U of T Robotics News
Robots in the wild: U of T’s Florian Shkurti on overcoming ‘edge cases’ in machine learning
The technology behind self-driving cars has been racing ahead – and as long as they are cruising along familiar streets, seeing familiar sights, they do very well. But the University of Toronto’s Florian Shkurti says that when driverless vehicles encounter something unexpected, all that progress can come screeching to a halt.
Raquel Urtasun awarded Everingham Prize at ICCV21
The Everingham prize is awarded to a researcher, or a team of researchers, who have made a selfless contribution of significant benefit to other members of the computer vision community. Raquel Urtasun and her and her colleagues Andreas Geiger, Philip Lenz, Christoph Stiller were awarded the prize thanks to their work on the KITTI Vision Benchmark Suite.
It’s Ada Lovelace Day: Let’s celebrate UofT’s women in robotics
Congrats to Prof. Jessica Burgner-Kahrs who was named to Robohub’s annual list “Women in robotics you need to know about”. The annual list comes out every year in commemoration of Ada Lovelace Day, and in the past has featured UofT Professors Angela Schoellig, Raquel Urtasun, Sheila McIlraith, and Sanja Fidler.
Watch Jessica Burgner-Kahrs’ 2021 ICRA Keynote
ICRA 2021 videos are now available. Watch Jessica Burgner-Kahrs’ keynote below!
Coming 08.11.21: Retail & Manufacturing Robotics Workshop
Join the UofT Robotics community on November 8th for a one-day virtual symposium with members from across Canada’s automation ecosystem, from manufacturing to e-commerce.
In this highly-focused, single-track workshop, you’ll discover the cutting edge of AI robotics, discuss common challenges, and strategize with researchers and industry partners as we close the gap between shop floor reality and practical robot and data platforms in retail and manufacturing applications.
Bringing transparency to self-driving technology
In an interview in Canadian Business magazine, Prof. Raquel Urtasun talks about how she got into autonomous vehicles research, why transparency is important in self-driving technology, and what it’s like working as a woman in this male-dominated field. Read the full article on Canadian Business here.
Visual Teach and Repeat 3 navigation framework: Now open source!
Visual Teach and Repeat (VT&R) is a navigation system for mobile robots developed and maintained by Timothy Barfoot and his team at the Autonomous Space Robotics Lab (ASRL) at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS). The Visual Teach and Repeat 3 (VT&R3) package, which is the C++ implementation of the Visual Teach and Repeat system for robot navigation with a camera or LiDAR sensor, is now available on github.
IROS Keynote: Can we build a long-term navigation system based on vision?
Watch Tim Barfoot’s keynote on vision-based navigation at the 2021 International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.
New article in Science Robotics: Humanoid robots that behave with less authority are more persuasive
In the future, socially interactive robots could help seniors age in place or assist residents of long-term care facilities with their activities of daily living. But will people actually accept advice or instructions from a robot? A new study published in Science Robotics suggests that the answer hinges on how that robot behaves.
09.27.2021: IROS Workshop on safe real-world robot autonomy
Join UofT Robotics at this 2021 IROS workshop that will foster long-term, interdisciplinary exchange on the development of safe real-world robotic systems.
Coming up 09.16.2021: Robotics grad networking event
Interested in a career in robotics? Join the Robotics Graduate Engineering Networking Event on Thursday, September 16th from 5-7pm.
Groundbreakers: U of T initiative brings together experts to address major societal issues
Part of U of T’s Institutional Strategic Initiatives (ISI) program, the Robotics Institute brings together top experts in different fields – from hardware design to public policy – to solve thorny, robotics-related problems in applications ranging from health care and transportation to manufacturing and logistics.
Animesh Garg featured on the Soft Robotics Podcast
Want to learn more about the grand challenges of generalizable autonomy in robotics? Check out this episode of the Soft Robotics Podcast, hosted by Marwa ElDiwiny.
Binbin Ying and Xinyu Liu win Materials Horizons Outstanding Article Award
Congratulations to Binbin Ying and Prof. Xinyu Liu for receiving the Materials Horizons Outstanding Article 2020 award. Binbin was a visiting PhD candidate at the University of Toronto, where he helped to develop stretchy, skin-like sensors that could help lead to advances in wearables, personal healthcare and soft robotics.
Animesh Garg and collaborators win Best Student Paper Award at RSS’21
UofT Robotics faculty had five papers accepted at Robotics Science and Systems this year, including one best student paper award! Congrats to Animesh Garg and co-authors for their winning paper! See all the robotics papers and talks from UofT below.
Anas Mahmoud and Juan Carrillo receive Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship
UofT Robotics PhDs Anas Mahmoud (above left) and Juan Carrillo (above right) have been awarded the 2021 Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship (North America Program) for their proposal on sensor fusion for 3D object detection.
WinTOR: New partnership will train self-driving cars to handle tough winter conditions
Professor Steven Waslander and his collaborators are leading a new project that will transform Toronto into a global hub for research and development related to autonomous driving in winter.
Meet Daeho Kim, UofT Robotics’ newest faculty affiliate
This July Daeho Kim joined the Department of Civil & Mineral Engineering as an assistant professor of civil engineering (Construction), with a focus on co-robotic construction and architectural engineering.
Robotics Panel and Poster Session at UofT Engineering Research Days
Robotics Institute Faculty will host a panel session titled “Robotics: Why Now? Why U of T?” on June 24 at 1:45-2:45 pm as part of Engineering Research Days at UofT.
Raquel Urtasun launches Waabi with over $100 million CAD in funding
Robotics Institute faculty Raquel Urtasun has launched Waabi, a company aiming to bring self-driving tech closer to commercialization than ever before.
UofT in top ten universities at ICRA 2021, wins best student paper award, and more
The University of Toronto had an excellent showing at ICRA 2021. Robotics Institute director Yu Sun was the program chair of this year’s conference, attended by over 5,000 people worldwide. UofT ranked 9th in accepted papers among universities, an impressive showing and the only Canadian university to make the top 20. See a listing of… Read more »
Rydesafely AV Safety & Validation Pitch Competition – Register Now!
A student competition as been added to the upcoming AV Workshop (June 15 & 16): the Rydesafely AV Perception Safety Pitch Competition.
TRAIL Lab wins Best Computer Vision Paper at CRV
Congrats to TRAIL Lab grad student Anas Mahmoud and Robotics Institute faculty member Steve Waslander for winning the Best Computer Vision Paper at this year’s Conference on Robots and Vision (CRV2021).
UofT Program for ICRA 2021
A chronological listing of all ICRA 2021 events involving UofT researchers
