Faculty Events

Abstract: In the current era of large-scale learning, a ‘bitter lesson’ has been that we should pursue general methods that scale with computation (and data) instead of ones that prioritize human knowledge of the domain.  An assumed corollary of this lesson for systems pursuing 3D understanding is that explicit geometry will not be needed for these. Similarly, [...]

Abstract:   Robots in factories are still largely limited to structured environments with known object models. How can we bring robots into the more diverse, unstructured settings of our daily lives, where objects may vary widely in shape and appearance, while maintaining reliable performance? A popular direction today is to train generalist robot policies on large-scale internet [...]

Abstract:  Designing safe and reliable robotic assistance for caregiving is a grand challenge in robotics. A sixth of the United States population is over the age of 65 and more than 1 in 4 (over 70 million) adults in the United States reported having a disability in 2022. Robotic caregivers could positively benefit society; yet, physical [...]

Abstract: Robots operating in open-world environments will need to understand the scope of their capabilities, recognize their limitations, and determine how those capabilities can be expanded. This talk will review research from the Intelligent Autonomous Manipulation Lab on modeling robot capabilities, allocating learning resources to expand them efficiently, and structuring skills for a given scope [...]

Abstract: From the cameras in our phones to the lenses in head-mounted displays, optics shape both how we capture the world and how we experience virtual reality. Most conventional lenses are designed to bring a single plane into focus. In this talk, we will discuss a new class of computational lens—referred to as a Split-Lohmann [...]