Summary
The Mason Autonomy and Robotics Center (MARC) conducts research and provides unique educational opportunities to address local and global needs in autonomy, embedded artificial intelligence (AI), and robotics. Our interdisciplinary activities take a holistic approach to growing technological demands by combining computer science, electrical and mechanical engineering, systems engineering, psychology, philosophy, and policy education and research.
All new facility coming in 2023
MARC will open its new facility in 2023 on the Fairfax Campus in Research Hall. The area will include a high-bay space for testing drones and other robots, faculty offices, as well as meeting and collaborative spaces for maximum contact with students and faculty.
Missy Cummings is the Director of MARC.
Source: Website
OnAir Post: MARC – Mason Autonomy and Robotics Center
About
Main capability areas
The team of faculty that make up the robotics and autonomous systems group is focusing on four areas of research: responsible robotics, embodied intelligence, real-world systems, and collaborative robotics. They are asking questions and finding solutions to problems in the future of robotic activity and intelligence in how it connects with human behavior.
Source: Website
Responsible Robotics
How will robots with increasing capabilities be trusted? Should they be?
Embodied Intelligence
How can we improve the capabilities of robot systems?
Real-world Systems
Collaborative Robotics
The whole ecosystem of robots and/or humans should be more (or even different) than the sum of the parts
- human-machine teaming
- multi-robot teaming
- networked systems
- swarming
Contact
Email: School
Web Links
Research
Creations Limited Only by Imagination
At Mason, our robotics researchers are generating technology that approaches the imagination and vision of H.G. Wells, George Lucas, and even Douglas Adams. Our robots are learning. Our robots are seeing. Our robots are doing. Our robots are saving the day
Robotics Labs
Micro/Nano Mechanics and Photonics with Nanomaterials Laboratory
Researchers in this lab conduct fundamental research on micro/nanoscale mechanics and photonics with nanomaterials for innovations in nanobiosensors. This team explores broad fields including nanophotonics, optofluidic, optoelectronics, and plasmonics to create innovations in advanced materials and manufacturing for high-performance, low-cost sensor devices. The research aims to develop advanced, high-performance materials with new functionalities in mechanical, optical, and electrical properties. Learn More
The Vessel Dynamics Laboratory
This lab capitalizes on George Mason University’s unique waterfront facility at the Potomac Science Center. The research team focuses on computational and experimental studies to better understand the dynamics and hydrodynamics of manned and unmanned vessels. Read about the lab.
Autonomous Robotics Laboratory
The Autonomous Robotics Laboratory is a collective effort among faculty in the Department of Computer Science. The research includes a variety of topics involving robotics, computer vision, and networks. They cover areas such as multi-robotics and swarm robotics, multiagent learning and stochastic optimization, swarm simulation, distributed sensor networks and mobile sensor networks, computer vision, tracking, situated vision, and multi-robot vision. Learn more.
Computer Vision and Robotics Laboratory
Computer Vision and Robotics Laboratory is located on the SciTech Campus. The researchers affiliated with this lab explore topics such as human-computer interaction, pattern recognition and neural networks, mobile robotics and how to build models from video and photos.
Departments Active in Robotics and Autonomous Systems Research
Our research in robotics and autonomous systems exists because of the collaborative effort of the nine departments working together to find solutions to problems and create new technologies in the field.
- Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering
- Systems Engineering and Operations Research
- Computer Science
- Mechanical Engineering
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- C4I
- Cyber Security Engineering
- Statistics
- Joint collaboration between mechanical, computer science, and electrical and computer engineering
Faculty
Meet our faculty who build and control robots that move through land, water, and air to help people spot dangerous situations, evaluate structures, and help solve real-world problems.
Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering
Research Interests: Additive Manufacturing, advanced materials, failure mechanics
Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering
Research Interests: Additive Manufacturing, advanced materials, failure mechanics
Professor, Department of Systems Engineering and Operations Research
Research Interests: Information fusion, Bayesian networks, distributed sensor networks, decision making under uncertainty, explainable AI
Associate Professor and Acting Chair, Department of Cyber Security Engineering
Research Interests: Defense systems, ontologies and information fusion, probabilistic reasoning
Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering
Research Interests: Materials Science, Carbon Nanomaterials, Energy, Water, Biomedical
Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science
Research Interests: Haptics, computer vision, HRI
Associate Professor, Sid and Reva Dewberry Department of Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering, College of Engineering and Computing
Research Interests: Underwater robotics, coastal mapping and resilience, water resources engineering, water-related extreme weather hazards (impact on infrastructure and societies), and nature-based climate adaptation strategies
Research Associate Professor, C4I Center, College of Engineering and Computing
Michael Hieb is a research Associate Professor in the C4I center at George Mason University.
Assistant Professor, Sid and Reva Dewberry Department of Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering, College of Engineering and Computing
Research Interests: Integration of advanced data analytics, complex system simulation in construction management and infrastructure systems.
Assistant Professor, Affiliate faculty in Bioengineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering
Research Interests: Sensors, micro/nano mechanics
Assistant Professor, Department of Statistics
Research Interests: Robust methods for high-dimensional problems, computational statistics, applications in the life sciences.
Professor, Associate Chair, Department of Computer Science
Research Interests: Visual perception, navigation, machine learning
Associate Professor, Sid and Reva Dewberry Department of Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering
Research Interests: Robotics in smart cities, data analytics, artificial intelligence for structural engineering and structural health modeling
Associate Professor
Computer ScienceResearch Interests: Multi-robot systems, motion planning, computational geometry
Assistant Professor
Computer ScienceHis primary research area covers decision- making under uncertainty, human-aided machine learning, symbolic AI, trustworthiness and interpretability in machine learning, and their numerous applications to BIGDATA, autonomous driving, and healthcare informatics.
Associate Professor and Department Chair, Department of Mechanical Engineering
A trailblazer in naval engineering research and engineering education, Leigh McCue combines curiosity, storytelling, and teaching that fosters a diverse environment for women and minorities in STEM.
Assistant Professor, Department of Systems Engineering and Operations Research
Research Interests: Cyber-physical systems, game theory, smart cities
Associate Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Engineering and Computing; Associate Dean, Undergraduate Programs
Research Interests: STEM education, intelligent sensing, autonomous systems
Associate Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Research Interests: Multi-robot systems, swarm robots, bio-inspired robots, distributed resource allocation
Tenure-Track Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Research Interests: Neuromorphic learning, bio-inspired robotics, distributed learning, algorithm hardware co-design
Associate Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering; Affiliate Faculty in Bioengineering
Research Interests: Biomedical Applications of Robotic Systems, epidemiology applications, biomimemetic and MEMS design for field, analog/digital circuit design for robots
Associate Professor
Computer ScienceResearch Interests: Motion Planning, inspection and surveillance, multi-robot systems, marine robotics, logistics operations
Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Research Interests: Distributed learning for MAS, information security for NxG robots, resilient multi-robot systems
Assistant Professor, Department of Systems Engineering and Operations Research
Research Interests: Defense and aerospace systems, system of systems/ multi-robots, information fusion, test, evaluation, and explainable AI
Assistant Professor, Bioengineering and Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering and Computing
Research Interests: Bio-medical robots, soft robotics
Associate Professor, Director at Center for Air Transportation Systems Research; Department of Systems Engineering and Operations Research
Research Interests: Aircraft and drone systems, urban air mobility, air transportation, system modeling and simulation
Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering
Research Interests: Multi-robot systems, multi-agent games
Professor
Computer ScienceResearch Interests: Wireless sensor networks, mobile networking, performance analysis, robotic cooperation
Assistant Professor, Department of Statistics
Research Interests: High-dimensional data, data compression, record linkage, optimization in statistical settings, machine learning, forensic statistics.
Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science
Research Interests: Reasoning and navigation under uncertainty and unknown environments, perception and learning
Associate Professor, Sid and Reva Dewberry Department of Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering
Geotechnical engineering, novel pavement construction methods, geo-transportation, and geo-environmental infrastructures.
Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Research Interests: Distributed Learning for MAS, wireless ad hoc networks, multi-robot coordination, information fusion
Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Research Interests: Perception, tactile sensing, robotic manipulation
Professor, Department of Statistics
Research Interests: Bioinformatics and biopharmaceutical statistics, robust inference, branching process, risk theory.
Professor, Department of Statistics
Research Interests: Non/semi-parametric regression, methodologies for functional data, spatiotemporal data, survey sampling, high dimensional data analysis.
Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Research Interests: Distributed learning for MAS, resilient multi-robot systems, distributed resource allocation, human-in-the-loop for MAS
Professor, Department of Cyber Security Engineering and Department of Computer Science
Research Interests: Safety and security of networked control systems overall and Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), Next G-based Edge services, building digital twins and vulnerability detection, and mitigation and applying formal methods to ensure cyber security
Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science
Research Interests: Field Robotics, Motion Planning, Machine Learning
Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Research Interests: Human-robot interactions, human-robot co-learning, bio-inspired robotics, distributed resource allocation
Assistant Professor
Computer ScienceResearch Interests: Human AI-interaction, NLP, machine learning
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Travel demand modeling, transportation planning, data analytics, managed lanes and tolling, multi-modal mobility and infrastructure.
