U of T Robotics News
Press Coverage of Prof Animesh Garg’s Thoughts About Tesla’s Optimus Robot
Robotics Institute Prof Animesh Garg wrote a piece on the new Tesla Bot in his newsletter that was quoted/covered in IEEE Spectrum, Verge, Yahoo Finance, & Nautilus.
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.
Apple Machine Learning Research: Self-Supervised Learning of Lidar Segmentation for Autonomous Indoor Navigation
We present a self-supervised learning approach for the semantic segmentation of lidar frames. Our method is used to train a deep point cloud segmentation architecture without any human annotation.
RoboWorm: Light-controlled organism offers a new strategy for micro-scale robotics
In this photomicrograph, points of patterned laser light (blue) are being projected on computationally selected positions to activate the muscles of a genetically modified, one-millimetre-long C. elegans worm. The technique could offer a new way of developing organism-based microrobots for a variety of different applications.
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. […]
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
Maria Yablonina receives funding for space project
Robotics Institute professor Maria Yablonina is working on a collaboration with Hassell architects that has just received funding to create a new framework for reconfigurable robotics, going beyond the traditional robotics for space operations.
UofT Robotics’ Guide to workshops at ICRA 2021
Which ICRA workshops are UofT Robotics faculty most looking forward to this year? Check out our recommendations to the 2021 edition of the premiere international conference in robotics.
UofT Robotics Outreach: Mars Rover Navigation 101 at the NSERC Science Odyssey Festival
Learn about the Mars rover’s autonomous navigation system and how teams of human experts safely operate it from earth. This talk is available in French and English, and is for all ages and anyone interested in learning more about planetary navigation – no technical background needed.