MSR Speaking Qualifier
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 [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk – Chi Yen Lee
Title: Enhancing Quadruped Locomotion Stability with Reaction Wheel Systems and Model Predictive Control Zoom: https://cmu.zoom.us/j/96808397411?pwd=YnFDaFk1WVVyZjc5UndlOTBZL0tjUT09 Abstract: The development of quadruped robots offers a mobility solution that allows robot agents to navigate complicated terrains, making them extremely versatile robots in a variety of environments. Today, there are a number of research challenges facing quadruped development. First, the [...]
MSR Thesis Talk – Chu Er Pan
Title: 6D Object Pose Estimation for Manipulation via Weak Supervision Abstract: 6D object pose estimation is essential for robotic manipulation tasks. Existing learning-based pose estimators often rely on training from labeled absolute poses with fixed object canonical frames, which (1) requires datasets with annotations of object absolute pose that are resource-intensive to collect; (2) is hard [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk: Ruoyang Xu
Title: Using 3D Imaging Radar for Indoor Localization and Mapping Zoom: https://cmu.zoom.us/j/95090884062?pwd=dVZDVHJDTGVUWW9iSlJLTWtidThBUT09 Meeting ID: 950 9088 4062 Passcode: 411959 Abstract: 3D Imaging Radars offer robust perception capability through visually demanding environments due to the unique penetrative and reflective properties of millimeter waves. However, the utilization of Imaging radar for robot navigation and mapping remains under-explored due [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk: Gaurav Pathak
Title: Programmable light curtains for Safety Envelopes, SLAM and Navigation Abstract: Conventional robot perception and navigation pipelines are built using traditional sensors such as RGB cameras, stereo depth sensors and LiDARs.These sensors scan the entire scene in a fixed and uniform way. In contrast, programmable light curtains are a recently-invented, resource-efficient sensor that measure the [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk: Andrew VanOsten
Title: Lidar-Visual-Inertial Odometry via Modifications and Improvements to Super Odometry Abstract: The main focus of this thesis involves improvements and extensions to Super Odometry, a preexisting method for lidar-inertial odometry. This was done in the context of the DARPA RACER program as a member of Carnegie Mellon's DEAD Fast team, aiming to provide reliable [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk – Bassam Bikdash
Title: Boundary-Aware Demons Algorithm with Applications in Electronic Waste Recycling Abstract Electronic waste (e-waste) refers to electronic devices that are nearing the end of their useful life, and are discarded, donated, or given away. Valuable metallic and plastic components in e-waste (gold, silver, platinum) is estimated to value upwards of $60 billion and although e-waste represents [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk – Mary Hatfalvi
Title: Introspective Perception through Identifying Blur, Light Direction, and Angle-of-View Abstract Robotic perception tasks have achieved great performance, especially in autonomous vehicles and robot assistance. However, we still often do not understand how and when perception tasks fail. Researchers have achieved some success in creating introspective perception systems that detect when perception tasks will fail, [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk: Bowei Chen
Title: Image Synthesis with Appearance Decomposition Abstract: Our visual world is compositional and its appearance can be decomposed into various components. Leveraging these components can be beneficial for challenging image synthesis tasks. To this end, this thesis focuses on studying how appearance decomposition can improve image synthesis methods using two examples. (1) Structural decomposition: we introduce [...]
MSR Thesis Talk: Ivan Cisneros
Title: A VPR-Based Technique for UAV Localization In Unseen Environments Abstract: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) primarily rely on GPS-assisted localization and navigation due to the accessibility and ubiquity of such systems. However, this presents a potentially catastrophic single point of failure that may prevent autonomous UAVs from becoming truly reliable, as GPS is prone to dropout, [...]
MSR Thesis Talk: Yehonathan Litman
Title: GPS-Denied Global Visual-Inertial Ground Vehicle State Estimation via Image Registration Abstract: Robotic systems such as unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) often depend on GPS for navigation in outdoor environments. In GPS-denied environments, one approach to maintain a global state estimate is localizing based on preexisting georeferenced aerial or satellite imagery. However, this is inherently challenged [...]
Carnegie Mellon University
MSR Thesis Talk – George Cazenavette
Title: Learning to Distill Datasets by Matching Expert Training Trajectories Project Page: https://georgecazenavette.github.io/mtt-distillation/ Abstract: Dataset distillation is the task of synthesizing a small dataset such that a model trained on the synthetic set will match the test accuracy of the model trained on the full dataset. In this talk, we review 3 several of our recent [...]