Self-Reflected: Bringing the Conscious Brain to Life
If you’re lucky enough to wander into the Your Brain exhibit at The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, you’re in for a mesmerizing treat — a portrait of the brain, ironically, as it views a work of art. The stunning display, appropriately called Self Reflected, depicts a thin slice of the human brain scaled up by a factor […]
GRASP’s VIO-Swarm Flies on its Own
GRASP researchers Giuseppe Loianno, Aaron Weinstein and Adam Cho invited Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Tom Avril and photographer Tim Tai to check out their latest quadrotors. Dubbed VIO-Swarm, these flying robots use stereoscopic vision instead of GPS or external cameras to figure out where they are and where they’re going, opening up the possibility of using […]
Penn Engineers Receive $6.1 Million Grant from Office of Naval Research to Reduce Software Complexity
The larger a fortress, the more spots there are for attackers to sneak in. One might think of software in a similar way: making software more complicated can also make it more vulnerable. “The trend of increasing software complexity has no end in sight,” says Mayur Naik, Associate Professor of Computer and Information Science (CIS). […]
Inventing the Interconnected Future
Anesthesiologists carefully monitor an infant during surgery to assure she receives a steady flow of oxygen. Yet should anything go awry, by the time the pulse oximeter on her finger indicates a falling oxygen level, she may already be in danger. To develop a more protective earlier warning system, engineers with Penn Research in Embedded […]
Rakesh Vohra: Can we make our financial systems more resilient?
One of the major research areas in the Warren Center for Network and Data Science is resilience. Whether it’s a trader working the stock market, a doctor combating infections in a hospital, or a quadrotor flying in a swarm, the more connections there are between agents in a system, the more likely it is that […]
IEEE Spectrum: ‘Microdrones That Cooperate to Transport Objects Could Be Future of Warehouse Automation’
Following up on an earlier story about the GRASP lab’s new swarming technology that uses only onboard cameras and sensors, IEEE Spectrum’s Evan Ackerman checks back in with GRASP research scientist Giuseppe Loianno to talk about another advance.
IEEE Spectrum: ‘This Autonomous Quadrotor Swarm Doesn’t Need GPS’
The GRASP Lab’s flying robots do some amazing things under the invisible glow of PERCH’s motion-tracking camera system, but to have an impact in the real world, they will need to figure out where they’re going without that kind of eye-in-the-sky. Enter VIO-Swarm, the latest set of collaborative quadrotors from the lab, which fly together […]
Play Hard, Work Harder: Taking it to the Edge on the Court and in the Classroom
From mid-August to late November, even as they face down the inevitable intellectual challenges of a new academic year, the women of Penn Volleyball practice their sport three hours a day, four days a week. Add to this their all-important Division I competitions, with many players spending additional hours on the road traveling to games […]
Aaswath Raman is Getting Free Cooling Straight from the Sky
Aaswath Raman is joining the Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering next month. He’s also the co-founder and chief scientific officer of SkyCool Systems. There, his background in optics and materials science have allowed him take an ancient idea and apply it to a pressing, modern-day problem.
Mobility21 is Making Self-Driving Cars Safer with Grand Theft Auto
Mobility21 is a new research partnership, funded by a five-year, $14 million grant from the Department of Transportation, that tackles all manners of transportation problems through the use of new information and sensing technologies.