Fall 2022 GRASP on Robotics: Wenzhen Yuan, Carnegie Mellon University, “Making sense of the physical world with high-resolution tactile sensing”

Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

This is a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Wu and Chen and virtual attendance via Zoom.   ABSTRACT In this talk, I will introduce the development of a high-resolution robotic tactile sensor GelSight, and how it can help robots understand and interact with the physical world. GelSight is a vision-based tactile sensor that measures the […]

ASSET Seminar: Decision-Aware Learning for Global Health Supply Chains, Osbert Bastani (University of Pennsylvania)

Levine 307 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

ABSTRACT: Machine learning algorithms are increasingly used in conjunction with optimization to guide decision making. A key challenge is aligning the machine learning loss with the decision-making loss. Existing solutions have limited flexibility and/or scale poorly to large datasets. We propose a principled decision-aware learning algorithm that uses a Taylor expansion of the optimal decision […]

Fall 2022 GRASP SFI: Roberto Calandra, Meta AI, “Perceiving, Understanding, and Interacting through Touch”

Levine 307 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

This is a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Levine 307 and virtual attendance via Zoom. ABSTRACT Touch is a crucial sensor modality in both humans and robots. Recent advances in tactile sensing hardware have resulted -- for the first time -- in the availability of mass-produced, high-resolution, inexpensive, and reliable tactile sensors. In this […]

MSE Seminar: “Understanding Degradation in Metal Halide Perovskite Solar Cells and Modules”

Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Halide perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have been the focus of much research in recent years due to their extremely high photoconversion efficiencies and their ability to be synthesized by solution processing.  These materials crystallize in the perovskite, AMX3 crystal structure where A is a monovalent cation (e.g. methyl ammonium, MA, formamidinium, FA, and/or Cs), M is the […]

Fall 2022 GRASP on Robotics: Radhika Nagpal, Princeton University, “Towards Collective Artificial Intelligence”

Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

This is a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Wu and Chen and virtual attendance via Zoom. ABSTRACT In nature, groups of thousands of individuals cooperate to create complex structure purely through local interactions — from cells that form complex organisms, to social insects like termites and ants that build nests and self-assemble bridges, to the […]

MEAM Seminar: “Cell Packings and Tissue Flows in Developing Embryos”

Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

During embryonic development, groups of cells reorganize into functional tissues with complex form and structure. Tissue reorganization can be rapid and dramatic, often occurring through striking embryo-scale flows that are mediated by the coordinated actions of hundreds or thousands of cells. In Drosophila, cell rearrangements in the embryonic epithelium rapidly narrow and elongate the tissue, […]

Fall 2022 GRASP SFI: Yasuo Kuniyoshi, University of Tokyo, “Behavior and Cognition Emerge and Develop From Embodiment – A Constructive Study of Human Fetus/Infant”

Raisler Lounge (Room 225), Towne Building 220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

This is a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Raisler Lounge (Towne 225) and virtual attendance via Zoom. This talk will NOT be recorded, please make sure to arrive on time. ABSTRACT In this talk, I will first show that physics of human-like body in action already provide certain information structure which can set the natural […]

ASSET Seminar: Building Safe Autonomous Systems, Rahul Mangharam (University of Pennsylvania)

Levine 307 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

ABSTRACT: Balancing performance and safety are crucial to deploying autonomous vehicles in multi-agent environments. In particular, autonomous racing is a domain that penalizes safe but conservative policies, highlighting the need for robust, adaptive strategies. Current approaches either make simplifying assumptions about other agents or lack robust mechanisms for online adaptation. In this talk we will […]