PhD Thesis Defense

Abstract: In many practical applications of reinforcement learning (RL), it is expensive to observe state transitions from the environment. In the problem of plasma control for nuclear fusion, the motivating example of this thesis, determining the next state for a given state-action pair requires querying an expensive transition function which can lead to many hours [...]

Abstract: Autonomous navigation in human crowds (i.e., social navigation) presents several challenges: The robot often needs to rely on its noisy sensors to identify and localize pedestrians in human crowds; the robot needs to plan efficient paths to reach its goals; the robot needs to do so in a safe and socially appropriate manner. Recent [...]

Abstract: The goal of personal robotics is to have robots in homes performing everyday tasks efficiently to improve our quality of life. Towards this end, manipulators are needed which are low cost, safe around humans, and approach human-level dexterity. However, existing off-the-shelf manipulators are expensive both in cost and manufacturing time, difficult to repair, and [...]