Join us for an engaging and insightful seminar with Steve Cousins, the Executive Director of the Stanford Robotics Center, as he introduces the groundbreaking work being done at one of the world’s leading hubs for robotics innovation. In this talk, Steve will provide an overview of the Center’s mission and provide insight into the future of robotics.

Compliance is a physical property of motion that describes the elastic relationship brings force and motion variations. A suitable compliance profile brings robustness to robotic manipulation by handling uncertainties gracefully. In this talk, I will introduce two sets of methods for designing compliance control in manipulation tasks. I will first walk through manipulation robustness analytically, and show the role compliance control can play to improve it. With basic modeling information, the optimal control/motion plan can be computed efficiently. Then I will talk about how to learn a compliant manipulation policy directly from human demonstrations. We propose Adaptive Compliance Policy (ACP), a framework that learns to dynamically adjust system compliance both spatially and temporally for given manipulation tasks from human demonstrations.

Recent advances across multiple research fields are rapidly changing the way in which we develop autonomous systems. In this talk, I will discuss how space autonomy can benefit from the rise of foundation models. The discussion will focus on two perspectives. First, I will discuss how techniques that are traditional to the foundation model literature can be adapted for the purpose of reliable decision-making in space, with a focus on the application of Transformers for spacecraft trajectory optimization. Next, I will discuss the opportunities presented by pre-trained foundation models within future machine learning-based autonomy stacks for space applications, ranging from data curation to serving as reconfigurable automated reasoning modules within modular autonomy stacks, towards the goal of developing a broadly capable Space Foundation Model.

Living robots represent a new frontier in engineering materials for robotic systems, incorporating biological living cells and synthetic materials into their design. These bio-hybrid robots are dynamic and intelligent, potentially harnessing living matter’s capabilities, such as growth, regeneration, morphing, biodegradation, and environmental adaptation. Such attributes position bio-hybrid devices as a transformative force in robotics development, promising enhanced dexterity, adaptive behaviors, sustainable production, robust performance, and environmental stewardship. Nature’s musculoskeletal design can act as an inspiration for both artificial and living robots. We will explore recent advances in artificial electrohydraulic musculoskeletal robots, which employ electrohydraulic actuators to produce lifelike muscle contractions and adaptive motions, as demonstrated in our recent work published in Nature Communications. We will also discuss our breakthroughs in vision-controlled inkjet printing for robotics from our Nature paper, as well as xolographic biofabrication techniques for biohybrid swimmers presented at RoboSoft. Additionally, I’ll share insights from our computational optimization of musculoskeletal systems featured at Humanoids. Together, these projects showcase how musculoskeletal, bio-hybrid, and computational techniques are opening new frontiers in robotics interaction and manipulation.

TBD

TBD

TBD

TBD

TBD