The Realization of RObotic Systems laboratory at USC is a facility for graduate and undergraduate robotics research and education with an emphasis on studying motion of robotic systems for a variety of practical applications. Our research interests are in the area of planning for high degrees of freedom robotic systems, motion planning of unmanned surface vehicles (USVs), physics aware decision making for multi-robot systems, and self directed learning.

At the RROS, we have developed ADAMMS-UV (Agile Dexterous Autonomous Mobile Manipulation System-UV), a robot to perform disinfection tasks in public spaces such as offices, labs, schools, hotels, and dorms using UV light. The UV light mounted robots currently in markets have a UV column on a mobile base that goes around in rooms and stands still at certain places in the room so that surfaces that are exposed to the light are disinfected. ADAMMS-UV is a semi-autonomous mobile manipulator that uses a UV light wand mounted on a robotic arm to reach spaces that cannot be treated by such UV source mounted robots. In addition, it also has a large UV light source to disinfect large open spaces. It can use the gripper to open drawers, closets and manipulate objects to perform a detailed sanitization on hard to reach surfaces. UV light is a proven disinfectant. Coronavirus on a surface can be killed when exposed to UV light of appropriate intensity for a sufficient amount of time. ADAMMS-UV can hold a UV wand over a surface and move it the right speed. The robot can do this task consistently without making any mistake. This task will be physically taxing and risky for humans.

ADAMMS-UV was featured on Forbes.com, New York Times, IEEE Spectrum and The Institute Magazines, NBC, Mashable.com, Forrester Market Research, Daily Trojan, News Break, USC Viterbi School News and USC Annenberg Media