PhD Speaking Qualifier
PhD Student
Robotics Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University

Dense 3D Representation Learning for Geometric Reasoning in Manipulation Tasks

NSH 3001

Abstract: When solving a manipulation task like "put away the groceries" in real environments, robots must understand what *can* happen in these environments, as well as what *should* happen in order to accomplish the task. This knowledge can enable downstream robot policies to directly reason about which actions they should execute, and rule out behaviors [...]

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
Luca Carlone
Leonardo Career Development Associate Professor
Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Next-Generation Robot Perception: Hierarchical Representations, Certifiable Algorithms, and Self-Supervised Learning

1305 Newell Simon Hall

Spatial perception —the robot’s ability to sense and understand the surrounding environment— is a key enabler for robot navigation, manipulation, and human-robot interaction. Recent advances in perception algorithms and systems have enabled robots to create large-scale geometric maps of unknown environments and detect objects of interest. Despite these advances, a large gap still separates robot [...]

Field Robotics Center Seminar
Dr. Larry Matthies
Technology Coordinator
Mars Exploration Program Office, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California

Autonomous mobility in Mars exploration: recent achievements and future prospects

NSH 4305

Abstract: This talk will summarize key recent advances in autonomous surface and aerial mobility for Mars exploration, then discuss potential future missions and technology needs for Mars and other planetary bodies. Among recent advances, the Perseverance rover that is now operating on Mars includes new autonomous navigation capability that dramatically increases its traverse speed over [...]

PhD Thesis Proposal
Extern
Robotics Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University

Passive Coupling in Robot Swarms

NSH 4305

Abstract: In unstructured environments, ant colonies demonstrate remarkable abilities to adaptively form functional structures in response to various obstacles, such as stairs, gaps, and holes. Drawing inspiration from these creatures, robot swarms can collectively exhibit complex behaviors and achieve tasks that individual robots cannot accomplish. Existing modular robot platforms that employ dynamic coupling and decoupling [...]

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
Phillip Isola
Associate Professor
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Structures and Environments for Generalist Agents

1305 Newell Simon Hall

Abstract: We are entering an era of highly general AI, enabled by supervised models of the Internet. However, it remains an open question how intelligence emerged in the first place, before there was an Internet to imitate. Understanding the emergence of skillful behavior, without expert data to imitate, has been a longstanding goal of reinforcement [...]

PhD Speaking Qualifier
PhD Student
Robotics Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University

Learning novel objects during robot exploration via human-informed few-shot detection

NSH 1109

Abstract: Autonomous mobile robots exploring in unfamiliar environments often need to detect target objects during exploration. Most prevalent approach is to use conventional object detection models, by training the object detector on large abundant image-annotation dataset, with a fixed and predefined categories of objects, and in advance of robot deployment. However, it lacks the capability [...]

PhD Thesis Proposal
PhD Student
Robotics Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University

Learning to Perceive and Predict Everyday Interactions

GHC 6121

Abstract: This thesis aims to develop a computer vision system that can understand everyday human interactions with rich spatial information. Such systems can benefit VR/AR to perceive the reality and modify its virtual twin, and robotics to learn manipulation by watching human. Previous methods have been limited to constrained lab environment or pre-selected objects with [...]