"The goal of this project is to allow robots to learn to understand spoken instructions and information about the world directly from speech with end users. Modern robots are small and capable, but not adaptable enough to perform the variety of tasks people may require. Meanwhile, too many machine learning systems work poorly for people from under-represented groups. The research will use physical, real-world context to enable learning directly from speech, including constructing a data set that is large, realistic, and inclusive of speakers from diverse backgrounds.

As robots become more capable and ubiquitous, they are increasingly moving into traditionally human-centric environments such as health care, education, and eldercare. As robots engage in tasks as diverse as helping with household work, deploying medication, and tutoring students, it becomes increasingly critical for them to interact naturally with the people around them. Key to this progress is the development of robots that acquire an understanding of goals and objects from natural communications with a diverse set of end-users. One way to address this is using language to build systems that learn from people they are interacting with. Algorithms and systems developed in this project will allow robots to learn about the world around them from linguistic interactions. This research will focus on understanding spoken language about the physical world from diverse groups of people, resulting in systems that are more able to robustly handle a wide variety of real-world interactions. Ultimately, the project will increase the usability and fairness of robots deployed in human spaces.

This CAREER project will study how robots can learn about noisy, unpredictable human environments from spoken language combined with perception, using context derived from sensors to constrain the learning problem. Grounded language refers to language that occurs in and refers to the physical world in which robots operate. Human interactions are fundamentally contextual: when learning about the world, we focus on learning by considering not only direct communication but also the context of that interaction. This work will focus on learning semantics directly from perceptual inputs combined with speech from diverse sources. The goal is to develop learning infrastructure, algorithms, and approaches to enable robots to learn to understand task instructions and object descriptions from spoken communication with end users. The project will develop new methods of efficiently learning from multi-modal data inputs, with the ultimate goal of enabling robots to efficiently and naturally learn about their world and the tasks they should perform."

Students who present at the conference (or any research conference) should include this on their academic resumes. When graduate or professional schools consider applicants, they often look for this kind of credit on a CV. Having presented your research as an undergraduate powerfully indicates that you are already doing graduate level work and gives you a competitive advantage over other applicants.
 

Students get the opportunity to present their own ideas, arguments, and evidence to their peers and faculty. This gives a work in progress a preliminary test-run. Students receive comments, advice, and recommendations for further development in the process without having to receive a grade. Often these presentations help students to submit better papers, and occasionally these presentations help turn existing papers into theses or even articles for publication.
 
You are engaging your discipline or research agenda of choice at a high level. This is an intellectually fulfilling opportunity with no chance of risk. Our conference panel chairs are there to help foster discussion and enhance your presentation.

 Unlike some professional conferences, this event is not designed to competitively challenge your research findings as much as it is to help you further develop your research interests.

Your participation in this conference will likely place you in panels with students from any number of different universities and fields of study. In recent years, we have had participants from a number of international partner universities, dozens of universities from our region, and hundreds of VCU students, making our conference one that is local, state, regional, and international. In 2019, the conference featured students from 20 regional universities and 2 countries. This is a great opportunity for students to engage their ideas with those from all over the field.

The conference is targeted at undergraduate students although we will consider graduate level papers as they fit the panels. We DO NOT REQUIRE completed paper. We will consider works in progress, new ideas you want to develop, old papers you want to present, and most other research possibilities as long as they fit into the following criteria:
 
Papers or ideas should fit into the very broad categories of: Government, Public Policy, and International Affairs. Papers can range from the formal and theoretical to pragmatic policy and issue analysis.

Strong consideration will be given to papers that deal with issues of:
American politics and policy, public administration, sociology and social structures ,international relations and world affairs, human rights, civil rights, criminal justice and public safety, national security, human security, geography and demography health policy, environmental policy, economic policy and political economy, race, class, and gender politics, social justice

The goal of this work is to develop a flexible, rechargeable zinc battery (RZB) prototype that can be used in wearable devices such as watches, wireless headphones, and health devices. “By demonstrating the unique advantages of safety and design flexibility—which enables larger battery footprint and, hence, better performance—we expect to enable RZB commercialization and gain market share for wearable health monitoring devices,” Madan explains.

Enhanced durability is an additional benefit of the RZB technology. These batteries can continue to safely generate power even if they are punctured, bent, or cut. 

During testing, Madan and her students poked six holes in the plastic that contained the battery. They found that the holes reduced the power generated from 100 percent to about 88 percent. The remaining power was still enough to power a small light.