Nancy Pollard Nancy Pollard| Nancy Pollard is a
Professor in the Robotics
Institute and the Computer
Science Department at Carnegie Mellon
University, Director of the Dexterous Manipulation and Soft Robotics Lab and Founder of FuturHand Robotics, Inc. She received her PhD in Electrical Engineering and
Computer Science from the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in
1994, where she performed research on grasp
planning for articulated robot hands. Before joining CMU, Nancy
was an Assistant Professor and part of the Computer
Graphics Group at Brown
University. Her primary research objective is to understand dexterity and to create genuinely dexterous
robots.
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Dexterous Manipulation and Soft Robotics LabFuturHand Robotics, Inc.CMU Graphics Lab |
Publications |
Research / ProjectsAt the Dexterous Manipulation and Soft Robotics lab, we study how hands -- robotic, animated, and human -- grasp, manipulate, and make sense of the physical world. Our research spans the full depth of dexterous manipulation: from the geometry of contact and the biomechanics of the human hand, to algorithms for grasp planning, motion retargeting across radically different hand morphologies, and robot systems that recover gracefully from uncertainty. Rather than treating manipulation as a solved problem of final-position control, we focus on the process -- the real-time sensing, adjustment, and physical intelligence that makes skilled handling possible. Our work bridges fundamental theory and working hardware, with results demonstrated on physical robot platforms and validated in collaboration with fields ranging from computer animation to biomechanics. Underlying everything is a long-term conviction: that giving robots genuinely human-like dexterity requires understanding what human dexterity actually is. Please see my publications page for papers and web sites for specific projects.
Contact Information
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