Toward Scalable Architectures for Multimodal LLM-based Cooperative Autonomous Driving
Abstract: Despite the tremendous progress made in autonomous driving over the years, the safety of autonomous vehicles still requires further improvement before they can operate worldwide with full human trust. One principal safety concern is that each individual vehicle may have a limited field of view due to finite detection ranges, potential sensor failures, or occlusions [...]
Creative Physical AI
Abstract: Do robots need creativity? I will share my stance that they do need creativity to solve general problems and support human values. Physical AI is a type of AI that enables robots to perceive and interact with a physical world. Trendy approaches in physical AI such as Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models directly map the observations [...]
Towards Manipulation in the Blind: Motion Planning for Manipulation under Uncertainty using Contacts
Abstract: Humans routinely rely on the sense of touch to better perceive the world. In environments characterized by poor lighting, occlusions, limited fields of view, or sparse visual features, contact feedback often becomes a primary source of information for perceiving the environment and successfully completing manipulation tasks. Everyday examples include locating a light switch in the [...]
RI Faculty Business Meeting
Meeting for RI Faculty.
Rethinking Robot Safety: Adaptive and Scalable Methods for Real-World Autonomy
Abstract: Safe autonomy in the real world requires more than safety in structured, low-dimensional settings. Robots deployed in everyday environments must cope with non-stationarity—objectives and dynamics that change due to human preferences or evolving operating conditions—and must also scale safety reasoning to high-dimensional robots and environments, where perception, dynamics, and safety constraints can be complex [...]
Angela Chen – PhD Proposal Info TBA
More info coming soon