Calendar of Events
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2 events,
RoboOrg Meta Seminar
Don’t forget to have fun
Abstract: I like to think that robots should be rational agents, modeled on human behavior. I teach a course about using optimization to plan over time by maximizing utility. I note that a series of Nobel Prizes in Economics, starting with CMU's own AI pioneer Herb Simon and including one to Daniel Kahneman and this [...]
Special Events
RoboOrg Board Games
RoboOrg Board Games
Board game night in RoboLounge with pizza and soda! We will be playing a bunch of games including Settlers of Catan, Codenames, Coup, Reformation and more!
1 event,
RI Seminar
Dmitry Berenson
Electrical Engineering & Computer Science Department, University of Michigan
What Matters for Deformable Object Manipulation
Abstract: Deformable objects such as cables and clothes are ubiquitous in factories, hospitals, and homes. While a great deal of work has investigated the manipulation of rigid objects in these settings, manipulation of deformable objects remains under-explored. The problem is indeed challenging, as these objects are not straightforward to model and have infinite-dimensional configuration spaces, [...]
1 event,
Special Events
RoboOrg FIFA 17 Tournament
RoboOrg FIFA 17 Tournament
Kicking off (pun intended) RoboOrg video game tournaments with FIFA 17, food and sodas! Sign up at this link or just show up the day of. Bring a healthy competitive spirit because we have some serious players!
2 events,
PhD Speaking Qualifier
Scaling up Self Supervised Robot Learning
Abstract Robot learning holds promise in alleviating several real world problems, by performing complex behaviors in complex environments. But what is the right way to train these robots? Our methods on self supervision shows encouraging results on several tasks like grasping objects, pushing objects and even flying drones. One key challenge with these methods is [...]
VASC Seminar
Ben Burchfiel
Duke
Bayesian Eigenobjects: A Unified Framework for 3D Robot Perception
Abstract: Robot-object interaction requires several key perceptual building blocks including object pose estimation, object classification, and partial-object completion. These tasks form the perceptual foundation for many higher level operations including object manipulation and world-state estimation. Most existing approaches to these problems in the context of 3D robot perception assume an existing database of objects [...]
1 event,
PhD Thesis Defense
Planning for a Small Team of Heterogeneous Robots: from Collaborative Exploration to Collaborative Localization
Abstract: Robots have become increasingly adept at performing a wide variety of tasks in the world. However, many of these tasks can benefit tremendously from having more than a single robot simultaneously working on the problem. Multiple robots can aid in a search and rescue mission each scouting a subsection of the entire area in [...]
1 event,
Staff Events
Staff Lunch
Staff Lunch
By Invitation Only - All Robotics Institute administrative support staff are invited to join us for our monthly lunch meeting. Speaker/topic to be announced.
1 event,
VASC Seminar
Laurens van der Maaten
Facebook AI Research
Two Tales about Image Classification
Abstract: This talk tells two tales about image-classification systems, both of which are motivated by the real-world deployment of such systems. The first tale introduces a new convolutional neural network architecture, called multi-scale DenseNets, with the ability to adapt dynamically to computational resource limits at inference time. The network uses progressively growing multi-scale convolutions, dense [...]
2 events,
RI Seminar
Deanna Gates
University of Michigan
Optimizing ankle prostheses to improve walking in transtibial amputees
Abstract: With a prosthetic device, people with a lower limb amputation can remain physically active, but most do not achieve medically recommended physical activity standards and are therefore at a greater risk of obesity and cardiovascular disease. Their reduced activity may be attributed to the 10 - 30% increase in energetic cost during walking compared […]
Special Events
RoboOrg Post-Seminar Reception
RoboOrg Post-Seminar Reception
Join us after Deanna Gates' RI Seminar in RoboLounge and adjoining Newell-Simon Hall 1507 to socialise with the speaker and other member's of the RI community. There will be food and drinks for all! PSRs are a good time to let off some steam, meet new people, have engaging conversations, learn new things and most […]
1 event,
VASC Seminar
Hongdong Li
Australian National University
Dense 3D Shape Reconstruction of Complex Dynamic Scene with a Single Monocular Camera
Abstract: In this talk, I will describe our recent work (presented at ICCV 2017) on monocular camera based 3D geometry reconstruction of a non-rigid dynamic scene. We aim to answer an open question in multi-view geometry, namely, "Is it possible to recover the 3D structure of a complex dynamic environment from two image frames captured by […]
3 events,
VASC Seminar
Larry Zitnick
Facebook AI Research
Learning to Visually Reason
Abstract: Visual reasoning is a core capability of artificial intelligence. It is a necessity for effective communication, planning, and for question/answering tasks. In this talk, I discuss some recent explorations into visual reasoning for question/answering, game playing and dialog. I also describe our new reinforcement learning platform ELF; an Extensive, Lightweight and Flexible research platform […]
PhD Speaking Qualifier
Data Collection for Screwdriving
Abstract: As the use of robotic manipulation in manufacturing continues to increase, the robustness requirements for fastening operations such as screwdriving increase as well. To investigate the reliability of screwdriving and the diverse failure categories that can arise, we collected a dataset of screwdriving operations and manually classified them into stages and result categories. I […]
Field Robotics Center Seminar
Dense Planar-Inertial SLAM for Large Indoor 3D Reconstruction
Abstract Reconstructing the dense 3D models of indoor environments in real-time is key to many robotics applications, such as navigation, inspection, and augmented reality. It is also a challenging problem due to the accumulation of drift, large amount of data, limited computation, and occasional lack of visual features. We develop an RGB-D simultaneous localization and […]
2 events,
PhD Thesis Proposal
Visual Learning without Exhaustive Supervision
Abstract Machine learning models have led to remarkable progress in visual recognition. A key driving factor for this progress is the abundance of labeled data. Over the years, researchers have spent a lot of effort curating visual data and carefully labeling it. However, moving forward, it seems impossible to annotate the vast amounts of visual […]
PhD Thesis Proposal
Learning with Clusters
Abstract As machine learning becomes more ubiquitous, clustering has evolved from primarily a data analysis tool into an integrated component of complex machine learning systems, including those involving dimensionality reduction, anomaly detection, network analysis, image segmentation and classifying groups of data. With this integration into multi-stage systems comes a need to better understand interactions between […]
1 event,
Field Robotics Center Seminar
Graeme Best
Australian Centre for Field Robotics (ACFR), University of Sydney
Planning Algorithms for Multi-Robot Active Perception
Abstract A fundamental task of robotic systems is to use on-board sensors and perception algorithms to understand high-level semantic properties of an environment. The performance of perception algorithms can be greatly improved by planning the motion of the robots to obtain high-value observations. In this talk I will present a suite of planning algorithms we […]
1 event,
RoboOrg Meta Seminar
Doing a Post-doc: Should I do one? How do I find one? How do I pick? What next?
Abstract: In this talk, I will describe the ins and outs of getting a job as a post-doctoral researcher ("doing a post-doc"). I will first describe a number of reasons why one might want to do a post-doc, as well as a few reasons not to do one. I will next describe how to choose […]
4 events,
PhD Thesis Proposal
Intra-Robot Replanning and Learning for Multi-Robot Teams in Complex Dynamic Domains
Abstract: In complex dynamic multi-robot domains, we have a set of individual robots that must coordinate together through a team planner that inevitably makes assumptions based on probabilities about the state of world and the actions of the individuals. Eventually, the individuals may encounter failures, because the team planner’s models of the states and actions […]
VASC Seminar
James Davidson
Google Brain Robotics
Towards Lifelong Robot Learning
Abstract: Google Brain Robotics vision is to leverage learning to push the field of robotics forward. As such, we have engaged in research ranging in application from navigation to grasping and approach from deep RL to learning from demonstration. Fundamentally, our research is built around the core idea of lifelong learning. Our long term goal […]
RI Seminar
Alan R. Wagner
Penn State University
Exploring Human-Robot Trust during Emergencies
Abstract: This talk presents our experimental results related to human-robot trust involving more than 2000 paid subjects exploring topics such as how and why people trust a robot too much and how broken trust in a robot might be repaired. From our perspective, a person trusts a robot when they rely on and accept the […]
Special Events
RoboOrg Post-Seminar Reception
RoboOrg Post-Seminar Reception
Join us after Alan Wagner's RI Seminar in RoboLounge and adjoining Newell-Simon Hall 1507 to socialise with the speaker and other member's of the RI community. There will be food and drinks for all! PSRs are a good time to let off some steam, meet new people, have engaging conversations, learn new things and most […]
Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University