engineering

Matthew T. Mason

Matthew T. Mason is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Matthew T. Mason rather than just read about it. In short: Matthew Thomas Mason (born August 24, 1952 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma) is an American roboticist and the former Director of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. Mason is a researcher in the area of robotic manipulation, and is the author of a highly cited textbook in the field.

Key takeaways

Matthew T. Mason belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Matthew T. Mason to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Matthew T. Mason from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Matthew Thomas Mason (born August 24, 1952 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma) is an American roboticist and the former Director of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. Mason is a researcher in the area of robotic manipulation, and is the author of a highly cited textbook in the field. In 2004, Mason received widespread media attention for developing the first origami 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 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 as a research visitor in 1978, and has been teaching at the School of Computer Science and the Robotics Institute 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 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, and in 2000 he became Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Mason was 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 origami 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, 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 Matt's Robotics Blog Web site RI page

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Matthew T. Mason

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Matthew T. Mason claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Matthew T. Mason before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Matthew T. Mason ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Matthew T. Mason

In research: Matthew T. Mason appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Matthew T. Mason in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Matthew T. Mason is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1952 births, American roboticists, Carnegie Mellon University faculty, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Matthew T. Mason outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Matthew T. Mason in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Matthew T. Mason means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Matthew T. Mason out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Matthew T. Mason in simple terms?

Why does Matthew T. Mason matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Matthew T. Mason?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Matthew T. Mason.