The Department of Computer Science is pleased to welcome Michael Walker as an assistant professor.
Walker has always been drawn to technologies he can interact with.
“When I was younger, I was exposed to 3D modeling and architectural drafting, but it always left me feeling like something was missing in terms of the final product, which I wanted to experience at a greater level,” he says. “Learning to program was a large step toward increased interactivity between creation and creator. But then I began to realize that robotics and extended reality were where my passions lie.”
Walker’s primary research interest is human robot interaction (HRI), a field of study dedicated to understanding, designing, and evaluating robotic systems for use by or with humans. He has a special interest within the field of virtual and mixed reality for human-robot interaction, primarily for improving human-robot teaming in real-world scenarios.
“To be able to design something that could physically interact with the real world, or to create a virtual 3D scene or object that I could experience as if it were real, satisfied both my engineering and creative sides,” Walker says. “Nothing is better than creating an interactive system and sharing it with others with the hope that it can benefit society in a meaningful way.”
In a recent research project, Walker used the robotic research platform Boston Dynamic, a quadruped robot that he brought to his Human-Robot Interaction Lab at Michigan Tech. In the study, Walker explored human-robot teaming in disaster response scenarios between a human teleoperator and on-the-ground human team members.
For the study, a dangerous situation was simulated in a mock disaster environment, mimicking scenarios in which human exposure is limited for safety reasons, such as a radiation leak or chemical spill. An immersive virtual reality control room interface provided robot operators with live 3D video streams. Live, large-scale, high-resolution, and dense 3D point clouds were employed for simultaneous viewing of robot-egocentric and robot-exocentric perspectives.
“This evaluation was the first-ever deployment and evaluation of a combined perspective mixed reality interface for a mobile robot in a realistic field setting,” Walker says. “The results provided insights regarding how such an interface impacts navigation and visual search efficiency, as well as various aspects of human-robot teaming between a remote operator and on-site human personnel in a large-scale team-based field experiment.”
Why Walker Chose to Work With Students
The opportunity to share his knowledge and empower students with the skills to find and follow their own passions for learning and development inspired Walker to pursue a career in education.
“It’s an honor to be part of students’ education and growth toward a successful career in industry or academia,” he says.
As an educator, Walker values hands-on learning and employs project-focused curricula. In his courses, students apply theories and concepts in mini-projects and larger final group projects designed to put their knowledge into practice and target real-world problems and deployments.
Walker says this approach exposes students to real-world challenges that often arise when implementing software and hardware solutions, such as when working with robotic hardware stacks (situations in which components of a distributed robotic system each require conflicting operating systems or library versions) or cutting-edge mixed reality display hardware (incomplete documentation and unreliable software libraries that are often still in alpha or beta phases of the product’s life cycle).
In graduate courses, Walker’s aim is to guide student projects into real-world publications, a process that exposes students to research best practices and procedures while also building their work portfolios.
In fall semester, Walker taught a class on human-robot interaction, which covers theory, methodologies, and applications and introduces HRI concepts including robot embodiment, verbal and non-verbal robot behavior, human-robot teaming and collaboration, robot social dynamics, robot learning, shared autonomy, robot teleoperation and supervision, and extended reality interfaces for human-robot interactions.
“This is a multi-disciplinary class which pulls research concepts from human-computer interaction, cognitive psychology, human factors, artificial intelligence, and design,” Walker says. “HRI research paper readings are also surveyed and discussed in classroom sessions.”
The course also included a semester-long team project, where students work on the development of complex, human-centered robotic systems and interfaces tested in immersive simulations and implemented on real robot platforms. The solutions were empirically evaluated using quantitative and qualitative methods in user study experiments with real human participants.
Bringing Valuable Industry and Academic Experience
Walker received his PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), where he worked in the Interactive Robotics and Novel Technologies Laboratory (IRON Lab) with his advisor and fellow HRI researcher, Dr. Daniel Szafir.
Walker also worked in the space telerobotics branch of Dr. Jack Burns’ Network for Exploration and Space Science, a NASA-funded research group based at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he was also a computer science graduate student. He also interned at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, working on extended reality applications for space robotics.
Walker’s first college degree was in business administration and accounting from the University of Washington in Seattle. It wasn’t until after his first year working in public accounting that he discovered that his interests were elsewhere, and he knew that a career in computer science was his true calling.
Settling Into His New Husky Nation Home
Walker is genuinely impressed by Michigan Tech’s faculty, students, facilities, and location.
“Michigan Tech checked all the boxes I was looking for in terms of continuing my academic career and HRI research,” he says. “I am very excited about the opportunities to collaborate with such a great group of researchers and students. I also feel that I’ve brought my family to a location and community I think they will love. “
Walker says he loves both the people and the Houghton area.
“I’ am’m not a large city kind of person, and I’m excited to be part of a smaller, tightknit community. I also love the outdoors and all the recreational activities in the area,” he says.
Walker and his wife have two dogs (a seven-year-old Golden Retriever named Baloo, and a three-year-old Border Collie named Mowgli). Together they enjoy exploring area beaches and trails. “Swimming in the Portage is easily Baloo and Mowgli’s favorite thing in the world,” Walker says.
Walker enjoys a variety of hobbies, both outdoors (skiing, biking, scuba diving, rock hunting – a new hobby!), and indoors (painting and modeling, reading). He also likes competitive games and events, especially with teams, including playing and watching sports and both video and board games.
Learn more about Walker on his faculty profile.
The Michigan Tech College of Computing, established in 2019, is the first academic unit in Michigan dedicated solely to computing, and one of only a handful such academic units in the United States. The college is composed of two academic departments. The Computer Science department offers four bachelor of science programs in computer science, cybersecurity, data science, and software engineering; four master of science programs in applied computer science, computer science, cybersecurity, and data science; and a doctoral program in computer science. The Applied Computing department offers four bachelor of science programs in cybersecurity, electrical engineering technology, information technology, and mechatronics; two master of science programs in health informatics and mechatronics; and a doctoral program is in computational science and engineering.Questions? Contact us at computing@mtu.edu. Follow the College of Computing on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter.