GRASP NEWS: Volume 7, Number 1

Since its beginning in 1983, the GRASP News has chronicled the research efforts of the Grasp Laboratory. This edition, which covers developments for the year 1990, follows the format of previous editions. The Feature Article, however, in a departure from tradition does not highlight a particular research project. Helen Anderson presents a summary of the Laboratory research projects and activities in her article Research at the GRASP Laboratory. The research abstracts summarize the progress of students, postdoctoral fellows, visiting researchers, and faculty. The abstracts are classified into three different areas Vision Research, Robotics Research, and Distributed Real-Time Systems Research. There is also a section on laboratory Software and Hardware Developments. This edition comprises 40 articles from 45 contributors, which makes it the largest GRASP News ever! We hope you enjoy this edition. We would also like to take this opportunity to mention some of our colleagues who have graduated since the last GRASP News was published. Dr. Greg Long is a Post-Doctoral Fellow with the Department of Mechanical Engineering at University of California, Irvine. Dr. Nathan Ulrich is now with the Deep Submergence Laboratory, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Dr. Siu-Leong Iu is with Panasonic, Inc. Dr. Yehong Zhang now works with Merck Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Division. Dr. Greg Hager, who returned to the GRASP Lab from a Fullbright Fellowship in Germany in January 1990, joined Yale University this Spring as an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department. George Pfreundschuh, who graduated with an M.S.E. last summer, is with the AT&T Technical Staff in New Jersey. Howie Choset graduated with a B.S. last year and is pursuing a Ph.D. at Caltech. Last, but not least, the CCD retina project is on hold because Greg Kreider, who is a Marine Reserve, was called up to serve in the war in the Persian Gulf. We wish him well. Comments University of Pennsylvania Department of Computer and Information Science Technical Report No. MSCIS-91-20. This technical report is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/cis_reports/760 e p Laboratory G R A S P A ~ W S b Volume 7, Number 1 Spring 199 1 "Active Multiple Agents" A Report of the General Robotics and Active Sensory Perception Laboratory General Robotics and Active Sensory Perception (GRASP) Laboratory University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA 19104-6228 GRASP News' is published by the Department of Computer and Information Science, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-6389. This edition of the GRASP News was edited by Sang Lee, Ale8 Leonardis, and Pramath Raj Sinha. Cover sketch of "Active Multiple Agents" by John Bradley. Cover layout was designed by Pramath Raj Sinha using Macintosh software. Grasp Laboratory research reported in this document was supported by DARPA Grant N0014-88-K-0630 (administered through ONR), AFOSR Grants 88-0244, AFOSR 88-0296; Army/DAAL 03-89-C-0031PRI; NSF Grants CISEICDA 88-22719, IRI 89-06770, IRI8917721, BCS-89-01352; and Du Pont Corporation. GRASP News was typeset using Donald Knuth's l ' @ typesetting system and Leslie Lamport's BTEX macro package running under SunOS Release 4.1. Printing was done on an Apple Laserwriter. Additional copies of GRASP News can be ordered from the Department of Computer and Information Science as Technical Report MS-CIS-91-20, GRASP LAB 256. Postal Address : 3401 Walnut Street # 301C, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6228 Telephone : (215) 898-0371 Telefax : (215) 573-2048 Email : [email protected] '@University of Pennsylvania MCMXCI.