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MEAM Seminar: “Defending the Planet: The DART Mission, and Mechanics Among the Asteroids”

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

An on-orbit demonstration of asteroid deflection is a key test of our ability to defend the planet from an incoming asteroid. The recent DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission was NASA's demonstration of kinetic impactor technology, impacting an asteroid to adjust its speed and path. The DART spacecraft impacted the asteroid Dimorphos on September 26, […]

ESE Fall Seminar – “Large Observational Study of the Causal Effects of a Nudge and the Geometry of Causality”

Glandt Forum, Singh Center for Nanotechnology 3205 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Nudges are interventions promoting healthy behavior without forbidding options or significant incentives. As an example of a nudge, the Apple Watch encourages users to stand by delivering a notification if they have been sitting for the first 50 minutes of an hour. Based on 76 billion minutes of observational standing data from 160,000 subjects in […]

ESE PhD Thesis Defense: “Control of Multi-Contact Systems via Local Hybrid Models”

Room 35, Singh Center for Nanotechnology 3205 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

For many important tasks such as manipulation and locomotion, robots need to make and break contact with their environment. Although such multi-contact systems are common, they pose a significant challenge when it comes to analysis and control. This thesis exploits the local hybrid structure of such problems and presents scalable and fast algorithmic solutions. First, […]

Fall 2023 GRASP Seminar: Paul Debevec, Eyeline Studios Powered by Netflix, “From Virtual Cinematographhy to Virtual Production”

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

*This seminar will be held in-person in Levine 307 as well as virtually via Zoom. The seminar will NOT be recorded. ABSTRACT This talk will describe how virtual cinematography techniques developed at UC Berkeley for image-based modeling, rendering, and lighting helped enable iconic visual effects sequences in movies such as The Matrix, X-Men, Spider-Man 2, Benjamin […]

ASSET Seminar: “Safety through Agility – Safe and Performant Control for Learning-Enabled Autonomous Systems” (Mangharam, Penn)

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

ABSTRACT: We present three approaches to combine formal methods, control theory, and machine learning for safe and performant autonomous systems.  Safe control for learning-enabled systems: We present our recent progress on how to learn safe adaptive behavior for highly interactive multi-agent systems. We will introduce how to quantify the uncertainty of closed-loop control systems using […]

Fall 2023 GRASP SFI: Robert Baines, ETH Zürich, “Material system design for predictable shape-morphing robots”

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

This is a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Levine 307 and virtual attendance on Zoom. This week's speaker will be virtual.  ABSTRACT Robots are traditionally designed with immutable physical hardware and control policies that make them specialized for repetitive, structured tasks and environments. This talk presents work toward robots that actively change shape to […]

MSE David P. Pope Distinguished Lecture: “Light, Materials and Interfaces: The Complex Dance That Allows CLIP-based 3D Printing,” Stanford University

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

Abstract The production of polymer products relies largely on age-old molding techniques. A major reason for this is that additive methods have not delivered meaningful alternatives to traditional processes—until now. In this talk, I will describe Continuous Liquid Interface Production (CLIP) technology, which embodies a convergence of advances in software, hardware, and materials to bring […]

MEAM Ph.D. Thesis Defense: “A Study of Hydrogel Mechanics with Application on the Fracture of Human Blood Clots”

DRLB A6 209 S. 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Loading of biological and synthetic hydrogels involves large deformations, and there exists a large literature devoted to their experimental characterization. Analytical investigations have recognized the importance of contributions originating from the liquid phase, and experiments have verified them. The liquid flux fields in these materials usually exhibit fully three-dimensional profiles and are time-dependent. This coupled […]

Fall 2023 GRASP on Robotics: Stefano Soatto, AWS & UCLA, “Toward Foundational Models of Physical Scenes: From Large Language Models to World Models and Back”

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 on Zoom. ABSTRACT Now that a significant fraction of human knowledge has been shared through the Internet, scraped and squashed into the weights of Large Language Models (LLMs), do we still need embodiment and interaction with the physical world to build […]