analysis, virtual prototyping,
pharmaceutical drug design, manufacturing, and computer
animation.
Autonomous Animated Characters
In this research, he explores techniques for creating animated
characters whose motion is generated automatically from high-level task
commands. Applications include virtual reality, video games, web
avatars, desktop movie studios, and other real-time virtual human
simulations.
James earned a B.S. (with distinction) in Computer Science from
Stanford University in 1993. He earned a M.S. in Computer Science
(Systems specialization) from Stanford University in 1995. He earned
his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University in 1999.
He was a
Postdoctoral Research Fellow at The University of Tokyo, Japan,
from 1999 to 2001.
Watch
Animation Theatre piece on Behavior Planning.
Watch
James Kuffner on Motion Planning for Humanoid Robots.