Toronto AI in Robotics Seminar University of Toronto

The Toronto AI in Robotics Seminar is organized by the Faculty and Students at the Dept. of Computer Science, University of Toronto for students across the world to present and interact with the Toronto CS Robotics Community.

Format: Opportunities for students to present their research and connect with peers from other institutions are inceasingly getting rarer. This phenomenon is sped up by low rate of oral/spotlights at top AI meetings and all events going virtual/online. This series aims to create such a platform for students to present their work in a friendly setting and get feedback and hopefully build new collaborations and network.

Logistics

We meet from 1030 to 1130 EST on Mondays. See in other time zones
The meetings will be hosted on youtube with hosts/presenters using zoom (internal UofT presenters will also come to the campus at Mississauga).

Subscribe to our list to be notified of upcoming talks:

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Past talks are also available on our YouTube Channel.

Winter 2023 Schedule

Speaker Affiliation Date Topic Recording
Ayal Taitler University of Toronto February 13, 2023 Stochastic Planning and Reinforcement Learning paper1, paper2 link
Zhenjia Xu Columbia University February 27, 2023 Deformable Object Manipulation Beyond Pick-and-Place paper1, paper2 link
Sven Lilge University of Toronto March 6, 2023 Continuum Robot State Estimation via Gaussian Process Regression on SE(3) link
Frederike Dümbgen University of Toronto March 13, 2023 Towards Globally Optimal State Estimation paper1, paper2, paper3 link
Zhang-Wei Hong MIT March 20, 2023 Explore and Exploit Data in Reinforcement Learning paper1, paper2 link
Zhenyu Jiang UT Austin March 27, 2023 Building Digital Twins of Articulated Objects and Scenes paper1, paper2  
Joanne Truong Georgia Institute of Technology April 3rd, 2023 Sim2Robot: Training Robots for the Real-World with Imperfect Simulators paper1, paper2, paper3, paper4 link
Ahalya Prabhakar EPFL April 17, 2023 Coverage-Based Control for Robot Communication and Learning paper1, paper2, paper3 link
Ivan Skorokhodov KAUST April 24, 2023 Generative Models for Neural Fields paper1, paper2, paper3 link
Gautam Singh Rutgers University May 1, 2023 Representation Learning for Systematic Generalization paper1, paper2, paper3 link
Bingjie Tang University of Southern California May 8, 2023 Transferring Contact-Rich Assembly from Simulation to Reality paper link

Contact

If you have any questions, kindly email the current organizers:


Previous iterations

Fall 2022 Schedule

Speaker Affiliation Date Topic Recording
Daniel Bruder Harvard University September 19, 2022 Making Soft Robotics Less Hard: Towards a Unified Modeling, Design, and Control Framework paper1, paper2 link
Nolan Wagener Georgia Institute of Technology September 26, 2022 MoCapAct: A Multi-Task Dataset for Simulated Humanoid Control link
Chris Denniston University of Southern California October 17, 2022 Active Robot Perception for Understanding the World paper1, paper2 link
S.M.Hadi Sadati King’s College London October 24, 2022 Reinventing Catheters by Soft Robotics: Robotics Thrombectomy for Acute Stroke link
Mohit Shridhar University of Washington October 31, 2022 Acting with Perception and Language link
Jun Yang University of Toronto - UTIAS November 7, 2022 6D Pose Estimation for Textureless Objects on RGB Frames using Multi-View Optimization paper1, paper2 link
Jun Gao University of Toronto November 14, 2022 Towards Generative Modeling of 3D Objects Learned from Images paper1, paper2, paper3 link
Silviu Pitis University of Toronto November 21, 2022 Generalizing Out-of-Distribution using Counterfactual Data Augmentation paper1, paper2, paper3 link
Wenyuan Zeng University of Toronto November 28, 2022 Neural World Models for Autonomous Driving paper1, paper2, paper3 link
Mathias Gehrig University of Zurich December 5, 2022 Event Cameras and How to Make Them Useful paper1, paper2, paper3 link
Kourosh Darvish University of Toronto December 12, 2022 Shared Autonomy: From Human-Robot Collaboration to Humanoid Robot Teleoperation paper1, paper2, paper3 link

Winter 2022 Schedule

Speaker Affiliation Date Topic Recording
Mojtaba Sharifi California State University January 31, 2022 Autonomous Locomotion Planning for Personalized Control of Lower-limb Exoskeletons link
Melissa Greeff University of Toronto - UTIAS February 7, 2022 Flying Flat Out: Fast Multirotor Flight Using Vision-Based Navigation in Real-World Environments paper 1, paper 2, paper 3 link
SiQi Zhou University of Toronto - UTIAS February 14, 2022 Integrating Machine Learning and Control Theory for Safe and Efficient Robot Decision Making paper 1, paper 2  
Jacopo Panerati University of Toronto - UTIAS February 21, 2022 Safe Learning-based Control for Robotics and Physics-based Simulation paper 1, paper 2, paper 3 link
Matthew Giamou University of Toronto February 28, 2022 Convex Relaxations for Geometric Problems in Robotics paper 1, paper 2, paper 3 link
Antonio Loquercio UC Berkeley March 7, 2022 Agile Autonomy: Learning High-Speed Flight paper 1, paper 2, paper 3 link
Weiyu Liu Georgia Institute of Technology March 14, 2022 Grounded Semantic Reasoning for Robotic Interaction with Real-World Objects paper 1, paper 2, paper 3 link
Marija Popovic University of Bonn March 21, 2022 Active Sensing with Intelligent Robots: Mapping and Planning for Robot Autonomy paper 1, paper 2, paper 3 link
Kashyap Chitta MPI & University of Tübingen March 28, 2022 Imitation with Transformer-Based Sensor Fusion for Autonomous Driving link
Erfan Shahriari Technical University of Munich April 4, 2022 The Language of Manipulation: Force/Motion Planning and Control for Tactile Robot Manipulation paper 1, paper 2, paper 3, paper 4, paper 5  
Brian Okorn Carnegie Mellon University April 11, 2022 Object Representations without Direct Supervision paper 1, paper 2 link
Cameron Forbrigger University of Toronto April 25, 2022 Tethered Magnetic Serial Robots for Minimally Invasive Neurosurgery paper 1, paper 2 link
Eric Heiden University of Southern California May 2, 2022 Reducing the Reality Gap in Robotics via Simulation-based Inference paper 1, paper 2 link
Sven Lilge University of Toronto May 9, 2022 Tendon-Driven Parallel Continuum Robots paper 1, paper 2 link
Heng Yang Massachusetts Institute of Technology May 16, 2022 Certifiable Outlier-Robust Geometric Perception: Robots that See through the Clutter with Confidence paper 1, paper 2 link

Fall 2021 Schedule

Speaker Affiliation Date Topic Recording
Tabitha Lee Carnegie Mellon University October 25, 2021 Causal Reasoning in Simulation for Structure and Transfer Learning of Robot Manipulation Policies link
Lukas Brunke University of Toronto - UTIAS November 1, 2021 Safe Learning in Robotics: From Learning-Based Control to Safe Reinforcement Learning link
Sarah Bechtle MPI Tuebingen November 15, 2021 Lifelong learning in the real world: paper 1, paper 2, paper 3 link
Nikita Dvornik University of Toronto, Samsung November 22, 2021 Representation Learning via Global Temporal Alignment and Cycle-Consistency link
Cynthia Chen UC Berkeley November 29, 2021 An Empirical Investigation of Representation Learning for Imitation link
Quentin Peyron University of Toronto December 6, 2021 Elastic Stability Issues in Continuum Robotics and How to Snap Out of Them: paper 1, paper 2 link
Homanga Bharadhwaj CMU December 13, 2021 Auditing Machine Learning and Robot Learning for Safety and Compliance during Deployment: paper 1, paper 2 link

Winter 2021 Schedule

Speaker Affiliation Date Topic Recording  
Kevin Xie / Homanga Bharadhwaj University of Toronto January 22, 2021 Skill Transfer via Partially Amortized Hierarchical Planning    
Ali Harakeh University of Toronto February 12, 2021 Bayesian Detection link  
Hazel Doughty University of Amsterdam February 19, 2021 Action Modifiers: Learning from Adverbs in Instructional Videos link  
Joonho Lee ETH Zürich February 26, 2021 Anymal Learning link  
Samarth Brahmbhatt Georgia Tech, Intel March 5, 2021 Grasp contact between hand and object & associated datasets link  
Maria Bauza MIT March 12, 2021 Tactile Localization link  
Daniel Seita UC Berkeley March 19, 2021 Deformable Object Manipulation link  
Krishna Murthy Mila March 26, 2021 GradSLAM link  
Michelle Lee Stanford April 9, 2021      
Georgia Chalvatzaki TU Darmstadt April 16, 2021 Accelerating Robot Skill Learning with Demonstrations and Models link  

Fall 2020 Schedule

Speaker Affiliation Date Topic Slides Recording
Yunzhu Li MIT September 4, 2020 Koopman operators for model-based RL link link
Yana Hasson INRIA September 11, 2020 Hand-Object Reconstruction link link
Ahmed Qureshi UCSD September 18, 2020 Motion Planning Networks link link
Ron Dorfman Technion September 25, 2020 Offline Meta RL link link
Rika Antonova KTH October 9, 2020 Analytic Manifold Learning link link
Anirudh Goyal Mila October 23, 2020 Recurrent Independent Mechanisms link link
Zongyi Li Caltech November 20, 2020 Fourier Neural Operator for Parametric PDEs link link
Carolyn Matl UC Berkeley December 11, 2020 Sim-To-Real from Sound / Material Properties for Robotic Tasks   link

Previous organizers