Eric Whitman


Me.

I am currently a fifth year graduate student in Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute working for Chris Atkeson. In 2008, I received a B.S.E. in Mechanic and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University.

Research Interests

I am interested in control of high degree-of-freedom nonlinear dynamic systems in the presence of large external disturbances and modeling error. My research has focused on bipedal walking. I try to develop state space controllers for walking that do not rely on trajectories or any notion of nominal motion. The goal is to make the walking system robust to large disturbances by making controllers that are stable for large regions of state space.

The Big Brain Theory: Pure Genius

I am a contestant on The Big Brain Theory: Pure Genius, a design and build competition show on Discovery Channel. Starting on May 1, 2013 and running for 8 weeks, it will be airing at 10|9c every Wednesday. You can go here for my behind-the-scenes notes or to Facebook for news and Facebooky stuff.

Publications

Eric C. Whitman and Christopher G. Atkeson. "Control of a Walking Biped Using a Combination of Simple Policies." Proc. of Humanoids 2009, Paris.
Video

Eric C. Whitman and Christopher G. Atkeson. "Control of Instantaneously Coupled Systems Applied to Humanoid Walking." Proc. of Humanoids 2010, Nashville.
Video

Eric C. Whitman and Christopher G. Atkeson. "Multiple Model Robust Dynamic Programming." Proc. of American Controls Conference 2012, Montreal.

Jiuguang Wang, Eric C. Whitman and Mike Stilman. "Whole-Body Trajectory Optimization for Humanoid Falling." Proc. of American Controls Conference 2012, Montreal.

Eric C. Whitman, Benjamin J. Stephens, and Christopher G. Atkeson. "Torso Rotation for Push Recovery Using A Simple Change of Variables." Proc. of Humanoids 2012, Osaka.

Thesis Proposal

Proposal

Posters

Whitman, Eric. “Optimization-Based Policy Search for Control of Periodic Systems.” Poster Presentation at Dynamic Walking 2009, Vancouver.

Whitman, Eric, and Christopher G. Atkeson. "Control of a Walking Biped Using a Combination of Simple Policies." Poster Presentation at Humanoids 2009, Paris.

Whitman, Eric. “Control of Humanoid Walking as an Instantaneously Coupled System.” Poster Presentation at Dynamic Walking 2011, Jena.

Presentations

Powerpoint presentation given at Humanoids 2010.

Robotic Walking Video

Walking in Place

Simulated Walking Videos

Forward Push of 44 Ns
Sideways Push of 40 Ns
Sideways Push of 30 Ns and Avoiding Obstacles
Avoiding Obstacles and Pushes (35 Ns, 30 Ns, 45 Ns)

Code

The Dynamic Programming code that much of my research is based on is here. It includes dynamic programming code as well as a simple test programming for doing inverted pendulum swing-up.

Little Dog

I worked on generating a bounding gait for littledog. Videos are available here

Side Project

Clockwork Factory
Ultrasound Localization for Legos

Contact

Carnegie Mellon University
Robotics Institute
5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
ewhitman@cmu.edu