Center for Robotics and Embedded Systems
The University Of Southern California Viterbi School Of Engineering has a group of interdisciplinary organized research units, or ORU, that centers its research on the science and technology of robotic systems using broad and far-reaching applications. This ORU is known as the Center for Robotics and Embedded Systems, or CRES.
Established in 2002, the lab continues to expand and serves as a source for strategic research areas at the university and expedites interdisciplinary interactions and collaborations through its robotics faculty and various team of affiliates, not just within the school but from external sources as well. The lab also aims to improve robotics education and integrate robotics into its curriculum, and envisions getting robotics out of their laboratory and incorporating it into our society.
To make the goal of this robotic center really achievable, CRES projects expand to the areas of service, humanoid, distributed, reconfigurable, space, and nano robotics and impact a spectrum of applications that includes assistance, training and rehabilitation, education, environmental monitoring and cleanup, emergency response, homeland security, and the entertainment industry.
Among various projects that have been worked on inside the robotic lab are the 20+ Pioneer mobile robots, pairs of large and small helicopters, Sony robot dogs, the Khepera robots, robomotes, scanning probe microscopes, Sarcos arms, full-body Sarcos humanoid, several soccer robots, several humanoid torso robots, PRIMUS Vision head, SARCOS Little Dog Quadruped robot, and the Beobots Chimp and SeeBee.
Helping the center achieve its goals are national laboratories, industry leaders, museums, and other institutions interested in robotics, including The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Intel Corporation, Evolution Robotics, Inc., iRobot Corporation., California Science Center, Kidspace Children’s Museum, John Deere, BEI Technologies, and the RoboDynamic Corporation, among others. These partners have allowed the center to expand its horizons further and make significant improvements in the world of robotics.
