Yuki Shirai
- Phone: 617-621-7503
- Email:
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Position:
Research / Technical Staff
Postdoctoral Research Fellow -
Education:
Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles, 2024 -
Research Areas:
External Links:
Yuki's Quick Links
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Biography
Yuki's research focuses on planning, estimation, and control for contact-rich manipulation and locomotion, from spanning free-climbing robots to robotic tool manipulation. In particular, he has been working on contact-implicit trajectory optimization, stochastic optimization, contact modeling, and contact estimation using tactile sensing. His current research interests lie in the intersection of optimization and learning.
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Recent News & Events
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NEWS Yuki Shirai appointed as an Associate Editor for IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L). Date: March 4, 2025
Where: IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS)
MERL Contact: Yuki Shirai
Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Optimization, RoboticsBrief- MERL researcher, Yuki Shirai, has been appointed to the editorial board of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L) as an Associate Editor.
IEEE RA-L publishes peer-reviewed articles in the areas of robotics and automation which can also be presented at the annual flagship conferences of IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS), including IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) and International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).
- MERL researcher, Yuki Shirai, has been appointed to the editorial board of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L) as an Associate Editor.
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Awards
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AWARD MERL Researchers Win Best Workshop Poster Award at the 2023 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) Date: June 2, 2023
Awarded to: Yuki Shirai, Devesh Jha, Arvind Raghunathan and Dennis Hong
MERL Contacts: Devesh K. Jha; Arvind Raghunathan; Yuki Shirai
Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Optimization, RoboticsBrief- MERL's paper titled: "Closed-Loop Tactile Controller for Tool Manipulation" Won the Best Poster Award in the workshop on "Embracing contacts : Making robots physically interact with our world". First author and MERL intern, Yuki Shirai, was presented with the award at a ceremony held at ICRA in London. MERL researchers Devesh Jha, Principal Research Scientist, and Arvind Raghunathan, Senior Principal Research Scientist and Senior Team Leader as well as Prof. Dennis Hong of University of California, Los Angeles are also coauthors.
The paper presents a technique to manipulate an object using a tool in a closed-loop fashion using vision-based tactile sensors. More information about the workshop and the various speakers can be found here https://sites.google.com/view/icra2023embracingcontacts/home.
- MERL's paper titled: "Closed-Loop Tactile Controller for Tool Manipulation" Won the Best Poster Award in the workshop on "Embracing contacts : Making robots physically interact with our world". First author and MERL intern, Yuki Shirai, was presented with the award at a ceremony held at ICRA in London. MERL researchers Devesh Jha, Principal Research Scientist, and Arvind Raghunathan, Senior Principal Research Scientist and Senior Team Leader as well as Prof. Dennis Hong of University of California, Los Angeles are also coauthors.
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Internships with Yuki
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OR0147: Internship - Learning Visuotactile Dexterous Manipulation
MERL is looking for a highly motivated individual to work on designing robot motor skills for contact-rich dexterous manipulation such as tool manipulation using visuotactile sensing. Through the internship, we develop closed-loop controller for dexterous manipulation that can stabilize manipulation even under unexpected contact events. A successful internship will result in the submission of results to a peer-reviewed robotics conference papers (e.g., RSS, ICRA, CoRL) or journal in collaboration with MERL researchers.
The expected duration of this internship is around 3 months with a start date in the Summer/Fall of 2025. This internship will be onsite at MERL.
Required Specific Experience
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Senior PhD students in robotics and engineering related field.
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Either (1) experience in machine learning for robotic manipulation such as reinforcement, representation, and imitation learning, with an emphasis on real-world deployments, or (2) experience in model-based optimization for contact-rich robotic manipulation such as trajectory optimization, MPC, and estimators.
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Experience in visuotactile sensors (e.g., GelSight, GelSlim, DIGIT)
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Familiarity with related frameworks in either (1) Machine Learning (e.g., PyTorch), or (2) model-based optimization (e.g., IPOPT, Gurobi).
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Experience working with physical hardware systems is required.
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Prior publication experience in robotics venues such as ICRA, RSS, IROS, and CoRL.
Additional Desired Experience
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Experience in computer vision.
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Experience in dexterous manipulation such as bimanual manipulation, tool manipulation, and whole-body manipulation.
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Familiarity with robotic simulators (e.g., MuJoCo).
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Experience in scalable software development (e.g., CI, unittests, OOP) in Python or C++.
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MERL Publications
- , "Hierarchical Contact-Rich Trajectory Optimization for Multi-Modal Manipulation using Tight Convex Relaxations", arXiv, March 2025.BibTeX arXiv
- @article{Shirai2025mar,
- author = {Shirai, Yuki and Raghunathan, Arvind and Jha, Devesh K.},
- title = {{Hierarchical Contact-Rich Trajectory Optimization for Multi-Modal Manipulation using Tight Convex Relaxations}},
- journal = {arXiv},
- year = 2025,
- month = mar,
- url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.07963}
- }
- , "Chance-Constrained Optimization for Contact-rich Systems using Mixed Integer Programming", Nonlinear Analysis: Hybrid Systems, DOI: 10.1016/j.nahs.2024.101466, Vol. 52, December 2024.BibTeX TR2024-008 PDF
- @article{Shirai2024dec,
- author = {Shirai, Yuki and Jha, Devesh K. and Raghunathan, Arvind and Romeres, Diego},
- title = {{Chance-Constrained Optimization for Contact-rich Systems using Mixed Integer Programming}},
- journal = {Nonlinear Analysis: Hybrid Systems},
- year = 2024,
- volume = 52,
- month = dec,
- doi = {10.1016/j.nahs.2024.101466},
- issn = {1751-570X},
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2024-008}
- }
- , "Robust Pivoting Manipulation using Contact Implicit Bilevel Optimization", IEEE Transactions on Robotics, DOI: 10.1109/TRO.2024.3422053, pp. 3425-3444, July 2024.BibTeX TR2024-096 PDF Video
- @article{Shirai2024jul,
- author = {Shirai, Yuki and Jha, Devesh K. and Raghunathan, Arvind},
- title = {{Robust Pivoting Manipulation using Contact Implicit Bilevel Optimization}},
- journal = {IEEE Transactions on Robotics},
- year = 2024,
- pages = {3425--3444},
- month = jul,
- doi = {10.1109/TRO.2024.3422053},
- issn = {1941-0468},
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2024-096}
- }
- , "Contact-Aware Covariance Control of Stochastic Contact-Rich Systems", IROS 2023 Workshop on Leveraging Models for Contact-Rich Manipulation, September 2023.BibTeX TR2023-120 PDF
- @inproceedings{Shirai2023sep,
- author = {Shirai, Yuki and Jha, Devesh K. and Raghunathan, Arvind},
- title = {{Contact-Aware Covariance Control of Stochastic Contact-Rich Systems}},
- booktitle = {IROS 2023 Workshop on Leveraging Models for Contact-Rich Manipulation},
- year = 2023,
- month = sep,
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2023-120}
- }
- , "Chance-Constrained Optimization in Contact-rich Systems", American Control Conference (ACC), DOI: 10.23919/ACC55779.2023.10156516, May 2023, pp. 14-21.BibTeX TR2023-061 PDF
- @inproceedings{Shirai2023may4,
- author = {Shirai, Yuki and Jha, Devesh K. and Raghunathan, Arvind and Romeres, Diego},
- title = {{Chance-Constrained Optimization in Contact-rich Systems}},
- booktitle = {American Control Conference (ACC)},
- year = 2023,
- pages = {14--21},
- month = may,
- publisher = {IEEE},
- doi = {10.23919/ACC55779.2023.10156516},
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2023-061}
- }
- , "Hierarchical Contact-Rich Trajectory Optimization for Multi-Modal Manipulation using Tight Convex Relaxations", arXiv, March 2025.
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Other Publications
- , "SCALER: A Tough Versatile Quadruped Free-Climber Robot", 2022 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2022, pp. 5632-5639.BibTeX
- @Inproceedings{9981555,
- author = {Tanaka, Yusuke and Shirai, Yuki and Lin, Xuan and Schperberg, Alexander and Kato, Hayato and Swerdlow, Alexander and Kumagai, Naoya and Hong, Dennis},
- title = {SCALER: A Tough Versatile Quadruped Free-Climber Robot},
- booktitle = {2022 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)},
- year = 2022,
- pages = {5632--5639}
- }
- , "Simultaneous Contact-Rich Grasping and Locomotion via Distributed Optimization Enabling Free-Climbing for Multi-Limbed Robots", 2022 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2022, pp. 13563-13570.BibTeX
- @Inproceedings{9981579,
- author = {Shirai, Yuki and Lin, Xuan and Schperberg, Alexander and Tanaka, Yusuke and Kato, Hayato and Vichathorn, Varit and Hong, Dennis},
- title = {Simultaneous Contact-Rich Grasping and Locomotion via Distributed Optimization Enabling Free-Climbing for Multi-Limbed Robots},
- booktitle = {2022 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)},
- year = 2022,
- pages = {13563--13570}
- }
- , "LTO: Lazy Trajectory Optimization with Graph-Search Planning for High DOF Robots in Cluttered Environments", 2021 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2021, pp. 7533-7539.BibTeX
- @Inproceedings{9561502,
- author = {Shirai, Yuki and Lin, Xuan and Mehta, Ankur and Hong, Dennis},
- title = {LTO: Lazy Trajectory Optimization with Graph-Search Planning for High DOF Robots in Cluttered Environments},
- booktitle = {2021 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)},
- year = 2021,
- pages = {7533--7539}
- }
- , "Risk-Aware Motion Planning for a Limbed Robot with Stochastic Gripping Forces Using Nonlinear Programming", IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, Vol. 5, No. 4, pp. 4994-5001, 2020.BibTeX
- @Article{9113247,
- author = {Shirai, Yuki and Lin, Xuan and Tanaka, Yusuke and Mehta, Ankur and Hong, Dennis},
- title = {Risk-Aware Motion Planning for a Limbed Robot with Stochastic Gripping Forces Using Nonlinear Programming},
- journal = {IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters},
- year = 2020,
- volume = 5,
- number = 4,
- pages = {4994--5001}
- }
- , "Passive Spine Gripper for Free-Climbing Robot in Extreme Terrain", IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 1765-1770, 2018.BibTeX
- @Article{8260908,
- author = {Nagaoka, Kenji and Minote, Hayato and Maruya, Kyohei and Shirai, Yuki and Yoshida, Kazuya and Hakamada, Takeshi and Sawada, Hirotaka and Kubota, Takashi},
- title = {Passive Spine Gripper for Free-Climbing Robot in Extreme Terrain},
- journal = {IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters},
- year = 2018,
- volume = 3,
- number = 3,
- pages = {1765--1770}
- }
- , "SCALER: A Tough Versatile Quadruped Free-Climber Robot", 2022 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2022, pp. 5632-5639.