27 September 2021
12:00 - 13:00 PM
Abstract
The best current robots still fall short of the versatility, efficiency, stability, and robustness to uncertainty achieved by the human sensorimotor control system. One way to understand how such remarkable movement control performance is achieved by humans is to build computational models that predict how humans perform movement tasks and learn new tasks. In addition to being an important scientific goal, such models will help design better autonomous and robot-aided neuromotor rehabilitation. My research uses classical optimal control-based modeling of movement dynamics, as well as recent advances in machine learning and computer vision to develop predictive models of real-world movement. In the first part of this talk, I will show how different optimality principles predict transient and steady-state behavior: how we used nonlinear system identification to obtain data-derived locomotor controllers, and how local reinforcement learning with stability-energy interactions explain locomotor adaptation to novel environments. In the second part of the talk, I will discuss my research on video data-driven autonomous neuromotor disorder diagnosis, and ongoing work on artificial intelligence-based automated action feedback systems using computer vision and machine learning.
Biography
Dr. Nidhi Seethapathi will be starting as an Assistant professor in Brain and Cognitive Science, with a shared appointment in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, at MIT in January 2022. Currently, she is a postdoctoral researcher in Bioengineering, and Neuroscience at University of Pennsylvania, where she works with Prof. Konrad Kording. Her postdoctoral work involves using data-driven techniques for modeling human movement and for autonomous neuromotor rehabilitation. She obtained her PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the Ohio State University in 2018. During her PhD, she worked with Manoj Srinivasan building predictive models of the energetics and stability of human locomotion. She received the prestigious Schlumberger Foundation Faculty for the Future Award during her doctoral studies. Nidhi received a Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute in Mumbai, India.
Please click the link below to join the webinar:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/84387526545?pwd=V3NCM3pOMFErM09wY0JjcEtkamt5Zz09
Passcode: 761915
