Grant Sherrick

Computer Science Department
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Office: LGRC 307, (413) 577-0618
sherrick(at)cs.umass.edu

Currently, I'm a Ph.D. student in the Department of Computer Science at UMass - Amherst, where I work with Professor Rod Grupen in the Laboratory for Perceptual Robotics.

I am interested in developing robots with a common-sense understanding of their surroundings. With this goal in mind, I am developing a method by which robots can remember the effects that their actions have had on the dynamic properties of objects in their environments. Through remembering these relationships between the robot's actions and the properties of other objects, the robot is then able to exploit past experiences to predict the effects of actions in the same or similar contexts. Further, I believe that by modeling objects in a functional manner, in terms of the actions that a robot can perform with them and on them, these disparate dynamical systems(objects and robots) can be brought into a common representation in which a robot can reason about tasks more easily.


Education

  • M.S., Computer Science, University of Massachusetts - Amherst, Amherst, MA, May 2011
  • B.S., Computer Engineering and Applied Mathematics, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, May 2008

Research Projects

  • Autonomous Assembly
  • Perception and control for grasping, manipulation, and autonomous assembly
  • Knowledge representations for robotic systems
  • State estimation of complex robot-object dynamical systems

Publications

  • Bayesian Inference for Task-driven Action Selection, S. Sen, G. Sherrick, D. Ruiken and R. Grupen, 11th IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots, Bled, Slovenia, October 2011.
  • Hierarchical Skills and Skill-based Representation, S. Sen, G. Sherrick, D. Ruiken and R. Grupen, Workshop on Lifelong Learning from Sensorimotor Experience, Conference on Artitficial Intelligence (AAAI), San Francisco, CA, August, 2011
  • Schema Structured Bayesian Inference for Manipulation and Grasping, G. Sherrick, S. Sen, D. Ruiken and R. Grupen, New England Manipulation Symposium(NEMS). Yale University, May, 2011