RI Seminar
Dynamical Robots via Origami-Inspired Design
Abstract: Origami-inspired engineering produces structures with high strength-to-weight ratios and simultaneously lower manufacturing complexity. This reliable, customizable, cheap fabrication and component assembly technology is ideal for robotics applications in remote, rapid deployment scenarios that require platforms to be quickly produced, reconfigured, and deployed. Unfortunately, most examples of folded robots are appropriate only for small-scale, low-load [...]
The Search for Ancient Life on Mars Began with a Safe Landing
Abstract: Prior mars rover missions have all landed in flat and smooth regions, but for the Mars 2020 mission, which is seeking signs of ancient life, this was no longer acceptable. To maximize the variety of rock samples that will eventually be returned to earth for analysis, the Perseverance rover needed to land in a [...]
Robotic Cave Exploration for Search, Science, and Survey
Abstract: Robotic cave exploration has the potential to create significant societal impact through facilitating search and rescue, in the fight against antibiotic resistance (science), and via mapping (survey). But many state-of-the-art approaches for active perception and autonomy in subterranean environments rely on disparate perceptual pipelines (e.g., pose estimation, occupancy modeling, hazard detection) that process the same underlying sensor data in [...]
Enabling Grounded Language Communication for Human-Robot Teaming
Abstract: The ability for robots to effectively understand natural language instructions and convey information about their observations and interactions with the physical world is highly dependent on the sophistication and fidelity of the robot’s representations of language, environment, and actions. As we progress towards more intelligent systems that perform a wider range of tasks in a [...]
Robots that Learn through Language
Abstract: Advances in perception have been integral to transitioning robots from machines restricted to factory automation to autonomous agents that operate robustly in unstructured environments. As our surrogates, robots enable people to explore the deepest depths of the ocean and distant regions of space, making discoveries that would otherwise be impossible. The age of robots [...]
Towards Reconstructing Any Object in 3D
Abstract: The world we live in is incredibly diverse, comprising of over 10k natural and man-made object categories. While the computer vision community has made impressive progress in classifying images from such diverse categories, the state-of-the-art 3D prediction systems are still limited to merely tens of object classes. A key reason for this stark difference [...]
The Unusual Effectiveness of Abstractions for Assistive AI
Abstract: Can we balance efficiency and reliability while designing assistive AI systems? What would such AI systems need to provide? In this talk I will present some of our recent work addressing these questions. In particular, I will show that a few fundamental principles of abstraction are surprisingly effective in designing efficient and reliable AI [...]
Robotics and Warehouse Automation at Berkshire Grey
Abstract: This talk tells the Berkshire Grey story, from its founding in 2013 to its IPO earlier this year — the first robotics IPO since iRobot over15 years ago. Berkshire Grey produces automated systems for e-commerce order fulfillment, parcel sortation, store replenishment, and related operations in warehouses, distribution centers, and in the back ends of [...]
Resilient Exploration in SubT Environments: Team Explorer’s Approach and Lessons Learned in the Final Event
Abstract: Subterranean robot exploration is difficult with many mobility, communications, and navigation challenges that require an approach with a diverse set of systems, and reliable autonomy. While prior work has demonstrated partial successes in addressing the problem, here we convey a comprehensive approach to address the problem of subterranean exploration in a wide range of [...]
Towards Robust Human-Robot Interaction: A Quality Diversity Approach
Abstract: The growth of scale and complexity of interactions between humans and robots highlights the need for new computational methods to automatically evaluate novel algorithms and applications. Exploring the diverse scenarios of interaction between humans and robots in simulation can improve understanding of complex human-robot interaction systems and avoid potentially costly failures in real-world settings. [...]