Matthew Thomas Mason (born August 24, 1952 in

Oklahoma City Oklahoma City (), officially the City of Oklahoma City, and often shortened to OKC, is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The county seat of Oklahoma County, it ranks 20th among United States cities in population, a ...

, Oklahoma) is an American

roboticist Robotics is an interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist humans. Robotics integrat ...

and the former Director of the

Robotics Institute The Robotics Institute (RI) is a division of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. A June 2014 article in ''Robotics Business Review'' magazine calls it "the world's best robo ...

at Carnegie Mellon University. Mason is a researcher in the area of robotic manipulation, and is the author of two highly cited textbooks in the field. In 2004, Mason received widespread media attention for developing the first

origami ) is the Japanese art of paper folding. In modern usage, the word "origami" is often used as an inclusive term for all folding practices, regardless of their culture of origin. The goal is to transform a flat square sheet of paper into a f ...

folding robot, demonstrating advances in difficult manipulation tasks.

Biography

Mason received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

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 advised by Tomas Lozano-Perez and Berthold K.P. Horn. He worked at the

IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center The Thomas J. Watson Research Center is the headquarters for IBM Research. The center comprises three sites, with its main laboratory in Yorktown Heights, New York, U.S., 38 miles (61 km) north of New York City, Albany, New York and wit ...

as a research visitor in 1978, and has been teaching at the School of Computer Science and the

at Carnegie Mellon University since 1982. At CMU, Mason served as the chair of the robotics doctoral program from 1995–2004, and is currently the director of the Robotics Institute. Mason served as the North American Editor of the Butterworths Series in Computer Automation from 1988 to 1994, the 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. Mason was

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...

Fellow from 1976 to 1980. In 1983 he received the System Development Foundation Prize. In 1992 he became Fellow of the

American Association for Artificial Intelligence The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) is an international scientific society devoted to promote research in, and responsible use of, artificial intelligence. AAAI also aims to increase public understanding of artif ...

, and in 2000 he became Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Mason is currently the Chief Scientist at Berkshire Grey.

Work

Mason's work is organized around five topics: * Mechanics of manipulation: modeling the physics of manipulation and how these models translates into implementation in robots. * Robotic origami: the problem of

as a challenging manipulation task for robots. * Manipulation without hands: manipulation with a set of resources instead of just a manipulation subsystem (an arm). * Locomotion without legs: exploiting all available resources for locomotion, similar to manipulation without hands * Shortest paths for mobile robots: finding time optimal paths for robot motion.

Publications

Mason has published several books and articles, a selection: * Matthew T. Mason, Mechanics of Robotic Manipulation, MIT Press: Cambridge, MA. 2001. * Pankaj Agarwal,

Lydia Kavraki Lydia E. Kavraki ( el, Λύδια Καβράκη) is a Greek-American computer scientist, the Noah Harding Professor of Computer Science, a professor of bioengineering, electrical and computer engineering, and mechanical engineering at Rice Unive ...

, and Matthew T. Mason, editors. Robotics: the Algorithmic Perspective: 1998 Workshop on the Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics, A K Peters: Boston. 1998. * Matthew T. Mason and J. Kenneth Salisbury, Robot Hands and the Mechanics of Manipulation, MIT Press: Cambridge, MA. 1985. * J. Michael Brady, John M. Hollerbach, Timothy Johnson, Tomas Lozano-Perez, and Matthew T. Mason, Robot Motion: Planning and Control, MIT Press: Cambridge, MA. 1982.

Notes and references

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Mason, Matthew T., 1952 births Living people People from Oklahoma City American roboticists Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Carnegie Mellon University faculty Origami Fellows of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Fellows of the IEEE