The Autonomous Robots Lab celebrates its first year and invites students and faculty to a day full of lab tours, discussions, presentations and live demonstrations of robotic technology Friday, March 31, 2017.

"Come to learn about the state of the art in robotics, identify research opportunities and discuss how robotics can change our societies," Kostas Alexis, computer science and engineering assistant professor and director of the robotics lab, said.  

The day begins at the Applied Research Facility with tours of the two labs, ARF 116 and 118, at 9 a.m., followed by presentations in ARF 104 that run from 10 a.m. to noon. The presentations are about multi-modal mapping, introduction to LiDAR ranging, virtual reality technologies and NAASIC - the University's autonomous systems research and innovation center.  

A live demonstration, in the Applied Research Facility flight arena from noon to 1:30 p.m. features aerial robotic exploration where the robots will seek and find objects. At 2 p.m., the main event begins at the Mathewson-IGT Knowledge Center auditorium with a welcome by Ana de Bettencourt Dias, associate vice-president for research and a professor of chemistry, then Alexis will give a history and specifics of the great strides made in the first year of the lab as well as opportunities for students in research and education in robotics.  

Invited for this talk, Sebastian Scherer from Carnegie Mellon University will provide an overview of the robotics research activities taking place at the Robotics Institute, one of the top robotics groups in the world.   

The Robotics Day continues with presentations at the Applied Research Facility on GPU Programming for Robots by Tyler Sorey and Autonomous Aerial Robots Navigation by lab team member Christos Papachristos. Students attending the event will be eligible to receive seminar credits.   

"We have a growing community of robotics research," Alexis said. "We want students to learn all they can about the programs and how they can become a part of that community. This Robotics Day is an ideal time to do that."   

Alexis wrote a blog post about the event recently, which can be found at http://www.unr.edu/nevada-today/blogs/2017/autonomous-robots-lab.   

For more information or questions, visit http://www.autonomousrobotslab.com/robotics-days.html, email autonomous.robots.lab@gmail.com or kalexis@unr.edu.