GCER Talk on Becoming a Robotics Researcher

Ross Mead will present an account of his experiences over a decade in competition robotics; topics include design and implementation of robot hardware and software, communication and cooperation in an interdisciplinary team, sportsmanship, and lessons in success and failure.

Ross will also discuss long-standing challenges in traditional robotics and propose a curriculum for presenting these challenges in robotics competitions to prepare participants for a future in professional robotics.

Ross Mead has been an active participant in competition robotics since 2001. He graduated with his bachelor’s degree in computer science from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville in 2007. For his master’s thesis, he developed algorithms for control and interactions of large formations of robots —the hardware and software platforms used were the same as those used in the Botball program.

As the trend in robotic systems places them in social proximity of a human user, his interests have evolved to consider the complexities of how robots and humans will interact. His work on multi-robot coordination and communication provides insight into the social aspect of human-robot interaction. Ross is now a Ph.D. student in Computer Science at the University of Southern California, where he conducts research in socially assistive robotics.