Feedback control for manipulation
Speaker: Prof. Russ Tedrake, Robot Locomotion Group @ MIT, VP Robotics Research @ Toyota Research Institute
August 18, 2020, 1pm ET
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Abstract:
Control theory has an answer for just about everything, but seems to fall short when it comes to closing a feedback loop using a camera, dealing with the dynamics of contact, and reasoning about robustness over the distribution of tasks one might find in the kitchen. Recent examples from RL and imitation learning demonstrate great promise, but don’t leverage the rigorous tools from systems theory. I’d like to discuss why, and describe some recent results of closing feedback loops from pixels for “category-level” robot manipulation.
Bio:
Russ Tedrake is the Toyota Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Aeronautics and Astronautics, and Mechanical Engineering at MIT, the Director of the Center for Robotics at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, and the leader of Team MIT’s entry in the DARPA Robotics Challenge. He is also the Vice President of Robotics Research at Toyota Research Institute (TRI). Dr. Tedrake is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, the MIT Jerome Saltzer Award for undergraduate teaching, the DARPA Young Faculty Award in Mathematics, the 2012 Ruth and Joel Spira Teaching Award, and was named a Microsoft Research New Faculty Fellow.
Russ received his B.S.E. in Computer Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 1999, and his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in 2004, working with Sebastian Seung. After graduation, he joined the MIT Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department as a Postdoctoral Associate. During his education, he has also spent time at Microsoft, Microsoft Research, and the Santa Fe Institute.