PhD Speaking Qualifier
PhD Student
Robotics Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University

Bridging Humans and Generative Models

NSH 4305

Abstract: Deep generative models make visual content creation more accessible to novice and professional users alike by automating the synthesis of diverse, realistic content based on a collected dataset. People often use generative models as data-driven sources, making it challenging to personalize a model easily. Currently, personalizing a model requires careful data curation, which is [...]

PhD Speaking Qualifier
MSR Student
Robotics Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University

Impulse considerations for reasoning about intermittent contacts

NSH 4305

Abstract: Many of our interactions with the environment involve making and breaking contacts. However, it is not always obvious how one should reason about these intermittent contacts (sequence, timings, locations) in an online and adaptive way. This is particularly relevant in gait generation for legged locomotion control, where it is standard to simply predefine and [...]

PhD Thesis Proposal
PhD Student
Robotics Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University

Multi-Human 3D Reconstruction from Monocular RGB Videos

NSH 3305

Abstract: We study the problem of multi-human 3D reconstruction from RGB videos captured in the wild. Humans have dynamic motion, and reconstructing them in arbitrary settings is key to building immersive social telepresence, assistive humanoid robots, and augmented reality systems. However, creating such a system requires addressing fundamental issues with previous works regarding the data [...]

PhD Thesis Proposal
PhD Student
Robotics Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University

Learning and Translating Temporal Abstractions across Humans and Robots

NSH 3305

Abstract: Humans possess a remarkable ability to learn to perform tasks from a variety of different sources-from language, instructions, demonstration, etc. In each case, they are able to easily extract the high-level strategy to solve the task, such as the recipe of cooking a dish, whilst ignoring irrelevant details, such as the precise shape of [...]

PhD Speaking Qualifier
PhD Student
Robotics Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University

Robust Incremental Smoothing and Mapping

NSH 3001

Abstract: In this work we present a method for robust optimization for online incremental Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM). Due to the NP-Hardness of data association in the presence of perceptual aliasing, tractable (approximate) approaches to data association will produce erroneous measurements. We require SLAM back-ends that can converge to accurate solutions in the presence [...]

PhD Thesis Defense
Robotics Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University

3D Reconstruction using Differential Imaging

GHC 4405

Abstract: 3D reconstruction has been at the core of many computer vision applications, including autonomous driving, visual inspection in manufacturing, and augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR). Because monocular 3D sensing is fundamentally ill-posed, many techniques aiming for accurate reconstruction use multiple captures to solve the inverse problem. Depending on the amount of change in these [...]

PhD Thesis Defense
Jacky Liang
PhD Student
Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University

Learning with Structured Priors for Robust Robot Manipulation

NSH 4305

Abstract: Robust and generalizable robots that can autonomously manipulate objects in semi-structured environments can bring material benefits to society. Data-driven learning approaches are crucial for enabling such systems by identifying and exploiting patterns in semi-structured environments, allowing robots to adapt to novel scenarios with minimal human supervision. However, despite significant prior work in learning for [...]

MSR Thesis Defense
PhD Student
Robotics Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University

Learning Parameter-Efficient Quadrotor Dynamics Models

NSH 4305

Abstract: Operation of quadrotors through high-speed, high-acceleration maneuvers remains a challenging problem due to the complex aerodynamics in this regime. While standard physical models suffice for control in near-hover conditions, the primary challenge in executing aggressive trajectories is obtaining a model for the quadrotor dynamics that adequately models the aerodynamic effects present, including lift, drag, [...]

PhD Thesis Defense
Robotics Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University

Self-Supervising Occlusions For Vision

GHC 4405

Abstract: Virtually every scene has occlusions. Even a scene with a single object exhibits self-occlusions - a camera can only view one side of an object (left or right, front or back), or part of the object is outside the field of view. More complex occlusions occur when one or more objects block part(s) of [...]

PhD Thesis Proposal
PhD Student
Robotics Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University

Predicting The Future and Linking the Past: Learning and Constructing Structured Models for Robotic Manipulation

GHC 4405

Abstract: Intelligent robotic agents need to reason about the dynamics of their surrounding world, and use such dynamics reasoning to make future predictions for efficient task planning. In addition, it is also desirable for robots to associate past experience in their memories to their current observation, and conduct analogical reasoning to complete tasks at their [...]