Evaluating and Improving Vision-Language Models Beyond Scaling Laws
Abstract: In this talk, we present our work on advancing Vision-Language Models (VLMs) beyond scaling laws through improved evaluation and (post-)training strategies. Our contributions include VQAScore, a state-of-the-art alignment metric for text-to-visual generation. We show how VQAScore improves visual generation under real-world user prompts in GenAI-Bench. Additionally, we explore training methods that leverage the language [...]
Whisker-Inspired Sensors for Unstructured Environments
Abstract: Robots lack the perception abilities of animals, which is one reason they can not achieve complex control in outdoor unstructured environments with the same ease as animals. One cause of the perception gap is the constraints researchers place on the environments in which they test new sensors so algorithms can correctly interpret data from [...]
Abstraction Barriers for Embodied Algorithms
Abstract: Designing robotic systems to reliably modify their environment typically requires expert engineers and several design iterations. This talk will cover abstraction barriers that can be used to make the process of building such systems easier and the results more predictable. By focusing on approximate mathematical representations that model the process dynamics, these representations can [...]
RI Seminar with Axel Krieger
RI Seminar with Jeffrey Ichnowski
Robotics Institute Winter Party
All Robotics Institute Faculty. Staff, Students, and Visitors are invited to attend this event. Please join us for food, beverages, and casual conversation with colleagues. A calendar invite including details will be sent closer to the event.
Robotics Institute Picnic
Please mark your calendars and plan to join us for the 2025 Robotics Institute Picnic! More information and RSVP e-vite to follow as we get closer to the event.