MSR Thesis Defense
MSR Student / Research Associate III
Robotics Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University

GNSS-denied Ground Vehicle Localization for Off-road Environments with Bird’s-eye-view Synthesis

NSH 4305

Abstract:  Global localization is essential for the smooth navigation of autonomous vehicles. To obtain accurate vehicle states, on-board localization systems typically rely on Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) modules for consistent and reliable global positioning. However, GNSS signals can be obstructed by natural or artificial barriers, leading to temporary system failures and degraded state estimation. On the [...]

MSR Thesis Defense
MSR Student
Robotics Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University

Scaling up Robot Skill Learning with Generative Simulation

Newell-Simon Hall 4305

Abstract:  Generalist robots need to learn a wide variety of skills to perform diverse tasks across multiple environments. Current robot training pipelines rely on humans to either provide kinesthetic demonstrations or program simulation environments with manually-designed reward functions for reinforcement learning. Such human involvement is an important bottleneck towards scaling up robot learning across diverse [...]

MSR Thesis Defense
MSR Student
Robotics Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University

Simulation as a Tool for Conspicuity Measurement

1305 Newell Simon Hall

Abstract:  The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for time critical tasks is becoming increasingly popular. Operators are expected to use information from these swarms to make real-time and informed decisions. Consequently, detecting and recognizing targets from video is extremely pivotal to the success of these systems. At greater altitudes or with more vehicles, this [...]

MSR Thesis Defense
Research Associate II
Robotics Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University

VP4D: View Planning for 3D and 4D Scene Understanding

1305 Newell Simon Hall

Abstract: View planning plays a critical role by gathering views that optimize scene reconstruction. Such reconstruction has played an important part in virtual production and computer animation, where a 3D map of the film set and motion capture of actors lead to an immersive experience. Current methods use uncertainty estimation in neural rendering of view [...]

PhD Thesis Proposal
PhD Student
Robotics Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University

Unlocking Generalization for Robotics via Modularity and Scale

GHC 4405

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 [...]

MSR Thesis Defense
MSR Student / Research Associate II
Robotics Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University

Automating Annotation Pipelines by leveraging Multi-Modal Data

Rashid Auditorium - 4401 Gates and Hillman Centers

Abstract: The era of vision-language models (VLMs) trained on large web-scale datasets challenges conventional formulations of “open-world" perception. In this work, we revisit the task of few-shot object detection (FSOD) in the context of recent foundational VLMs. First, we point out that zero-shot VLMs such as GroundingDINO significantly outperform state-of-the-art few-shot detectors (48 vs. 33 AP) [...]

MSR Thesis Defense
MSR Student
Robotics Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University

Leveraging Affordances for Accelerating Online RL

3305 Newell-Simon Hall

Abstract: The inability to explore environments efficiently makes online RL sample-inefficient. Most existing works tackle this problem in a setting devoid of prior information. However, additional affordances may often be cheaply available at the time of training. These affordances include small quantities of demo data, simulators that can reset to arbitrary states and domain specific [...]

PhD Thesis Proposal
PhD Student
Robotics Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University

Dynamic Route Guidance in Vehicle Networks by Simulating Future Traffic Patterns

NSH 1305

Abstract: Roadway congestion leads to wasted time and money and environmental damage. One possible solution is adding more roadway capacity, but this can be impractical especially in urban environments and still may not make up for a poorly-calibrated traffic signal schedule. As such, it is becoming increasingly important to use existing road networks more efficiently. [...]