The Dartmouth Math Society will be meeting tomorrow (Monday) in Kemeny 105.

There will be PIZZA served at 6:30 PM followed by an interesting talk by Prof. Devin Balkcom of the Computer Science department. 

*Robots and geometry: robot geodesics, pushing string, and grasping cloth*

Theory and practice are tightly coupled in robotics. New practical robot designs force examination of underlying geometry, and new theoretical results lead to more creative and effective mechanisms and algorithms. Even if we could build a ten-fingered robot with touch sensitive skin everywhere and binocular vision, we would not know how to program it to fold laundry or tie knots. In this talk, I will present a few fundamental geometric problems in robotics. By the end of the talk, you will be able to construct fastest paths for rigid bodies in the plane, build a fingerless and sensorless robot to tie knots, and grasp polygonal cloth with the minimum number of fingers.


We hope to see you there!