Unlocking Generalization for Robotics via Scale and Modularity
Abstract: How can we build generalist robot systems? Looking at fields such as vision and language, the common theme has been large scale end-to-end learning with massive, curated datasets. In robotics, on the other hand, scale alone may not be enough due to the significant multimodality of robotics tasks, lack of easily accessible data and [...]
RI Seminar with Aaron Johnson
Towards Open World Robot Safety
Abstract: Robot safety is a nuanced concept. We commonly equate safety with collision-avoidance, but in complex, real-world environments (i.e., the “open world’’) it can be much more: for example, a mobile manipulator should understand when it is not confident about a requested task, that areas roped off by caution tape should never be breached, and [...]
RI Seminar with Alfred Rizzi
Good Old-Fashioned LLMs (or, Autoformalizing the World)
Abstract: Classical formal approaches to artificial intelligence, based on manipulation of symbolic structures, have a number of appealing properties---they generalize (and fail) in predictable ways, provide interpretable traces of behavior, and can be formally verified or manually audited for correctness. Why are they so rarely used in the modern era? One of the major challenges [...]
Unfamiliar Intelligence: Art, AI, and Robots
Abstract: Shortly after the 1918 pandemic, the word "robot" was coined in a play about mechanical workers organizing a rebellion to defeat their human overlords. A century later, emerging advances in Artificial Intelligence and robotics, fueled by venture capital and governments, are disrupting labor, trade, and political stability. Claims about “superintelligence” and existential threats to [...]
RI Seminar with Nima Fazeli
RI Seminar with Nikolay Atanasov
Physical Intelligence and Cognitive Biases Toward AI
Abstract: When will robots be able to clean my house, dishes, and take care of laundry? While we source labor primarily from automated machines in factories, the penetration of physical robots in our daily lives has been slow. What are the challenges in realizing these intelligent machines capable of human level skill? Isn’t AI advanced [...]
