Center for Robotics and Embedded Systems (CRES) was established in fall 2002. It is an interdisciplinary organized research unit (ORU) in the USC Viterbi School of Engineering that focuses on the science and technology of effective, robust, and scalable robotic systems, with broad and far-reaching applications. CRES facilitates interdisciplinary interactions and collaboration through its robotics faculty and its large team of interdisciplinary affiliates and serves as a linch pin for strategic research areas at USC. CRES projects span the areas of service, humanoid, distributed, reconfigurable, space, and nano robotics and impact a broad spectrum of applications, including assistance, training and rehabilitation, education, environmental monitoring and cleanup, emergency response, homeland security, and entertainment. The Center provides a tight-knit foundation for collaboration and opportunities for education and outreach.

The Parasol laboratory is a focal point for research related to next-generation high-performance computing languages and systems and for the development of algorithms and applications that exploit these to solve computation and/or data intensive applications. Due to its application-centric focus, the Parasol Lab creates a uniquely favorable environment for multidisciplinary collaboration between systems and application developers.

The Human-Machine Teaming laboratory was established in September 2003 by Julie A. Adams. The purpose of the laboratory is to investigate and advance issues in Complex Man-Machine Systems interaction with a primary focus on human-robotic interaction. Research focuses on developing interaction for multiple robotic systems and developing distributed artificially intelligent algorithms to support human-robotic interaction.

iSSRt is a State of Florida Type II center whose mission is to lead the way in innovating and propagating information and intelligent systems (unmanned systems, computer vision, intelligent networks, sensors and perception, protocols and team processes) for the unique needs of homeland security and defense. iSSRt is unique in its commitment to the entire R&D cycle of basic research, industry transfer through its NSF industry consortium, and field evaluation. Over 14 USF faculty are involved from three USF campuses (Tampa, St. Pete, Lakeland). iSSRt actively partners with other USF centers and universities to promote true multi-disciplinary work.

The Distributed Intelligence Laboratory was founded in August of 2002 by Prof. Lynne E. Parker and is engaged in research in cooperative robotics and distributed artificial intelligence. Our research is focused on the computational issues of distributed intelligent systems -- particularly embodied intelligent systems that have a physical instantiation in the world, such as multi-robot teams, sensor networks, or software agents. We characterize distributed intelligent systems as multiple entities that integrate perception, reasoning, and action to perform cooperative tasks under circumstances that are insufficiently known in advance, and dynamically changing during task execution.

The Neurobotics Laboratory is interested in building a robot-human closed loop system to alter the neural control of movement as a way to rehabilitate, assist, and enhance human motor control and learning capabilities. Our primary target population is individuals with strokes, spinal cord injuries, traumatic brain injuries, and other injuries that inhibit daily activities. We also target sports medicine, military, and entertainment applications.

The Haptic Exploration Laboratory works with both robotic haptics and human-machine haptic interfaces. In the area of robotic haptics, we enable robots to explore the world through touch, using specialized robotic fingers and sensors and the appropriate planning and control. We are developing new finger designs and algorithms for autonomous and teleoperated haptic exploration. In the area of human-machine haptic interfaces, haptic interfaces are used to add the sense of touch to virtual and teleoperated environments. By creating physically-based mathematical models of interactions in real environments, we can enhance the realism of virtual environments. In addition, haptic feedback and active augmentation modes can improve the performance of robotic assistants in tele- and cooperative manipulation. These systems are evaluated using control theoretic and experimental approaches. This research has applications in many areas, including computer-assisted and simulated surgery, autonomous exploration of hazardous or remote environments, undersea salvage, enabling technologies, and manufacturing and design. Sponsors of our work include NSF, NIH and the Whitaker Foundation. The lab director is Dr. Allison Okamura.

Taking inspiration and guidance from the science of animal and human behavior, our goal is to build cooperative robots that can work and learn in partnership with people. Not only an engineering endeavour, we hope to gain scientific insight into the mechanisms that underlie this human and animal competence, and to develop a science of human-robot collaboration. Given the multi-disciplinary nature of this endeavor, our research explores a wide variety of topics including:

- Novel mechanical designs
- New sensing and actuator technologies
- Active multi-modal perceptual systems
- Natural language and gesture interfaces
- Expressive movement and skillful motor control
- Social learning
- Psychological modeling
- Human-robot interaction and collaboration

Directed by Prof. Alícia Casals, UPC, Spain

The Science Integration Program was established in April 2005 under the direction of University of Tokyo President Hiroshi Komiyama. The Science Integration Program - Human, started as the first activity in the overall program, will target integration of knowledge within the field of life science relating in particular to scientific knowledge of the human organism from genome to organism level phenomena.