MSR Speaking Qualifier
Yeeho Song – MSR Thesis Talk
Title: Inverse Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Ground Navigation Using Aerial and Satellite Observation Data Abstract: Inverse Reinforcement Learning(IRL) is a supervised learning paradigm where a learner observes expert demonstrations to learn the hidden cost function to mimic the expert's behavior. Eliminating the need for elaborate feature engineering, deep IRL approaches have been gaining interests [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Satyaki Chakraborty – MSR Thesis Talk
Title: Detecting objects in videos under occlusion Abstract: While object detection in videos has received a lot of attention in the past few years, most existing methods in this domain do not target detecting objects when they are occluded. However, being able to detect or track an object of interest through occlusion has been [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk – Junjiao Tian
Title: Detailed Image Captioning with Hierarchical Attention Abstract: Automatic image description is the task of generating a natural sentence which reflects the visual content of an image. A lot of deep learning architectures have been explored in the past few years. While researchers have made great improvement on generating syntactically correct sentences by learning from [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk – Karen Orton
Title: Inching for Planetary Rovers Abstract: . Inching, also called push-rolling, is method of moving for vehicles that can change the position of their wheels relative to their body. Like an inchworm, it is possible to hold some wheels stationary while advancing the others and the body. In this research a test apparatus capable [...]
Sha (Yisha) Yi – MSR Thesis Talk
Title: Improving Scalability in Multi-Robot Systems with Abstraction and Specialization Abstract: Planning and controlling multi-robot systems is challenging due to high dimensionality. When the number of robots increases in the system, the complexity of computation grows exponentially. In this thesis, we examine the scalability problem in planning and control of the multi-robot system. We propose [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk – Andy (Chieh-En) Tsai
Title: A Generative Approach for Socially Compliant Navigation Abstract: Robots navigating in human crowds need to optimize their paths not only for the efficiency of their tasks performance but also for the compliance to social norms. One of the key challenges in this context is due to the lack of suitable metrics for evaluating and [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Shubham Agrawal – MSR Thesis Talk
Title: 3D Face Geometry Capture Using Monocular Video Abstract: Accurate reconstruction of facial geometry has been one of the oldest tasks in computer vision. Despite being a long-studied problem, many modern methods fail to reconstruct realistic looking faces or rely on highly constrained environments for capture. High fidelity face reconstructions have so far been [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Tejas Khot – MSR Thesis Talk
Title: Unsupervised Learning for 3D Reconstruction and Blocks World Representation Abstract: Recovering the dense 3D structure of a scene from its images has been a long-standing goal in computer vision. Recent years have seen attempts of encoding richer priors into the geometry-based pipelines with the introduction of learning based methods. We argue that the form of 3D [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Yubo Zhang – MSR Thesis Talk
Title: A structured model for action detection Abstract: A dominant paradigm for learning-based approaches in computer vision is training generic models, such as ResNet for image recognition, or I3D for video understanding, on large datasets and allowing them to discover the optimal representation for the problem at hand. While this is an obviously attractive approach, [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Nilesh Kulkarni – MSR Thesis Talk
Title: Canonical Surface Mapping via Geometric Cycle Consistency Abstract: We explore the task of Canonical Surface Mapping (CSM). Specifically, given an image, we learn to map pixels on the object to their corresponding locations on an abstract 3D model of the category. But how do we learn such a mapping? A supervised approach would [...]
Yufei (Judy) Ye – MSR Thesis Talk
Title: Leveraging Structure for Generalization and Prediction in Visual System. Abstract: Our surrounding world is highly structured. Humans have a great capacity of understanding and leveraging those structures to generalize to novel scenarios and to predict the future. The thesis studies how computer vision systems benefit from the similar process -- leveraging inherent structures in [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Dhiraj Gandhi – MSR Thesis Talk
Title: Self-Supervised Robot Learning Abstract: Supervised learning has been used in robotics to solve various tasks like navigation, fine manipulation, etc. While it has shown a promising result, in most cases the supervision comes from the human agent. However, relying on human is a huge bottleneck to scale up these approaches. In this thesis, [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk – Chia Dai
Title: Few-Shot Learning for Semantic Segmentation Abstract: Most learning architectures for segmentation task require a significant amount of data and annotations, especially in the task of segmentation, where each pixel is assigned to a class. Few-shot segmentation aims to replace large amount of training data with only a few densely annotated samples. In this talk, [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Subhodeep Mitra – MSR Thesis Talk
Title: A fast algorithm for consecutive ones with applications in item labeling Abstract: We develop and analyze a general problem in a crowd-sourced setting: users pick a label from a set of candidates for a set of items; the problem is to determine the most likely label for each item, as well as a ranking [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Aashi Manglik – MSR Thesis Talk
Title: Real-Time Collision Forecasting from Monocular Video Abstract: We explore the possibility of using a single monocular camera to forecast the time to collision between a suitcase-shaped robot being pushed by its user and other nearby pedestrians. We develop a purely image-based deep learning approach that directly estimates the time to collision without the need [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Kevin Christensen – MSR Thesis Talk
*LOCATION CHANGE TO NEWELL SIMON HALL ROOM 1305* Title: Computer Vision for Live Map Updates Abstract: Real-time traffic monitoring has had widespread success via crowd-sourced GPS data. While drivers benefit from this low-level, low-latency map information, any high-level traffic data such as road closures and accidents currently have very high latency since such systems rely solely [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk – Weizhao Shao
Title: Stereo Visual-Inertial-LiDAR Simultaneous Localization and Mapping Abstract: Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) is a fundamental task to mobile and aerial robotics. The goal of SLAM is to utilize onboard sensors for estimating the robot’s trajectory while reconstructing the surrounding environment (map) in real-time. The algorithm should also be able to perform loop closure, such [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Samuel Clarke – MSR Thesis Talk
Title: Robot Learning for Manipulation of Granular Materials Abstract: Granular materials are ubiquitous in household and industrial manipulation tasks, but their dynamics are difficult to model analytically or through simulation. During manipulation, they provide rich multimodal sensory feedback. We present a robotic system we constructed for investigating manipulation of granular materials. We present [...]
Gengshan Yang – MSR Thesis Talk
Title: Volumetric Correspondence Networks for Stereo Matching and Optical Flow Abstract: Many classic tasks in vision, such as the estimation of optical flow or stereo disparities, can be cast as dense correspondence matching. Well-known techniques for doing so make use of a cost volume, which is typically a 3D/4D tensor of match costs between all [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Jack Yang – MSR Thesis Talk
Title: Surfel-based RGB-D Reconstruction and SLAM with Global and Local Consistency Abstract: Achieving high surface reconstruction accuracy in dense mapping has been a desirable target for both robotics and vision communities. In the robotics literature, simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) systems use depth-enabled cameras to reconstruct a dense map of the environment. They leverage [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Kevin Pluckter – MSR Thesis Talk
Title: Precision UAV Landing in Unstructured Environments Abstract: The autonomous landing of a drone is an important part of autonomous flight. One way to have a high certainty of safety in landing is to return the drone to the same location it took-off from. Current implementations of the return-to-home functionality fall short when relying solely [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Zimo Li – MSR Thesis Talk
Title: Joint Surface Reconstruction from Monocular Vision and LiDAR Abstract: In recent years, dense reconstruction gains popularity because of its broad applications in inspection, mapping, and planning. Cameras or LiDARs are generally deployed for 3D dense reconstruction. However, current reconstruction pipelines based on cameras or LiDARs have significant limitations in achieving an accurate and [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Bhavan Jasani – MSR Thesis Talk
Title: Automatic detection of human affective behavior in dyadic conversations Abstract: Emotion is communicated through face, voice, and body motion in interpersonal contexts. Yet, most approaches to automatic detection emphasize a single modality (especially face or voice), ignore social context, and focus on well-defined signs of emotion (e.g., smile). This thesis addresses multimodal, interpersonal emotion [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Aaron Roth – MSR Thesis Talk
Title: Structured Representations for Behaviors of Autonomous Robots Abstract: Autonomous robot behavior can be captured in many ways: as code, as modules of code, in an unstructured form such as a neural net, or in one of several more structured formats such as a graph, table, or tree. This talk explores structured representations that [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Travers Rhodes – MSR Thesis Talk
Title: Vision and Improved Learned-Trajectory Replay for Assistive-Feeding and Food-Plating Robots Abstract: Food manipulation offers an interesting frontier for robotics research because of the direct application of this research to real-world problems and the challenges involved in robust manipulation of deformable food items. In this talk, we focus on the challenges associated with robots manipulating [...]
Kevin Zhang – MSR Thesis Talk
Title: Leveraging Multimodal Sensory Data for Robust Cutting Abstract: Cutting food is a challenging task due to the variety of material properties across food items. In addition, different events occur during the slicing process that need to be monitored and detected for robust execution, such as when a knife has completely cut through a [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk – Edward Ahn
Title: Toward Safe Reinforcement Learning in the Real World Abstract: Control for mobile robots in slippery, rough terrain at high speeds is difficult. One approach to designing controllers for complex, non-uniform dynamics in unstructured environments is to use model-free learning-based methods. However, these methods often lack the necessary notion of safety which is needed [...]
MSR Thesis Talk – Xianyi Cheng
Title: Data-Efficient Stage Classification and Failure Detection for Robotic Screwdriving Abstract: Screwdriving is one of the most common assembly methods, yet its full automation is still challenging, especially for small screws. A critical reason is that existing techniques perform poorly in process monitoring and failure prediction. In addition, most solutions are essentially data-driven, thereby [...]
Wenxuan Zhou – MSR Thesis Talk
Title: Environment Generalization in Deep Reinforcement Learning Abstract: A key challenge in deep reinforcement learning (RL) is environment generalization: a policy trained to solve a task in one environment often fails to solve the same task in a slightly different test environment. In this work, we propose the ``Environment-Probing'' Interaction (EPI) policy, which allows the agent [...]
Abhijat Biswas – MSR Thesis Talk
Title: Human Torso Pose Forecasting for the Real World Abstract: Anticipatory human intent modeling is important for robots operating alongside humans in dynamic or crowded environments. Humans often telegraph intent through posture cues, such as torso or head cues. In this paper, we describe a computationally lightweight approach to human torso pose recovery and forecasting [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Anjana Kakecochi Nellithimaru – MSR Thesis Talk
Title: Object-level visual SLAM for plant modeling Abstract: A 3D model that can capture the finer details of the plant structure as well as the overall field statistics, plays an important role in automating agriculture. However, modeling and mapping an agricultural field is challenging due to dynamics, illumination conditions and limited texture inherent in an outdoor environment. We propose a pipeline that combines the recent [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk – Aman Khurana
Title: Behavior planning at roundabouts About the talk: Roundabouts or traffic circles represent a significant portion of unsignalized intersections commonly found in urban and rural roads and pose a specific challenge for autonomous or self-driving cars. In this work, we present model-free techniques that allow a self-driving car to navigate a roundabout safely. We [...]
Arpita Routray – MSR Thesis Talk
Title: Towards retinal membrane peeling with a handheld robotic instrument Abstract: Vitreoretinal surgery procedures demand high precision and have to be performed with limited visualization and access. One such procedure is membrane peeling, which involves peeling of the 5-10 µm thick internal limiting membrane around macular holes. Using virtual fixtures in conjunction with robotic [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk – Sumit Kumar
Title: Spatiotemporal Modeling using Recurrent Neural Processes Abstract: Spatiotemporal processes, such as temperature in an area, motion of a vehicle, etc., depend on the spatial features of the underlying phenomena as well as time. Developing models that can estimate both mean and uncertainty associated with the prediction is important for building robust systems capable of [...]
Sudharshan Suresh – MSR Thesis Talk
Title: Localization and Active Exploration in Indoor Underwater Environments Abstract: Autonomous underwater vehicles have the potential to inspect and map indoor underwater environments, such as spent nuclear fuel pools and ship ballast tanks. Towards this, the thesis makes contributions in the domains of visual localization and active SLAM for underwater environments. In the first work, [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Cong Li – MSR Thesis Talk
Title: Multi-Sensor Fusion for Robust Simultaneous Localization and Mapping Abstract: Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) consists of the estimation of the state of the robot, and the reconstruction of the surrounding environment simultaneously. Over the last few decades, numerous state-of-the-art SLAM algorithms are proposed and frequently utilized in the robotics community. However, a SLAM algorithm [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk – Naman Gupta
Title: State Estimation for Legged Robots using Proprioceptive Sensors Abstract: Mobile robots need good estimates of their state to perform closed-loop control in structured and unstructured environments. A number of existing algorithms rely on data fusion from multiple sensors to compute these estimates. This work focuses on state estimation using sensors which only measure [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk – Harjatin Baweja
Title: Leveraging Computer Vision and Reinforcement Learning for contact and non-contact based plant phenotyping. Abstract: Effective plant breeding requires scientists to find correspondences between genetic markers and desirable physical traits (phenotypes) of the genotype. Robotics can aid the acceleration of breeding pipeline by facilitating high throughput plant phenotyping. In this thesis we propose [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk – Suhit Kodgule
Title: Active Sampling for Planetary Rover Exploration Abstract: Planetary Robotics research has expanded beyond simply developing robust navigation strategies for rovers to providing them with the capability of performing intelligent actions so as to develop a better interpretation and understanding of the environment. This will become essential in the future, when rovers explore regions far [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Matthew Collins – MSR Thesis Talk
Title: Efficient Planning for High-Speed MAV Flight in Unknown Environments Using Sparse Topological Graphs Abstract: Safe high-speed autonomous navigation for MAVs in unknown environments requires fast planning to enable the robot to adapt and react quickly to incoming information about obstacles within the world. Furthermore, when operating in environments not known a priori, the robot [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk – Siva Chaitanya Mynepalli
Title: Recognizing Tiny Faces Abstract: Objects are naturally captured over a continuous range of distances, causing dramatic changes in appearance, especially at low resolutions. Recognizing such small objects at range is an open challenge in object recognition. In this paper, we explore solutions to this problem by tackling the fine-grained task of face recognition. State-of-the-art embeddings [...]
MSR Thesis Talk – Matt Martone
Title: Design and Control of a Large Modular Hexapod Abstract: Legged robotic systems have made great strides in recent years, but unlike wheeled robots, limbed locomotion does not scale well. Long legs demand huge torques, driving up actuator size and onboard battery mass. This relationship results in massive structures that lack the safety, portability, [...]
MSR Thesis Talk: Jenny Nan
Title: Combining Deep Learning and Verification for Precise Object Instance Detection Abstract: Deep learning based object detectors often return false positives with very high confidence. Although they optimize generic detection performance, such as mean average precision (mAP), they are not designed for reliability. For a reliable detection system, if a high confidence detection is [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis talk – Vasu Agrawal
Title: Ground Up Design of a Multi-modal Object Localization System Abstract: Rapid situational awareness is the key to enabling a successful response from first responders during an emergency, where time is of the essence. Emergency personnel are often sent into incident scenes to gather information, but this is often a dangerous and slow process. Subterranean environments [...]
MSR Thesis Talk – Swaminathan Gurumurthy
Title: Improving generalization in data-driven models with task-specific knowledge Abstract: With the rise of the over-parameterized deep learning models and massive datasets, many have started advocating towards minimizing the amount of prior knowledge added to a learning model. Ironically, the traditional machine learning community advocated for exactly the opposite. Whereas the latter assumes knowledge of [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Aditya Dhawale – MSR Thesis Talk
Title: Hierarchical Gaussian Distributions for Real-Time SLAM ZOOM Link: (Virtual Presentation) https://cmu.zoom.us/j/7210519673 Abstract: We present Gaussian distributions as structure primitives in a hierarchical multi-fidelity framework to enable accurate real-time Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) using uncertain depth data. Real-time mapping and localization capabilities on a mobile robot can enable deployment of robots in real-world scenarios. An autonomous system must [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Qian Long – MSR Thesis Talk
ZOOM Link: https://cmu.zoom.us/j/7263914910 Title: Evolutionary Population Curriculum for Scaling Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning Abstract: In multi-agent games, the complexity of the environment can grow exponentially as the number of agents increases, so it is particularly challenging to learn good policies when the agent population is large. We introduce Evolutionary Population Curriculum (EPC), a curriculum learning [...]
Wen-Hsuan Chu – MSR Thesis Talk
ZOOM Link: https://cmu.zoom.us/j/4417558334 Title: Neural Batch Sampling with Reinforcement Learning for Semi-Supervised Anomaly Detection Abstract: We are interested in the detection and segmentation of anomalies in images where the anomalies are typically small (i.e., a small tear in woven fabric, bro-ken pin of an IC chip). From a statistical learning point of view, anomalies have [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Chendi Lin – MSR Thesis Talk
Zoom Link: https://cmu.zoom.us/j/95571441174 Title: Online Connectivity-aware Dynamic Distribution for Heterogeneous Multi-Robot Systems Abstract: In many multi-robot applications the robot team needs to execute multiple tasks simultaneously with different task-related controllers. To ensure effective coordination and at the same time avoid collisions, the robots have to stay connected. In this work, we consider the problem where a [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Robert Li – MSR Thesis Talk
Zoom Link: https://cmu.zoom.us/j/91465601940 Title: Solving Puzzles Like A Human With Two Stage Random Search Abstract: Humans are remarkably good at solving novel physical puzzles and tasks, with only a basic understanding of abstract concepts like kinematics, gravity, mass, friction, and inertia. We wanted to replicate how a human would explore the search space of a problem. [...]
Samantha Speer – MSR Thesis Talk
Zoom Link: https://cmu.zoom.us/j/98546775449 Title: Grounding Abstract Concepts With Robotic Manipulatives Abstract: Technology in education has been on the rise for a long time, developing from computer manipulatives to mobile apps and finally into robotics. Robotics has the unique affordances of the classic physical manipulatives and virtual manipulative, providing both a physical aspect along with [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Vaibhav (Vai) Viswanathan – MSR Thesis Talk
Zoom Link: https://cmu.zoom.us/j/2112607862 Title: Bitwise Trajectory Elimination: An Efficient Method for Filtering Trajectory Libraries for Quadrotor Navigation Abstract: Quadrotor flight in unknown environments is challenging due to the limited range of perception sensors, state estimation drift, and limited onboard computation. In this work, we tackle these challenges by proposing an efficient, reactive planning approach. We introduce [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Xi (Sandy) Sun – MSR Thesis Talk
Zoom link: https://cmu.zoom.us/j/94541819048 Title: Visual-Inertial Source Localization for Co-Robot Rendezvous Abstract: We aim to enable robots to visually localize a target person through the aid of an additional sensing modality -- the target person's 3D inertial measurements. The need for such technology may arise when a robot is to meet a person in [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Harsh Agarwal – MSR Thesis Talk
Zoom Link: https://cmu.zoom.us/j/99544484313 Title DeepBLE - Generalizing RSSI based Localization Across Different Devices Abstract Accurate smartphone localization ( < 1-meter error) for indoor navigation using only RSSI received from a set of BLE beacons remains a challenging problem, due to the inherent noise of RSSI measurements. To overcome the large variance in [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Xia Chen – MSR Thesis Talks
ZOOM Link: https://cmu.zoom.us/j/93785335144 Title: Combining Semantic and Geometric Understanding for Modern Visual Recognition Tasks Abstract: For autonomous driving perception, visual data, such as camera image and LiDAR point cloud, consists of two aspects: semantic feature and geometric structure. While usually studied separately, these two properties can be combined and jointly used by a unified framework. [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Himanshi Yadav – MSR Thesis Talk
Zoom Link: https://cmu.zoom.us/j/96397153508 Title: A Comprehensive Study of Unsupervised Classification Techniques for Hyperspectral Datasets Abstract: Unsupervised learning and in this specific research, clustering regional composition in hyperspectral images, poses significant challenges in the fields of machine learning and remote sensing. Hyperspectral images capture the spectral information in many wavelengths, as opposed to typical images that [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Alan Zhao – MSR Thesis Talk
Zoom Link: https://cmu.zoom.us/j/98144379626 Title Learning Precise and Task-oriented Grasps for Robotic Assembly Abstract Robust, precise, and task-oriented grasp planning is vital for autonomous robotic assembly. It requires reasoning about the object geometry and preconditions of a task so as to properly grasp an object and complete the down-stream tasks. However, achieving such [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Michael Tatum – MSR Thesis Talk
Archived Zoom Video Password: 1u%i4YO% Title: Communications Coverage in Unknown Underground Environments Abstract:In field robotics, maintaining communications between the user at a stationary basestation and all deployed robots is essential. This task's difficulty increases when the test environment is underground and the environment is unknown to the operator and robots. A common approach [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Brendan Miller – MSR Thesis Talk
Zoom Link: https://cmu.zoom.us/j/96617143856 Title: IBB-Net: Fast Iterative Bounding Box Regression for Point Clouds Abstract: Currently, most point cloud based detection pipelines are focused on producing high accuracy results while requiring significant computational resources and a high-end GPU. Our research explores how to reduce the computational overhead by improving a key element of detection: bounding box regression. We [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Aditya Agarwal – MSR Thesis Talk
Zoom Link: https://cmu.zoom.us/j/3276236755 Title: Fast and High-Quality GPU-based Deliberative Perception for Object Pose Estimation Abstract: Pose estimation of known objects is fundamental to tasks such as robotic grasping and manipulation. The need for reliable grasping imposes stringent accuracy requirements on pose estimation in cluttered, occluded scenes in dynamic environments. Existing methods either require large sets of [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Josh Jaekel – MSR Thesis Talk
Zoom Link: https://cmu.zoom.us/j/97161117200?pwd=QlpkS0hFOFVLRDlKVlFqby9JbWZTUT09 Title: Towards Robust Multi-Camera Visual Inertial Odometry Abstract: Visual inertial odometry (VIO) has become an increasingly popular method of obtaining a state estimate on board smaller robots like micro aerial vehicles (MAVs). While VIO has demonstrated impressive results in certain environments, there is still work to be done in improving the robustness of [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
John Mai – MSR Thesis Talk
Zoom Link: https://cmu.zoom.us/j/7518832261 Title: System Design, Modelling, and Control for an Off-Road Autonomous Ground Vehicle Abstract: Autonomy in passenger road vehicles has long been a goal for many research groups and companies, and there has been a significant amount of focus on achieving this endeavour. A lesser focused upon area is the task of precise autonomous [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Zoom Link: https://cmu.zoom.us/j/5523238059 Title: Robust Instance Tracking via Uncertainty Flow Abstract: Current state-of-the-art trackers often fail due to distractors and large object appearance changes. In this work, we explore the use of dense optical flow to improve tracking robustness. Our main insight is that, because flow estimation can also have errors, we need [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Sarthak Ahuja – MSR Thesis Talk
Zoom Link: https://cmu.zoom.us/j/8978517404 Title: Visual Assessment for Non-Disruptive Object Extraction Abstract: Robots operating in human environments need to perform a variety of dexterous manipulation tasks on object arrangements that have complex physical support relationships, e.g. procuring utensils from a large pile of dishes, grabbing a bottle from a stuffed fridge, or fetching a book from a loaded [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Eric Dexheimer – MSR Thesis Talk
Location: https://cmu.zoom.us/j/98262481359?pwd=dnN4UERmQlF6dVVROTQ1czYrU215UT09 Title: Efficient Multiresolution Scrolling Grid for MAV Obstacle Avoidance Abstract: In this talk, we propose the use of an efficient, structured multiresolution representation for robot mapping and planning. We focus on expanding the sensor range of dense local grids for memory-constrained platforms. While multiresolution data structures have been proposed previously, we avoid processing [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Tanmay Agarwal – MSR Thesis Talk
Zoom link: https://cmu.zoom.us/j/3388909661 Title: On-Policy Reinforcement Learning for Learning to Drive in Urban Settings Abstract: Traditional autonomous vehicle pipelines that follow a modular approach have been very successful in the past both in academia and industry, which has led to autonomy deployed on road. Though this approach provides ease of interpretation, its generalizability to unseen [...]
Jay Patrikar – MSR Thesis Talk
Zoom link: https://cmu.zoom.us/j/93391276533?pwd=RTM4NTc0cTJETmRudGcwenNCSVgzdz09 Title: Wind-Field Estimation and Curvature Continuous Path Planning for Low Altitude Urban Aerial Mobility Abstract: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) operating in dense urban areas need the ability to generate wind-aware collision-free, smooth, dynamically feasible trajectories between two locations. The complex and high-rise structure of the modern urban landscape affects the wind flow [...]
Benjamin Freed – MSR Thesis Talk
Where?:https://cmu.zoom.us/j/96355036481?pwd=OCtBeWZpMnZsZzFlRkJWc2dkZW5qUT09 Title: Discrete Communication Learning via Backpropagation for Distributed Computing on Bandwidth-Limited Communication Networks Abstract: Efficient inter-agent communication is an important requirement for both cooperative multi-agent robotics tasks, as well as distributed computing. In both of these domains, the rate at which information can be transferred between robots or computing nodes is often [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Tanvir Parhar – MSR Thesis Talk
Zoom Link:https://cmu.zoom.us/j/3399055387 Title: Applications of Deep Learning for Robotic Agriculture. Abstract: Agricultural automation is a varied and challenging field, with tasks ranging from detection to sizing and from manipulation to navigation. These are also precursors to effective plant breeding and management. Making plant measurements by manually scouting is labor-intensive and intractable at large scale. [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Hitesh Arora – MSR Thesis Talk
Zoom link: https://cmu.zoom.us/j/4937138807 Title: Off-Policy Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Driving Abstract: Modern autonomous driving systems continue to face the challenges of handling complex and variable multi-agent real-world scenarios. Some subsystems, such as perception, use deep learning-based approaches to leverage large amounts of data to generalize to novel scenes. Other subsystems, such as planning [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Scott Sun – MSR Thesis Talk
Zoom link: https://cmu.zoom.us/j/93097644031?pwd=RzZVSXEvdE5zZ0RDaU9FdmRUMU1vQT09 Title: Accurate Orientation Estimates for Deep Inertial Odometry Abstract: Many smartphone applications use inertial measurement units (IMUs) to sense movement, but the use of these sensors for pedestrian localization can be challenging due to their noise characteristics. Recent deep inertial odometry approaches to pedestrian navigation have demonstrated the increasing feasibility of inertial navigation. However, [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Allen Cheng – MSR Thesis Talk
Zoom link: https://cmu.zoom.us/j/6056258382 Title: Search-Based Planning with Extend Operator Abstract: Sampling-based approaches are often favored in robotics for high-dimensional motion planning for their fast coverage of the search space. However, at best they offer asymptotic guarantees on completeness and solution quality, and returned paths are typically unpredictable due to their inherent stochasticity. By [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Chenfeng Tu – MSR Thesis Talk
Location: https://cmu.zoom.us/j/96696044200?pwd=MVl4aUpiZlYvYlRwRmF1SVBUeGx6Zz09 Title: On-the-fly Targetless Extrinsics Calibration For Multi-Stereo Systems Without Field-of-View Overlap Abstract: In this talk, we propose an on-the-fly extrinsics calibration method for stereo pairs lacking overlapping field of view that is robust to visual odometry errors. Multi-stereo systems are becoming increasingly popular because of their large field of view (FoV) that benefits [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Shuoqi Chen – MSR Thesis Talk
Zoom link: https://cmu.zoom.us/j/9608506704 Title: Towards Geometric Motion Planning for 3-link Kinematic Systems Abstract: Geometric mechanics offers a powerful mathematical framework for studying locomotion for mobile systems. Despite the well-established literature, challenges remain when using geometric mechanics to design gaits for robots made of multi-link chain; in this thesis, we look at two of them. First, [...]
Raunaq Bhirangi – MSR Thesis Talk
Zoom link: https://cmu.zoom.us/j/93803046130?pwd=dE5LU21lakcxNjBmZ0EvVDdNOWswdz09 Title: Learning Families of Behaviors for Legged Locomotion using Model-Free Deep Reinforcement Learning Abstract: Conventional planning and control of highly articulated legged robots is challenging because of the high dimensionality of the state space, and such conventional techniques normally produce a single point solution. In this work, we present a [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
William Qi – MSR Thesis Talk
Location: https://cmu.zoom.us/j/96923127678?pwd=TWt3Zk5neFUzSlJWUjZEN2F6UVhudz09 Title: Representation Learning for Safe Autonomous Movement Abstract: Mobile robots have become an increasingly common presence in our homes and on our roads. To move safely within these shared spaces, autonomous agents must understand how other dynamic actors behave and how such behavior influences the navigability of the surrounding scene. Towards this goal, we [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Ryan Coulson – MSR Thesis Talk
Zoom link: https://cmu.zoom.us/j/91138367616 Title: Soft Materials Architectures for Robot Manipulation Abstract: Robot manipulation has been a prolific subject of academic research for several decades - however, today's robotic manipulators have yet to demonstrate an ability to perform robust and versatile dexterous manipulation. This challenge can largely be attributed to a tradeoff between complexity and capability [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Anish Bhattacharya – MSR Thesis Talk
Zoom link: https://cmu.zoom.us/j/4413360562 Title: Toward Increased Airspace Safety: Quadrotor Guidance for Targeting Aerial Objects Abstract: As the market for commercially available unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) booms, there is an increasing number of small, teleoperated or autonomous aircraft found in protected or sensitive airspace. Existing solutions for removal of these aircraft are either military-grade and too [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Aaron Miller – MSR Thesis Talk
Zoom link: https://cmu.zoom.us/j/95386019509?pwd=cmNnTm9lWWlNbTh1SmQ0RU5PVTBmQT09 Title: Cooperative Perception for Pairs of Self-Driving Cars Abstract: Fully autonomous vehicles are expected to share the road with less advanced vehicles for a significant period of time. Furthermore, an increasing number of vehicles on the road are equipped with a variety of low-fidelity sensors which provide some perception and localization [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Sara Misra – MSR Thesis Talk
Zoom link: https://cmu.zoom.us/j/3216213856 Title: Learning-based modular framework for environment-adaptive planning in exploration tasks Abstract: Search-based path planning has spawned a number of different solutions using different paradigms and strategies, both generalized and specific to certain problems, representations, and environments. Split into heuristic and non-heuristic based approaches, where heuristic-based approaches, embedded within these approaches [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Blake Buchanan – MSR Thesis Talk
Location: https://cmu.zoom.us/j/99874277969?pwd=Q1MvczNhWTB4UmF3UXFOMEFtVG1uZz09 Title: Mechanics and Control of Coupled Interactions in Ambient Media Abstract: Many multi-agent systems in nature comprise agents that interact with, and respond to, the dynamics of their environment. For example, fish school based on the fundamental fluid phenomena of vortex shedding, birds shed leading-edge vortices in formation for flocking, and E. coli bacteria [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Xueting Li – MSR Thesis Talk
Title: Multi-agent Deception in Attack-Defense Stochastic Game Abstract: In adversarial scenarios, defending oneself by using deception has recently been studied. A popular direction is to design deceptive defense strategies when the defender has complete information of the game and the attacker doesn't. The work on deception so far models the games as a signal game [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Shubhankar Deshpande – MSR Thesis Talk
Where: https://cmu.zoom.us/j/92520469322?pwd=SjlpTVI5MGdtN1VBakFkRG82bStYQT09 Meeting ID: 925 2046 9322 Passcode: 323696 Calendar Invite: https://tinyurl.com/shuby-msr-thesis-talk-invite Title: Towards Interpretable RL — Interactive Visualizations to Increase Insight Abstract: Visualization tools for supervised learning (SL) allow users to interpret, introspect, and gain an intuition for the successes and failures of their models. While reinforcement learning (RL) practitioners ask many of [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Rohith Pillai – MSR Thesis Talk
ZOOM Link: https://cmu.zoom.us/j/95344974779?pwd=aXlmbktDMFZIUjhyeTRuNWxmeXcwdz09 Meeting ID: 953 4497 4779 Passcode: 783497 Title: 3D Face Reconstruction from Monocular Video and its Applications In the Wild Abstract: 3D face reconstruction is a very popular field of computer vision due to its applications in social media, entertainment and health. However, ever since the introduction of 3D morphable models as [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Mayra Melendez – MSR Thesis Talk
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk – Hans Kumar
Title: Multi-Session Periodic SLAM for Legged Robots Abstract: Methods for state estimation that rely on visual information are challenging on dynamic robots because of rapid changes in the viewing angle of onboard cameras. In this thesis, we show that by leveraging structure in the way that dynamic robots locomote, we can increase the feasibility [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk: Eagle Dapeng Zhao
Title: Predicting Human Trajectories by Learning and Matching Patterns Zoom Link: https://cmu.zoom.us/j/93356993095?pwd=Nzd3a09PbG9mVkV5blFVaU5nRk1GQT09 Abstract: As more and more robots are envisioned to cooperate with humans sharing the same space, it is desired for robots to be able to predict others' trajectories to navigate in a safe and self-explanatory way. We propose a Convolutional Neural Network-based approach [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk: Shengcao Cao
Title: Efficient Model Performance Estimation via Feature Histories Abstract: An important step in the task of neural network design, such as hyper-parameter optimization (HPO) or neural architecture search (NAS), is the evaluation of a candidate model's performance. Given fixed computational resources, one can either invest more time training each model to obtain more accurate estimates [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk: Steven Lee
Title: Learning to Represent and Accurately Arrange Food Items Abstract: Arrangements of objects are commonplace in a myriad of everyday scenarios, such as decorations at one’s home, displays at museums, and plates of food at restaurants. An efficient personal robot should be able to learn how to robustly recreate an arrangement using only a few [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk: Amrita Sawhney
Title: Learning to Perceive and Manipulate Diverse Food Materials Through Interaction Abstract: The home kitchen environment presents many challenges for an autonomous cooking robot, such as the deformability of food items, the wide range of material properties of food, and the complex interaction dynamics involved in food manipulation tasks. Material properties are important when interacting [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk: Haidar Jamal
Title: Localization for Lunar Micro-Rovers Abstract: This talk presents an avionics and localization system that enables a lunar micro-rover to navigate autonomously. This system is important for the latest class of small, low-powered, and fast robots going to the Moon in search of polar ice. The first component of the system is an Extended [...]
MSR Thesis Talk: Akash Sharma
Title: Incorporating Semantic Structure in SLAM Abstract: For robots to understand the environment they interact with, a combination of geometric information and semantic information is imperative. In this talk, I propose a fast and scalable Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) system that represents indoor scenes as a graph of semantic objects. Leveraging the observation that [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Yaadhav Raaj MSR Thesis Talk
Title: Exploiting Uncertainty in Triangulation Light Curtains for Object Tracking and Depth Estimation Abstract: Active sensing through the use of Adaptive Depth Sensors is a nascent field, with potential in areas such as Advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS). One such class of sensor is the Triangulation Light Curtain, which was developed in the Illumination and Imaging [...]
MSR Thesis Talk: Zhipeng Bao
Title: Introducing Generative Models to Facilitate Multi-Task Visual Learning Abstract: Motivated by multi-task learning of shared feature representations, this talk considers a novel problem of learning a shared generative model that can facilitate multi-task learning. We present two systems to utilize generative modeling for other visual tasks. The first system focuses on learning a generative [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk: Shanshan Jessy Xie
Title: GPU based perception via search for object pose estimation with RGB data Abstract: Known object pose estimation is essential for a robot to interact with the real world. It is the first and fundamental task if the robot wants to manipulate the object. This problem is particularly challenging when the environment is complicated [...]
MSR Thesis Talk – Mosam Dabhi
Title: Multi-view NRSfM: Affordable setup for high-fidelity 3D reconstruction Abstract: Triangulating a point in 3D space should only require two corresponding camera projections. However in practice, expensive multi-view setups -- involving tens sometimes hundreds of cameras -- are required to obtain the high fidelity 3D reconstructions necessary for many modern applications. In this talk, we argue [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk: Manan Shah
ZOOM Link: https://www.google.com/url?q=https://cmu.zoom.us/j/93845075967?pwd%3DbndGc3NvaUVDVFFTTDZvektrNWJqdz09&sa=D&source=calendar&ust=1623592142330000&usg=AOvVaw1xfNPT5c59CQGKzR2bw5sO ID: 93845075967 Passcode: 159459 Title: 3D SLAM for Powered Lower Limb Prosthesis Abstract: During locomotion, humans use visual feedback to adjust their leg movement when navigating the environment. This natural behavior is lost, however, for lower-limb amputees, as current control strategies of prosthetic legs do not typically consider environment perception. With [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk: Dennis Melamed
Title: Learnable Spatio-Temporal Map Embeddings for Deep Inertial Localization Abstract: Pedestrian localization systems often fuse inertial odometry with map information via hand-defined methods to reduce odometry drift, but such methods are sensitive to noise and struggle to generalize across odometry sources. To address the robustness problem in map utilization, we propose a system that forms a [...]
MSR Thesis Talk: Kshitij Goel
Title: Rapid Subsurface Exploration with Multiple Aerial Robots Abstract: This thesis develops a robotic exploration framework that allows for rapid and communication-efficient mapping of unknown environments with a team of aerial robots. Aerial robots can provide rapid and agile mobility in diverse environments where ground mobility is either severely constrained or impossible. However, high-speed flight [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk: Albert Ye
Title: BusEdge: Efficient Live Video Analytics for Transit Buses via Edge Computing Abstract: Many vehicles like transit buses are now routinely fitted with cameras. These live visual data are invaluable to achieve real-time traffic monitoring, but it is intractable to handle such a gigantic amount of data either locally or in the cloud due to [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk: Yunze Man
Title: Multi-Echo 3D Object Detection Abstract: LiDAR sensors can be used to obtain a wide range of measurement signals other than a simple 3D point cloud, and those signals can be leveraged to improve perception tasks like 3D object detection. A single laser pulse can be partially reflected by multiple objects along its path, resulting [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Krishna Uppala – MSR Thesis Talk
Title: Exemplar free video retrieval. Abstract: Video retrieval of activities has a wide range of applications. In the traditional mode of operation, a collection of example videos describing the activities are given and the retrieval technique identifies other samples in a dataset that semantically match the examples provided. However, retrieval using a collection of example [...]
Ruixuan Liu – MSR Thesis Talk
Title: Data-efficient Behavior Prediction for Safe Human-Robot Collaboration. Abstract: Predicting human behavior is critical to facilitate safe and efficient human-robot collaboration (HRC). However, human behavior is difficult to predict due to the scarcity of human motion data. This work explores using online adaptation, an online approach, and data augmentation, an offline approach, to deal with the [...]
MSR Thesis Talk: Vidhi Jain
Title: Explainability in navigation policies Abstract: Today's autonomous agents have improved performance with learning and planning algorithms, but the applicability of such agents in the human-inhabited world is confined. Humans find it hard to explain the model's decision-making and thus, may not trust it as a teammate. While working with a machine learning model that [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk: Aditya Sripada
Title: Turning Behavior of Running Systems induced by Leg Placement Abstract: Compared to legged robots, animals and humans can perform much faster and larger turns, even when they run at high speeds. Such rapid turns require the body of a runner to reorient dynamically and in synchrony with its redirection during stance. While it is [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk: Rohit Jena
Title: Learning Mental Models of Experts in a Simulated Search and Rescue Scenario Abstract: Search and Rescue is a task where the rescuers need to be cognitively agile, strategically consistent, and efficient to save as many trapped victims as possible. In a team scenario, the rescuers must additionally coordinate with each other based on [...]
MSR Thesis Talk: Mohamad Qadri
Title: Robotic Vision for 3D Modeling and Sizing in Agriculture Abstract: Obtaining accurate perceptual information is a critical component in agricultural robotics since there is a heavy need for interaction with the environment to perform tasks such as pruning, harvesting, and phenotyping. In this thesis, we tackle the problem of perception and 3D modeling in [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk: Alex Baikovitz
Title: Underground Representations for Robot Localization and Mapping Abstract: There has been exciting recent progress in using radar as a sensor for robot navigation given its increased robustness to varying environmental conditions. However, within these different radar perception systems, ground penetrating radar (GPR) remains under-explored. By measuring structures beneath the ground, GPR can provide stable features that [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk: Ankur Deka
Title: On combining Reinforcement Learning & Adversarial Training Abstract: Reinforcement Learning (RL) allows us to train an agent to excel at a given sequential decision-making task by optimizing for a reward signal. Adversarial training involves a joint optimization scheme where an agent and an adversary compete against each other. In this work, we explore some [...]
MSR Thesis Talk: Zhengyi Luo
Title: Physics-based object-aware ego-centric human pose estimation Abstract: We investigate the roles of body kinematics, dynamics, and objects for 3D human pose estimation using a head-mounted camera. Human kinematics models play a key role in encoding the natural range of human motion, while dynamics models can react to the spatial arrangement between humans and objects [...]
MSR Thesis Talk: Tarasha Khurana
Title: Detecting Invisible People Abstract: Monocular object detection and tracking have improved drastically in recent years, but rely on a key assumption: that objects are visible to the camera. Many offline tracking approaches reason about occluded objects post-hoc, by linking together tracklets after the object re-appears, making use of reidentification (ReID). However, online tracking [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk: Sujay Bajracharya
work, we address the problem of goal-directed cloth manipulation, a challenging task due to the deformability of cloth. Our insight is that optical flow, a technique normally used for motion estimation in video, can also provide an effective representation for corresponding cloth poses across observation and goal images. We introduce FabricFlowNet (FFN), a cloth manipulation [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk: Edward Chen
Title: Towards Practical Ultrasound AI Across Real-World Patient Diversity Abstract: In the case of high-tempo, traumatic scenarios on the battlefield, real-time ultrasound (US) imaging serves as an enabler for countless possible robotic interventions. Having the ability to automatically segment anatomical landmarks in the body, such as arteries, veins, ligaments, and veins, for percutaneous procedures remains [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk: Haochen Wang
Title: Audiovisual ontology and robust representations via cross-modal fusion Abstract: The shrill of an ambulance siren and flashing lights, the hum of an accelerating car — important events often come to us simultaneously through sight and sound. We first consider the problem of identifying these events from raw, unlabeled audiovisual data of agents interacting with [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk: Viraj Parimi
Title: T-HTN: Timeline Based HTN Planning for Multi-Agent Robots Abstract: Planning in mission-critical systems like deep-space habitats with onboard robotic systems must be robust to unforeseen circumstances. Such systems are expected to complete a set of goals with different deadlines each day for routine maintenance while also accounting for emergencies. With the presence of [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk: Yiming Zuo
Title: Towards Self-supervised Object Discovery and Tracking Abstract: Object discovery and multiple object tracking (MOT) are two highly interrelated tasks that are known to be fundamental problems in computer vision, and are crucial for video understanding. Most existing methods rely on supervised training with human annotations, which is laborious and expensive. In this thesis, [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk: Qiao Gu
Title: Towards Object-generic 6D Pose Estimation Abstract: Pose estimation is a basic module in many robot manipulation pipelines. Estimating the pose of objects in the environment can be useful for grasping, motion planning, or manipulation. However, current state-of-the-art methods for pose estimation either rely on large annotated training sets or simulated data. Further, the long [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk: Divam Gupta
Title: End-to-End Deep Stereo Layout Estimation Abstract: Accurate layout estimation is crucial for planning and navigation in robotics applications, such as self-driving. In this paper, we introduce the Stereo Bird's Eye ViewNetwork (SBEVNet), a novel supervised end-to-end framework for estimation of bird's eye view layout from a pair of stereo images. Although our network [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Michael Tasota – MSR Thesis Talk
Title: Design of a Multimodal System for Social Emotional Learning in Early Childhood Classrooms Abstract: As the prevalence of mobile and touch-based devices continues to expand in society, so too does its impact on young children. With educational technologies also on the rise, young children benefit most from those technologies that are designed to [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk: Aaron Huang
Title: End-to-End Methods for Autonomous Driving in Simulation Abstract: Fully autonomous driving is considered one of the grand challenges of modern technology and a variety of approaches have emerged for creating and evaluating autonomous driving agents. The self-driving industry typically adopts a modular software architecture and uses large fleets of autonomous vehicles for data [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk
Title: Retrieval-based Novel Activity Detection in Untrimmed Videos Abstract: Accurately detecting activities in untrimmed videos is a challenging task as systems need to handle variance in object scales, multiple viewpoints, and multiple types of activities. Furthermore, in a real-world scenario, activity detectors are often required to detect novel kinds of activities when the need [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk: Howard Coffin
Title: Mutual Information Maps for Single and Multi-Target Ergodic Search Abstract: This thesis addresses use of multi-agent systems to perform autonomous search for moving targets. Target search has many applications, including search and rescue and surveillance, but most robotic systems used in these situations require human operators. Recent works have used ergodic search methods to [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk: Wanwen Chen
Title: Ultrasound-based Needle Tracking and Lateral Manipulation Planning for Common Needle Steering Abstract: Many medical interventions require inserting a needle towards the desired site. Robotic needle insertion can potentially provide reliable needle access independent of practitioner experience and availability. However, when the needle is inserted into heterogeneous tissue, the complicated needle-tissue interaction introduces multiple challenges [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk: Rohit Garg
Title: Coordinated Aerial Exploration of Subterranean Voids Abstract: Subterranean exploration has been thrust into the spotlight by the recent DARPA Subterranean Challenge. Teams are tasked with developing a multi-agent system that can rapidly navigate through unknown underground environments while sending back maps and other semantic information. A system with such capabilities has a wide [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk: Harvey Shi
Title: The design of a compact laser scanner and an integrated simulation environment for smart manufacturing Abstract: Advanced manufacturing is on the rise with the notable progress in the additive and hybrid manufacturing field. However, most of the existing solutions are open loop without sensory feedback because of the lack of a small form factor [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk: Daqian Cheng
Zoom link: https://cmu.zoom.us/j/99726348928?pwd=azlicW9qZk1Nc3BkQXBLT2d6djVBQT09 Meeting ID: 997 2634 8928 Passcode: 136122 Title: SLAM with Laser Profilers for High Definition Mapping in Confined Spaces Abstract: Three-dimensional reconstruction in confined spaces is important for the manufacturing of aircraft wings, the inspection of narrow pipes, the examination of turbine blades, etc. It is also challenging because confined spaces tend [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk: Quint Hester
Title: Graph Neural Networks for Wind Farm Yaw Optimization Abstract: In order to mitigate the effects of climate change, it is important to maximize the power output of our wind energy resources. Wind farm control is typically greedy, with all turbines facing directly into the wind. Due to wake interactions, this leads to reductions [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk: Henry Zhang
Title: On Visual-Aided LiDAR-Inertial Odometry System in Challenging Subterranean Environments Abstract: Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) is one of the fundamental components for autonomous robotic exploration. The goal of SLAM is to create an accurate map for the environment and provide robust state estimation for planning, control, and perception tasks. However, due to the [...]
MSR Thesis Talk: Ryan Darnley
Title: Communication Network Flow Control With LQR and Factor Graphs Abstract: Advances in the estimation and more recently the controls communities have leveraged the use of factor graphs to overcome problems of scalability and runtime in dynamical systems. In continuation of that work, we look to use factor graphs to perform LQR control on [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk: Shirsendu Halder
Title: Robust 3D reconstruction in noisy environments Abstract: Automated inspection in industrial manufacturing can minimize the total production cost of a part. Current inspection solutions often involve measuring a part manually, which interrupts the machining process. We present two non-contact real-time systems which integrate visual inspection in-line with CNC (computer numerical control) machines and ensures [...]
MSR Thesis Talk: Tejus Gupta
ZOOM Link: https://cmu.zoom.us/j/2388465851 Meeting ID: 238 846 5851 Google calendar invite link Title: Adaptive and Efficient Models for Intent Recognition Abstract: Assistive robots should have the ability to understand the intent of humans, predict their behavior, and plan to provide anticipatory assistance in complex real-life environments. In this thesis, we present adaptive and efficient algorithms for recognizing [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk: Siddharth Agrawal
Title: Learning to Imitate, Adapt and Communicate Abstract: For AI agents to co-exist with humans, they need to be able to learn from us humans, adapt to any perceived changes in our behavior, and communicate in a manner that is easily interpretable. In this work, we investigate the following 3 subproblems: Imitation Learning, Adaptation in Human-Agent [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk: Danny Vedova
Link: https://cmu.zoom.us/j/92810207130?pwd=blphbkovYVA2b1VoSmhuZ0h2bFRzZz09 Meeting ID: 928 1020 7130 Passcode: 721620 Title: Design and Analysis of a Control Pipeline for a Manipulator in Space Abstract: Many satellites are rapidly reaching the end of their lifespans, and risk de-orbiting if no action is taken. One common problem satellites face towards the end of their lifespans is that they are running [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk: Fan Jia
Zoom Link: https://cmu.zoom.us/j/9793644214?pwd=enpab3dPc0FBWVdqWDNrcVlabUJCZz09 Meeting ID: 979 364 4214 Passcode: 304453 Title: Trust-Aware Behavior Reflection for Robot Swarm Self-Healing Abstract: The deployment of robot swarms is influenced by real-world factors, such as motor issues, sensor failure, and wind disturbances. These factors cause the appearance of faulty robots. In a decentralized swarm, sharing incorrect information from faulty robots will lead to [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk: Tejas Zodage
Meeting Link: https://cmu.zoom.us/j/2427727031 Title: Point Cloud Registration as a Classification Problem Abstract: Point Cloud Registration(PCR) is an important step in fields such as robotic manipulation, augmented and virtual reality, SLAM, etc. In the context of computer vision, registration, in general, refers to the process of aligning data obtained from different frames, and as the [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk – Evan Harber
Title: Stiffness Mapping of Deformable Objects Through Supervised Embedding and Gaussian Process Regression Abstract: The stiffness map of a deformable object stores information about that object's surface compliance. Thus, through a stiffness map, we gain insight into the physical properties of that object. Depending on the object, an understanding of stiffness has applications ranging [...]
MSR Thesis Talk – Gaurav Parmar
Title: Spatially-Adaptive Multilayer GAN Inversion Abstract: Existing GAN inversion and editing methods are well suited for only a target images that contain aligned objects with a clean background, such as portraits and animal faces, but often struggle for more difficult categories with complex scene layouts and object occlusions, such as cars, animals, and outdoor images. [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk – Manash Pratim Das
Title: Model-Accuracy Aware Anytime Planning with Simulation Verification for Navigating Complex Terrains Abstract: Off-road and unstructured environments often contain complex patches of various types of terrain, rough elevation changes, deformable objects, etc. An autonomous ground vehicle traversing such environments experiences physical interactions that are extremely hard to model at scale and thus very hard to [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk – Akshay Dharamavaram
Title: Stabilizing the Training Dynamics of Generative Models using Self-Supervision Abstract: Generative Models have been shown to be adept in mimicking the behavior of an unknown distribution solely from bootstrapped data. However, deep learning models have been shown to overfit in either the minimization or maximization stage of the two player min-max game, resulting [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk – Vivek Roy
Title: Smartphone localization for Indoor Pedestrian Navigation Abstract: Global positioning system (GPS) interfacing with applications such as Google Maps has proven very useful for navigation in outdoor open settings. However in crowded metropolitan environments with high rise buildings or in indoor settings, GPS quickly becomes unreliable. Using sensors found on commodity smartphones to perform accurate [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk – Zhe Huang
Title: Distributed Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Driving Abstract: Due to the complex and safety-critical nature of autonomous driving, recent works typically test their ideas on simulators designed for the very purpose of advancing self-driving research. Despite the convenience of modeling autonomous driving as a trajectory optimization problem, few of these methods resort to online reinforcement [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk- Xinjie Yao
Title: Ride Comfort-Aware Visual Navigation via Self-Supervised Learning Abstract: Under shared autonomy, wheelchair users expect vehicles to provide safe and comfortable rides while following users’ high-level navigation plans. To find such a path, vehicles negotiate with different terrains and assess their traversal difficulty. Most prior works model surroundings either through geometric representations or semantic classifications, [...]
MS Thesis Talk – Shun Iwase
Title: Fast 6D Object Pose Refinement via Deep Texture Rendering Abstract: We present RePOSE, a fast iterative refinement method for 6D object pose estimation. Prior methods perform refinement by feeding zoomed-in input and rendered RGB images into a CNN and directly regressing an update of a refined pose. Their runtime is slow due to the [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
Vision-based Aircraft Detection and Tracking for Detect-and-Avoid
Abstract: Detect-and-Avoid (DAA) capabilities are critical for autonomous operations of small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS). Traditionally DAA systems for large aircraft have been ground and radar-based. Due to the size, weight, and power (SWaP) constraints of sUAS, current DAA systems rely mainly on vision-based sensors and ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast) transponders. However, not all flying [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk: Yash Oza
Title: Preprocessing-based Methods for Robotic Manipulation Abstract: Robotic manipulation is a key problem for several applications such as welding, pick-and-place, and automated assembly. However, motion planning for manipulation can be computationally expensive as it requires planning in the high-dimensional configuration space of the manipulator. Additionally, task-specific constraints such as strict time limits or constraints on end-effector [...]
MSR Thesis Talk: Ingrid Navarro Anaya
Title: Socially-Aware Trajectory Prediction Guided by Motion Patterns Abstract: As intelligent robots across domains start collaborating with humans in shared environments, e.g., urban settings and terminal airspace, algorithms that enable them to reason over human motion and intent are important to enable seamless and safe interplay. In our work, we study human intent by focusing on the [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk: Qichen Fu
Date: Tuesday, July 19, 2022 Time: 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM ET Location: Newell-Simon Hall (NSH) 3305 Title: Detect Active Object in a Sequential Voting Process Abstract: A key component of understanding hand-object interactions is the ability to identify the active object -- the object that is being manipulated by the human hand. In order to accurately localize the [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk: Ruohai Ge
Title: Real-Time Visual Localization System in Changing and Challenging Environments via Visual Place Recognition Abstract: Localization is one of the fundamental capabilities to guarantee reliable robot autonomy. Many excellent Visual-Inertial and LiDAR-based algorithms have been developed to solve the localization problem. However, deploying these methods on a real-time portable device is challenging due to high [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk – Zixuan Huang
Title: Seeing the Unseen: Closed-loop Occlusion Reasoning for Cloth Manipulation Robotic manipulation of cloth remains challenging due to the complex dynamics of cloth, lack of a low-dimensional state representation, and self-occlusions. Particularly, self-occlusion makes it difficult to estimate the full state of the cloth, which poses significant challenges to policy learning and dynamics modeling. Ideally, [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk – Zhaoyuan Fang
Title: Features in Extra Dimensions: Spatial and Temporal Scene Representations Abstract: Computer vision models have made great progress in featurizing pixels of images. However, an image is only a projection of the actual 3D scene: occlusions and perspective distortions exist. To arrive at a better representation of the scene itself, extra dimensions are needed to [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk – Yunchu Zhang
Title: Library of behaviors and tools for robot manipulation Abstract: Learned policies often fail to generalize across environment variations, such as, different objects, object arrangements, or camera viewpoints. Moreover, most policies are trained and tested in simulation environments, and the sim2real gap remains large under weak visual representations that do not disentangle the scene from [...]