Hi, I’m Rodrigo Gutierrez, a second year PhD student at the University of South Florida where I focus on AI Robotics. I intend to gradate with a PhD in Computer Science in the Fall of 2009. This site is primarily a repository for information related to my academic career as well as other geeky projects that I’ve worked on in my spare time.

In my two years of graduate studies I’ve worked on a variety of topics. A large portion of this time has been devoted to designing a distributed cartographic architecture capable of supporting outdoor multi-robot teams. More recently I’ve become interested in the regulation of robot behaviors through the use of artificial emotions. For my PhD I plan to create a robot architecture that, from its inception, incorporates robust emotional functionality. This is in opposition to the typical approach of using an existing architecture and simply adding on the needed emotional functionality as an afterthought.

I like tinkering around with ideas on the side as well. I’ve fallen in love with the iPhone, and have started learning iPhone development. My first, and current, iPhone project uses the iPhone as a operator control unit for an iRobot Packbot. My future goals for this project involve exploring different interface configurations and their affect on human-robot interaction. Another interesting idea that needs some attention is something I call Camradery. Without giving too much away the premise is to collect public web cameras and georeference them using the Google Maps API.

Check out my Projects page for more information about the projects mentioned above, as well as some of my other work. Or, if you’re looking for something a little more formal, you may be interested in my Curriculum Vitae.