People of the Leg Laboratory

People working in the Leg Laboratory are legged locomotion enthusiasts of all stripes. They represent several disciplines, including electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, computer science, physics, biomechanics, and aero/astro.

PI -- Students -- Staff -- Grads -- Alumni

Principal Investigator

Gill Pratt is director of the Leg Laboratory. He is Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and a member of the Laboratory for Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

Graduate Students

Jerry Pratt studies the application of novel control techniques to legged robot locomotion. He and Peter Dilworth designed and built Spring Turkey for this work. Jerry finished designing and building Spring Flamingo in 1996 to replace Spring Turkey.
Robert Ringrose finished his PhD thesis, Running Without Active Control.
Chee-Meng Chew is working on his Mechanical Engineering Master's Degree on Rough terrain walking for 2D bipedal robot.
Jianjuen "John" Hu
David Robinson
George Homsy
Hugh Herr
Mike Wessler is currently working for Al Gore in Washington...
Joanna Bryson is interested in "cognitive" control architectures. She is currently working on wheeled robots in Edinburgh, Scotland, but will be returning to the Leg Lab in 1997 to finish her PhD.

Staff

Peter Dilworth is designing and building Trudy, a compact dinosaur-like robot.
Mike Wittig
Lisa Kozsdiy is the senior staff assistant. That is, she is the source of all order.

Matt Williamson is a PhD student working on the arms for Cog using a related approach to our recent walking robots. His MSc was advised by Gill Pratt, and he's co-authored some of our recent publications.

Alumni of the Leg Lab

Founder

Marc Raibert founded the Leg Laboratory in 1980 and directed it through 1995. The Lab was originated at CMU when Marc was Associate Professor in Computer Science and the Robotics Institute, and it moved to MIT in 1986 when Marc became Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and a member of the Artificial Intelligence Lab. He is now president of the company he co-founded, Boston Dynamics, Inc.

Researchers

Andrew Allen worked on his MEng with the Recti-Blob.
Ann Torres worked on hexapod simulation.
Abbe Cohen was a UROP working on feet and ankles for the 2-d bipeds.
Adam Crane did UROP work and his Senior Thesis in the Leg Lab, and helped out with several other projects. Adam is currently hacking computer creatures at Boston Dynamics, Inc.
Anthony J. Stentz
Ben Brown was the key mechanical designer for many of the Leg Lab robots. He is currently on the staff at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Charles Francois made the uniroo run at 2 m/s. He is currently working on his PhD at INRIA Sophia Antipolis, France.
Chris Wren did his Senior Thesis in the Leg Lab using physics-based simulation to model a tree blowing in the wind. After graduating and spending a year at BDI, Chris jointed the Media Lab as a graduate student.
Clay Thompson worked on passive dynamic running.
Daniell Hebert worked on the Zero Gravity machine.
Dave Barrett was a mechanical designer in the Leg Lab for three years. He is currently working on swimming robots in the MIT Department of Ocean Engineering.
David Bailey worked on Geekbot looking at smooth transfer of support for his M.S. Thesis. He is currently working at Sarcos Research Corporation.
Eugene Hastings
Francis C. Wimberly
Garth Zeglin built the uniroo and first made it hop. He is currently a graduate student in Matt Mason's lab at CMU.
Jeff Koechling did his PhD thesis studying the limits of robot running speed. As part of that work he programmed the planar biped to run fast: It set the world land speed record for legged robots by running over 13 mph. Jeff is currently Chief Scientist at Boston Dynamics, Inc.
Jeffrey Miller
Jessica Hodgins did her PhD thesis in the Leg Lab, working on foot placement for the planar biped. In the course of doing her thesis, she programmed the planar biped to run up and down a set of three steps. She also helped make the planar biped do front somersaults. After her PhD thesis she did a one-year postdoc in the lab working on animated characters. She is currently a professor in the College of Computing and a member of the Graphics Visualization and Usability Center at Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, where she runs their Animation Lab.
Jiping He
Karl Leeser completed a Master Thesis in the Leg Lab in 1996. He studyied the role of an articulated spine in quadruped running, including construction and experiments with the Planar Quadruped.
Karl Murphy did a Master's Thesis in the Lab when it was at CMU on coupled oscillation in bounding.
Kenneth Y. Goldberg
Lance Borvansky did a Master's Thesis simulating ostrich running.
Lee Campbell worked on "On The Run", and helped with a variety of projects. He is currently working at the MIT Media Lab on the taxonomy of classes of human motion using vision.
Martin Buehler was a postdoc in the lab, working on the quadruped and kangaroo robots. He is currently a professor at the Centre for Intelligent Machines , at McGill.
Michael Chepponis was the key software guy for many of the early Leg Lab robots. He is currently at California Wireless Inc. in Santa Clara.
Michael Saginaw worked on electronics and force control.
Mitchell London worked in the lab as an undergraduate at CMU. He is the founder of Connect Software in Redmond, Washington,
Robert Playter did his PhD Thesis in the Leg Lab in 1994. His thesis examined passive methods for stabilizing gymnastic maneuvers. He programmed the 3D-Biped robot to do somersaults. Rob now works at Boston Dynamics, Inc. He was a champion collegiate gymnast in 1985, with one hell of a high bar routine: Part I(696K MPEG) , Part II(986K MPEG).
Seth Holler worked on gymnastics simulations as a UROP.
Steven E. Shreve
Seshashayee S. Murthy
Takashi Aoki spent 18 months in the Leg Lab as a visitor from Fujitsu. He worked on the 3D biped and on the Lab's early animation projects.
Woojin Lee gave the monopod a flexible foot.
Zexiang Li was a postdoc in the lab, developing the theory of non-holonomic maneuvers.

The Leg Lab crew on the set of Rising Sun at 20th Century Fox. We ended up wearing white lab coats in the movie. (From left: Charles Francois, Lee Campbell, Rob Playter, Marc Raibert.)

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