Student Talks
MSR Thesis Talk: Tianyuan Zhang
Title: Surface Ripples: Analyzing Transient Vibrations on Object's Surfaces Abstract: The subtle vibrations on an object's surface contain information about its physical properties and interaction with the environment. Prior works imaged surface vibration to recover the object's material properties via modal analysis, which discards the transient vibrations propagating immediately after the object is disturbed. In this [...]
MSR Thesis Talk: Anurag Ghosh
Title: Learned Two-Plane Perspective Prior based Image Resampling for Efficient Object Detection Abstract: Real-time efficient perception is critical for autonomous navigation and city scale sensing. Orthogonal to architectural improvements, streaming perception approaches have exploited adaptive sampling improving real-time detection performance. In this work, we propose a learnable geometry-guided prior that incorporates rough geometry of the [...]
MSR Thesis Talk: David Russell
Title: Using Drones and Remote Sensing to Understand Forests with Limited Labeled Data Abstract: Drones and remote sensing can provide observations of forests at scale, but this raw data needs to be interpreted to further scientific understanding and inform effective management decisions. This thesis studies two problems under the realistic constraint of limited domain-specific training [...]
MSR Thesis TallK: Aarrushi Shandilya
Title: Lights, Camera, Render: Neural Fields for Structured Lighting Abstract: 3D scene reconstruction from 2D image supervision alone is an under-constrained problem. Recent neural rendering frameworks have made great strides in learning 3D scene representations to enable novel view synthesis, but they struggle to reconstruct geometry of low-texture regions or from sparse views. The prevalence of active [...]
Building 4D Models of Objects and Scenes from Monocular Videos
Abstract: We explore how to infer the time-varying 3D structures of generic, deformable objects, and dynamic scenes from monocular videos. A solution to this problem is essential for virtual reality and robotics applications. However, inferring 4D structures given 2D observations is challenging due to its under-constrained nature. In a casual setup where there is neither [...]
MSR Thesis Talk: Anirudha Ramesh
Title: Learning to See in the Dark and Beyond Abstract: Robotic Perception in diverse domains such as low-light scenarios remains a challenge, even upon the employment of new sensing modalities like thermal imaging and specialized night-vision sensors. This is largely due to the high difficulty in obtaining labeled data for certain tasks. In this work, [...]
MSR Thesis Talk: Mateo Guaman Castro
Title: Self-Supervised Costmap Learning for Off-Road Vehicle Traversability Abstract: Estimating terrain traversability in off-road environments requires reasoning about complex interaction dynamics between the robot and these terrains. However, it is challenging to build an accurate physics model, or create informative labels to learn a model in a supervised manner, for these interactions. We propose a method [...]
Learning to Manipulate Using Diverse Datasets
Abstract: Manipulation is a key challenge in the robotic fields that impedes the deployment of robots in real-world scenarios. While notable advancements have been made in solving high/mid level planning problems, such as decomposing tasks (e.g. "bring me a bottle") into primitives (e.g. "pick up bottle"), the acquisition of fundamental manipulation primitives remains a difficult [...]
MSR Thesis Talk: Gaoyue Zhou
Title: On Generalization and Benchmarking on Physical Robots Abstract: Robotics research has seen significant advancements; however, the field remains predominantly demo-driven, making direct comparisons between methods difficult without replicating them on individual setups. While many simulation benchmarks exist, they usually feature contrived datasets and do not accurately reflect real-world performance. In my thesis, we [...]
An Effective Learning Framework for Active Perception and a Case Study on Liquid Property Estimation
Abstract: Active perception refers to a perception process where robot actions are taken to improve perception. To do this, the robot needs an observation model that knows what it will observe based on the actions it takes. However, existing approaches struggle to learn a good observation model since it needs to account for all possible [...]
MSR Thesis Talk: Heng Yu
Title: Towards Real-time Controllable Neural Face Avatars Abstract: Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF) are compelling techniques for modeling dynamic 3D scenes from 2D image collections. These volumetric representations would be well suited for synthesizing novel facial expressions but for three problems. First, deformable NeRFs are object agnostic and model holistic movement of the scene: they can [...]
MSR Thesis Talk: Winnie Kuang
Title: Design and Integration of Semantic Mapping System for Forest Fire Mitigation Abstract: Remote sensing technologies can provide an automated approach to monitor and analyze conditions in the forest environment over a period of time for forest maintenance and wildfire mitigation efforts. In particular, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are a promising remote sensing modality since they [...]
MSR Thesis Talk: Jinqi Luo
Title: Vision Model Diagnosis: A Generative Perspective Abstract: In the evolving landscape of computer vision, deep learning has emerged as a transformative force, enhancing a myriad of societal facets. The real-world deployment of such a deep vision model requires a reliable evaluation, particularly when the model can have different sensitivities across various semantic attributes and concepts. [...]
MSR Thesis Talk: Daphne Chen
Title: Learning Task Preferences from Real-World Data Abstract: In order to provide personalized assistance that is capable of adapting to the needs of unique individuals, it is necessary to understand peoples’ preferences for different tasks. Robot assistance often assumes a static model of the individual, while in the real world, people have different capabilities and needs [...]
Unified Control for Over and Fully-Actuated Aerial Vehicles
Abstract: The growing domain of aerial robotics necessitates advancements in the control strategies and robustness of over-actuated and fully-actuated aerial vehicles. This thesis proposal makes contributions to this endeavor by providing in-depth analysis and methodologies concerning these vehicles, control allocation strategies during actuator failures, high-fidelity simulations, and a unified control framework. Our completed work has [...]
MSR Thesis Talk: Prasanna Kettavarapalyam Sriganesh
Title: Fast Staircase Detection and Estimation with Multi-View Merging for Multi-Robot Systems Abstract: When robotic systems are deployed in the real world, they demand advanced mobility capabilities to operate in complex, three-dimensional environments designed for human use, e.g., multi-level buildings. Staircases have been an integral part of facilitating vertical movement in these three-dimensional environments. This work [...]
MSR Thesis Talk: Aarush Gupta
Title: LightSpeed: Light and Fast Neural Light Fields on Mobile Devices Abstract: Real-time novel-view image synthesis on mobile devices is prohibitive due to limited on-device computational power and storage. Using volumetric rendering methods, such as NeRF and its derivatives, on mobile devices is not suitable due to the high computational cost of volumetric rendering. On the [...]
MSR Thesis Talk: Akshaya Kesarimangalam Srinivasan
Title: Multi-agent Multi-objective Ergodic Search Abstract: In order to find points of interest in a given domain, many planners use a priori information to guide the search to expedite the detection of targets. We present an approach to direct multiple agents (MA) to search a given domain subject to multiple objectives (MO), each characterized by its own information [...]
MSR Thesis Talk: Joshua Spisak
Title: Stochastic Optimization for Autonomous Navigation, Leveraging Parallel Computation Abstract: Stochastic Optimal Control (SOC) is a framework that allows disturbances and uncertainty in system models to be accounted for in its optimization framework. Despite accounting for this uncertainty, many first and second order methods for solving SOC problems are subject to local minima and are [...]
MSR Thesis Talk: Xuxin Cheng
Title: Learning Legged Robot Agility: Sim-to-Real and Beyond Abstract: Legged robotics has seen significant advancements in both manipulation and locomotion. However, there remain significant gaps compared to their biological counterparts, particularly in energy efficiency, natural motion, and the capacity for agile skills. This thesis primarily focuses on two aspects: the unified control of legged manipulators [...]
MSR Thesis Talk: Harry Freeman
Title: Computer Vision-Based Phenotyping in Agriculture: Leveraging Semantic Information for Non-Destructive Small Crop Analysis Abstract: Fast and reliable non-destructive phenotyping of plants plays an important role in precision agriculture, as the information enables farmers to make real-time crop management decisions without affecting yield. To non-destructively phenotype crops, computer and stereo-vision based methods are commonly used, [...]
MSR Thesis Talk: Nishant Mohanty
Title: Multi-Robot Control using Control Barrier Functions: Theory and Application Abstract: Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) have emerged as a powerful theoretical tool for designing controllers with provable safety guarantees. This work presents a novel methodology that leverages CBFs to synthesize controllers for multi-robot coordination. Two multi-agent use cases are explored, i.e., a) Non-Cooperative Herding and [...]
MSR Thesis Talk: Yuyao Shi
Title: A Learning Approach to Understand How Spinal Cord Learns Multiple Behaviors Abstract: The spinal cord plays a crucial role in the control of human locomotion, generating motor patterns and coordinating reflex responses to sensory signals. Although this spinal control is traditionally viewed as a simple relay system, more recent neurophysiological evidence points to a [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk: FNU Abhimanyu
Title: Improving Robotic Ultrasound AI Using Optical Flow Abstract: Ultrasound is an important modality for medical intervention such as vascular access because it is safe, portable, and low-cost. However, ultrasound scanning requires trained sonographers who are scarce, and it can be challenging to perform ultrasound examinations in disaster or battlefield scenarios. This motivates us to automate [...]
Vision-based Proprioceptive and Tactile Sensing for Soft Robots
Abstract: Soft robotic manipulators present many unique advantages in difficult manipulation tasks. The inherent compliance of soft robots' constituent deformable material makes them safe and reliable in delicate tasks such as harvesting fruit and assisting in household work. To address challenges in proprioceptive and tactile sensing for soft robots, we present a family of vision-based [...]
MSR Thesis Talk: Lucas Casanova De Oliveira Nogueira
Title: SuperLoop: a LIDAR-based SLAM Back-end for Underground Exploration Abstract: Robots deployed in underground scenarios require a SLAM system that can handle a variety of challenges, such as the absence of GPS, large scale maps, bad illumination, and geometrically degenerate environments. It is nearly impossible for any SLAM solution to handle all these challenges perfectly, specially [...]
Learning via Visual-Tactile Interaction
Abstract: Humans learn by interacting with their surroundings using all of their senses. The first of these senses to develop is touch, and it is the first way that young humans explore their environment, learn about objects, and tune their cost functions (via pain or treats). Yet, robots are often denied this highly informative and [...]