RI Seminar
Byron Boots
Amazon Professor
Machine Learning in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science, University of Washington

Machine Learning and Model Predictive Control for Adaptive Robotic Systems

1305 Newell Simon Hall

Abstract: In this talk I will discuss several different ways in which ideas from machine learning and model predictive control (MPC) can be combined to build intelligent, adaptive robotic systems. I’ll begin by showing how to learn models for MPC that perform well on a given control task. Next, I’ll introduce an online learning perspective on [...]

Field Robotics Center Seminar
José Luís Silva
Assistant Professor
Science and Technology Department, University Institute of Lisbon

Towards more effective remote execution of exploration operations using multimodal interfaces

1305 Newell Simon Hall

Abstract: Remote robots enable humans to explore and interact with environments while keeping them safe from existing harsh conditions (e.g., in search and rescue, deep sea or planetary exploration scenarios). However, the gap between the control station and the remote robot presents several challenges (e.g., situation awareness, cognitive load, perception, latency) for effective teleoperation. Multimodal [...]

VASC Seminar
Andrew Owens
Assistant Professor
Electrical Engineering & Computer Science , University of Michigan

Learning Visual, Audio, and Cross-Modal Correspondences

Newell-Simon Hall 3305

Abstract:  Today's machine perception systems rely heavily on supervision provided by humans, such as labels and natural language. I will talk about our efforts to make systems that, instead, learn from two ubiquitous sources of unlabeled data: visual motion and cross-modal sensory associations. I will begin by discussing our work on creating unified models for [...]

VASC Seminar
Lachlan MacDonald
Postdoc
Australian Institute for Machine Learning, University of Adelaide

Towards a formal theory of deep optimisation

Newell-Simon Hall 3305

Abstract:  Precise understanding of the training of deep neural networks is largely restricted to architectures such as MLPs and cost functions such as the square cost, which is insufficient to cover many practical settings.  In this talk, I will argue for the necessity of a formal theory of deep optimisation.  I will describe such a [...]

VASC Seminar
Christoph Lassner
Senior Research Scientist
Epic Games

Towards Interactive Radiance Fields

Newell-Simon Hall 3305

Abstract:  Over the last years, the fields of computer vision and computer graphics have increasingly converged. Using the exact same processes to model appearance during 3D reconstruction and rendering has shown tremendous benefits, especially when combined with machine learning techniques to model otherwise hard-to-capture or -simulate optical effects. In this talk, I will give an [...]

RI Seminar
Dorsa Sadigh
Assistant Professor
Computer Science Electrical Engineering, Stanford University

Learning Representations for Interactive Robotics

Newell-Simon Hall 1305

In this talk, I will be discussing the role of learning representations for robots that interact with humans and robots that interactively learn from humans through a few different vignettes. I will first discuss how bounded rationality of humans guided us towards developing learned latent action spaces for shared autonomy. It turns out this “bounded rationality” is not a [...]

RI Seminar
Russ Tedrake
Professor
Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, MIT

Motion Planning Around Obstacles with Graphs of Convex Sets

1305 Newell Simon Hall

Abstract: In this talk, I'll describe a new approach to planning that strongly leverages both continuous and discrete/combinatorial optimization. The framework is fairly general, but I will focus on a particular application of the framework to planning continuous curves around obstacles. Traditionally, these sort of motion planning problems have either been solved by trajectory optimization [...]

RI Seminar
Jorgen Pedersen
Chief Operating Officer
Sarcos Technology and Robotics Corporation

RE2 Robotics: from RI spinout to Acquisition

1305 Newell Simon Hall

Abstract: It was July 2001.  Jorgen Pedersen founded RE2 Robotics.  It was supposed to be a temporary venture while he figured out his next career move.  But the journey took an unexpected course.  RE2 became a leading developer of mobile manipulation systems.  Fast forward to 2022, RE2 Robotics exited via an acquisition to Sarcos Technology and [...]

VASC Seminar
Rika Antonova
Postdoctoral Scholar
Stanford University

Enabling Self-sufficient Robot Learning

3305 Newell-Simon Hall

Abstract:  Autonomous exploration and data-efficient learning are important ingredients for helping machine learning handle the complexity and variety of real-world interactions. In this talk, I will describe methods that provide these ingredients and serve as building blocks for enabling self-sufficient robot learning. First, I will outline a family of methods that facilitate active global exploration. [...]