VASC Seminar
Rachel McDonnell
Associate Professor
Creative Technologies, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland

Motion Matters in the Metaverse

3305 Newell-Simon Hall

Abstract:  Abstract: In the early 1970s, Psychologists investigated biological motion perception by attaching point-lights to the joints of the human body, known as ‘point light walkers’. These early experiments showed biological motion perception to be an extreme example of sophisticated pattern analysis in the brain, capable of easily differentiating human motions with reduced motion cues. Further [...]

MSR Thesis Proposal
MSR Student
Robotics Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University

MSR Thesis Talk: Yichen Li

NSH 3305

Title: Simulation-guided Design for Vision-based Tactile Sensing on a Soft Robot Finger Abstract: Soft pneumatic robot manipulators have garnered widespread interest due to their compliance and flexibility, which enable soft, non-destructive grasping and strong adaptability to complex working environments. Tactile sensing is crucial for these manipulators to provide real-time contact information for control and manipulation. [...]

PhD Speaking Qualifier
PhD Student
Robotics Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University

Controllable Visual-Tactile Synthesis

GHC 6501

Abstract: Deep generative models have various content creation applications such as graphic design, e-commerce, and virtual Try-on. However, current works mainly focus on synthesizing realistic visual outputs, often ignoring other sensory modalities, such as touch, which limits physical interaction with users. The main challenges for multi-modal synthesis lie in the significant scale discrepancy between vision [...]

Faculty Events
Associate Professor
Robotics Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University

Geometry Processing and Differential Geometry

Newell-Simon Hall 3305

Abstract: Basic representations for three-dimensional geometry have a profound effect on what can be achieved downstream, in a variety of disciplines (physical simulation, computational design, geometric learning, etc.).  In this talk I will discuss recent efforts in our group to revisit fundamental choices in the way we represent digital geometry, and solve geometric equations.  The guiding [...]

PhD Speaking Qualifier
PhD Student
Robotics Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University

Perceiving Particles Inside a Container using Dynamic Touch Sensing

GHC 6501

Abstract: Dynamic touch sensing has shown potential for multiple tasks. In this talk, I will present how we utilize dynamic touch sensing to perceive particles inside a container with two tasks: classification of the particles inside a container and property estimation of the particles inside a container. First, we try to recognize what is inside [...]

PhD Thesis Proposal
PhD Student
Robotics Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University

Towards Photorealistic Dynamic Capture and Animation of Human Hair and Head

GHC 4405

Abstract: Realistic human avatars play a key role in immersive virtual telepresence. To reach a high level of realism, a human avatar needs to faithfully reflect human appearance. A human avatar should also be drivable and express natural motions. Existing works have made significant progress on building drivable realistic face avatars, but they rarely include [...]

VASC Seminar
Anand Bhattad
PhD candidate
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

What do generative models know about geometry and illumination?

3305 Newell-Simon Hall

Abstract: Generative models can produce compelling pictures of realistic scenes. Objects are in sensible places, surfaces have rich textures, illumination effects appear accurate, and the models are controllable. These models, such as StyleGAN, can also generate semantically meaningful edits of scenes by modifying internal parameters. But do these models manipulate a purely abstract representation of the [...]

Seminar
Matthew Johnson-Roberson, Zeynep Temel, Kris Kitani, Deva Ramanan, Henny Admoni
Singleton Room, Roberts Engineering Hall
Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University

Life as a Professor Seminar

Singleton Room, Roberts Engineering Hall

Have you ever wondered what life is like as a professor? What do professors do on a daily basis? What makes the faculty career challenging and rewarding? Maybe you have even thought about becoming a faculty member yourself? Join us on March 22nd from 2:00 - 3:30 PM, where a panel of CMU faculty will [...]

PhD Thesis Defense
Robotics Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University

System Identification and Control of Multiagent Systems Through Interactions

NSH 3305

Abstract: This thesis investigates the problem of inferring the underlying dynamic model of individual agents of a multiagent system (MAS) and using these models to shape the MAS's behavior using robots extrinsic to the MAS. We investigate (a) how an observer can infer the latent task and inter-agent interaction constraints from the agents' motion and [...]

PhD Speaking Qualifier
PhD Student
Robotics Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University

Examining the Role of Adaptation in Human-Robot Collaboration

GHC 4405

Abstract: Human and AI partners increasingly need to work together to perform tasks as a team. In order to act effectively as teammates, collaborative AI should reason about how their behaviors interplay with the strategies and skills of human team members as they coordinate on achieving joint goals. This talk will discuss a formalism for [...]

PhD Speaking Qualifier
PhD Student
Robotics Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University

A Multi-view Synthetic and Real-world Human Activity Recognition Dataset

NSH 3305

Abstract: Advancements in Human Activity Recognition (HAR) partially relies on the creation of datasets that cover a broad range of activities under various conditions. Unfortunately, obtaining and labeling datasets containing human activity is complex, laborious, and costly. One way to mitigate these difficulties with sufficient generality to provide robust activity recognition on unseen data is [...]

Faculty Events

RI Faculty Business Meeting

Newell-Simon Hall 4305

Meeting for RI Faculty. Discussions include various department topics, policies, and procedures. Generally meets weekly.

RI Seminar
Lerrel Pinto
Assistant Professor of Computer Science
Robotics and Machine Learning, New York University

A Constructivist’s Guide to Robot Learning

1305 Newell Simon Hall

Over the last decade, a variety of paradigms have sought to teach robots complex and dexterous behaviors in real-world environments. On one end of the spectrum we have nativist approaches that bake in fundamental human knowledge through physics models, simulators and knowledge graphs. While on the other end of the spectrum we have tabula-rasa approaches [...]