VASC Seminar
Larry Zitnick
Research Lead
Facebook AI Research

Learning to Visually Reason

GHC 6115

Abstract: Visual reasoning is a core capability of artificial intelligence. It is a necessity for effective communication, planning, and for question/answering tasks. In this talk, I discuss some recent explorations into visual reasoning for question/answering, game playing and dialog. I also describe our new reinforcement learning platform ELF; an Extensive, Lightweight and Flexible research platform [...]

Field Robotics Center Seminar
Robotics Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University

Dense Planar-Inertial SLAM for Large Indoor 3D Reconstruction

Newell Simon Hall 1507

Abstract Reconstructing the dense 3D models of indoor environments in real-time is key to many robotics applications, such as navigation, inspection, and augmented reality. It is also a challenging problem due to the accumulation of drift, large amount of data, limited computation, and occasional lack of visual features. We develop an RGB-D simultaneous localization and [...]

Field Robotics Center Seminar
Graeme Best
Ph.D. Candidate
Australian Centre for Field Robotics (ACFR), University of Sydney

Planning Algorithms for Multi-Robot Active Perception

Newell Simon Hall 1507

Abstract A fundamental task of robotic systems is to use on-board sensors and perception algorithms to understand high-level semantic properties of an environment. The performance of perception algorithms can be greatly improved by planning the motion of the robots to obtain high-value observations. In this talk I will present a suite of planning algorithms we [...]

RoboOrg Meta Seminar
Associate Professor
Robotics Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University

Doing a Post-doc: Should I do one? How do I find one? How do I pick? What next?

Newell-Simon Hall 1305

Abstract: In this talk, I will describe the ins and outs of getting a job as a post-doctoral researcher ("doing a post-doc").  I will first describe a number of reasons why one might want to do a post-doc, as well as a few reasons not to do one.  I will next describe how to choose [...]

VASC Seminar
James Davidson
Software Engineer
Google Brain Robotics

Towards Lifelong Robot Learning

GHC 6501

Abstract: Google Brain Robotics vision is to leverage learning to push the field of robotics forward. As such, we have engaged in research ranging in application from navigation to grasping and approach from deep RL to learning from demonstration. Fundamentally, our research is built around the core idea of lifelong learning. Our long term goal [...]

RI Seminar
Alan R. Wagner
Assistant Professor of Aerospace Engineering
Penn State University

Exploring Human-Robot Trust during Emergencies

NSH 1305

Abstract: This talk presents our experimental results related to human-robot trust involving more than 2000 paid subjects exploring topics such as how and why people trust a robot too much and how broken trust in a robot might be repaired. From our perspective, a person trusts a robot when they rely on and accept the [...]

Field Robotics Center Seminar
Robotics Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University

Belief Space Planning for Reducing Terrain Relative Localization Uncertainty in Noisy Elevation Maps

GHC 4405

Abstract Accurate global localization is essential for planetary rovers to reach science goals and mitigate mission risk. Planetary robots cannot currently use GPS or infrastructure for navigating, and hence rely on terrain for determining global position. Terrain relative navigation (TRN) compares planetary rover-perspective images and 3D models to existing satellite orbital imagery and digital elevation [...]

VASC Seminar
Zach Pezzementi
Lead Robotics Engineer
Carnegie Mellon University / NREC

Comparing apples and oranges: Off-road pedestrian detection on the NREC agricultural person-detection dataset

GHC 6501

Abstract: Person detection from vehicles has made rapid progress recently with the advent of multiple high-quality datasets of urban and highway driving, yet no large-scale benchmark has been available for the same problem in off-road or agricultural environments. In this talk, we present the NREC Agricultural Person-Detection Dataset to spur research in these environments. It [...]