PhD Thesis Proposal
Siyuan Feng
Carnegie Mellon University

Online Hierarchical Optimization for Humanoid Control

Event Location: NSH 3305Abstract: This thesis proposal presents an online approach that is based on hierarchical optimization for controlling humanoid robots. While our primary focus is on developing a fast and robust walking system that is able to follow desired footsteps, full body manipulation capability is also achieved. The proposed hierarchical system consists of three [...]

PhD Thesis Proposal
Heather Knight
Carnegie Mellon University

Expressive Motion for Low Degree of Freedom Robots

Event Location: NSH 3305Abstract: As social and collaborative robots move into everyday life, the need for algorithms enabling their acceptance becomes critical. The proposed work will create a framework for Expressive Motion generation that allows a robot to use modified task motions to communicate its state naturally and efficiently, including mental state, task state, and [...]

VASC Seminar
Shiguang Shan
Professor
Chinese Academy of Sciences

Visual Representation and Metrics for Face Classification with Image Sets

Event Location: NSH 1507Bio: Shiguang Shan is now a visiting scholar with Dr. Alex Hauptmann at CMU. He received Ph.D. degree in computer science from the Institute of Computing Technology (ICT), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing, China, in 2004. He then joined ICT, CAS and has been a Professor since 2010. He is now [...]

VASC Seminar
Xinlei Chen
Graduate Research Assistant, PhD
LTI

Learning a Recurrent Visual Representation for Image Caption Generation

Event Location: NSH 1507Bio: Xinlei Chen is a PhD student in the Language Technologies Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, where he is supervised by Abhinav Gupta. He holds an Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Zhejiang University, China. His research focuses on the intersection of computer vision and natural language processing and he is particularly [...]

PhD Thesis Defense
Felix Duvallet
Carnegie Mellon University

Natural Language Direction Following for Robots in Unstructured Unknown Environments

Event Location: NSH 3305Abstract: Robots are increasingly performing collaborative tasks with people in our homes, workplaces, and outdoors, and with this increase in interaction comes a need for efficient communication between human and robot teammates. One way to achieve this communication is through natural language, which provides a flexible and intuitive way to issue commands [...]

PhD Thesis Proposal
Breelyn Kane Styler
Carnegie Mellon University

Planning for Robot Recovery with Varying Model Fidelity

Event Location: GHC 4405Abstract: For robots to be deployable, robot systems need to operate reliably for long periods. Reliable operation requires robots to reason about events that impede task progression. Robots that consider failure recovery strategies are more dependable and robust to unforeseen events. Recovery strategies allow the robot to continue consistent task operation even [...]

RI Seminar
Kanna Rajan
Visiting Professor
FEUP, University of Porto

Advancing Autonomous Operations in the Field From Outer to Inner Space

Event Location: NSH 1305Bio: Kanna is a Visiting Professor, Faculty of Engineering, Univ. of Porto affiliated with the Underwater Systems Technology Lab. Till recently he was the Principal Researcher in Autonomy at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (http://www.mbari.org) a privately funded non-profit Oceanographic institute which he joined in October 2005. Prior to that he [...]

RI Seminar
John Leonard
Professor
MIT/CSAIL

Mapping, Localization, and Self-Driving Vehicles

Event Location: NSH 1305Bio: John J. Leonard is Professor of Mechanical and Ocean Engineering and Associate Department Head for Research in the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering. He is also a member of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). His research addresses the problems of navigation and mapping for autonomous mobile robots. [...]

VASC Seminar
Jia Xu
PhD Candidate
University of Wisconsin

Visual Parsing with Weak Supervision

Event Location: NSH 1507Bio: Jia Xu is a PhD candidate of the Computer Sciences Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, working with Prof. Vikas Singh, Prof. Jerry Zhu, and Prof. Chuck Dyer. He was a visiting student at University of Toronto in Summer 2014 and at TTI-Chicago during Summer 2013, both working with Prof. Raquel [...]