Matthew T. Mason
Roboticist who developed the first origami folding robot.
Matthew T. Mason, an American roboticist born in Oklahoma City in 1952, formerly led the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. His work centers on robotic manipulation, and he wrote a widely referenced textbook on the subject. In 2004, Mason gained significant public attention by creating the first robot capable of folding origami, showcasing progress in complex handling tasks.
Quick Facts
- Born
- 24 August 1952
- Birthplace
- Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States
- Fields
- Robotics
- Workplaces
- Carnegie Mellon University
- Education
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Doctoral advisor
- Tomás Lozano-Pérez; Berthold K.P. Horn
- Thesis year
- 1982
Facts from the source article.
Biography
Matthew T. Mason earned his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1976, 1978, and 1982, respectively. His M.S. thesis, 'Compliance and Force Control for Computer Control led Manipulators,' was advised by Berthold K.P. Horn, and his Ph.D. thesis, 'Manipulator Grasping and Pushing Operations,' was jointly advised by Tomas Lozano-Perez and Berthold K.P. Horn. In 1978, he worked as a research visitor at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center. Since 1982, he has taught at the School of Computer Science and the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. At CMU, he chaired the robotics doctoral program from 1995 to 2004 and currently serves as the director of the Robotics Institute. Mason was the North American Editor of the Butterworths Series in Computer Automation from 1988 to 1994, technical editor of the IEEE Journal on Robotics and Automation from 1989 to 1992, and on the board of editors for the MIT Robotics Review from 1988 to 1992. He is currently a member of the editorial and advisory board for the International Journal of Robotics Research. He was a National Science Foundation Fellow from 1976 to 1980, received the System Development Foundation Prize in 1983, became a Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence in 1992, and a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2000. Mason also served as Chief Scientist at Berkshire Grey.
Work
Mason's work is organized around five topics. Mechanics of manipulation involves modeling the physics of manipulation and translating those models into robot implementation. Robotic origami treats origami as a challenging manipulation task for robots. Manipulation without hands uses a set of resources instead of a dedicated manipulation subsystem. Locomotion without legs exploits all available resources for movement, similar to manipulation without hands. Shortest paths for mobile robots focuses on finding time-optimal paths for robot motion.
Publications
Mason has published several books and articles. These include 'Mechanics of Robotic Manipulation' (MIT Press, 2001); 'Robotics: the Algorithmic Perspective,' edited with Pankaj Agarwal and Lydia Kavraki (A K Peters, 1998); 'Robot Hands and the Mechanics of Manipulation,' with J. Kenneth Salisbury (MIT Press, 1985); and 'Robot Motion: Planning and Control,' with J. Michael Brady, John M. Hollerbach, Timothy Johnson, and Tomas Lozano-Perez (MIT Press, 1982).
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