Optimization
Efficient solutions to large-scale problems.
Much of MERL's research activity involves formulating scientific and engineering problems as optimizations, which can be solved in an efficient way. We have developed fundamental algorithms to better solve classic problems, such as quadratic programs and minimum-cost paths. Our work also involves developing theoretical bounds to understand performance limits.
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Researchers
Stefano
Di Cairano
Toshiaki
Koike-Akino
Daniel N.
Nikovski
Arvind
Raghunathan
Ankush
Chakrabarty
Philip V.
Orlik
Christopher R.
Laughman
Mouhacine
Benosman
Karl
Berntorp
Yebin
Wang
Kieran
Parsons
Ye
Wang
Matthew
Brand
Scott A.
Bortoff
Petros T.
Boufounos
Devesh K.
Jha
Hassan
Mansour
Pu
(Perry)
WangJianlin
Guo
Diego
Romeres
Abraham P.
Vinod
Dehong
Liu
Hongbo
Sun
Avishai
Weiss
Vedang M.
Deshpande
Yanting
Ma
Hongtao
Qiao
Saviz
Mowlavi
Yuki
Shirai
Gordon
Wichern
William S.
Yerazunis
Jinyun
Zhang
Abraham
Goldsmith
Chungwei
Lin
Bingnan
Wang
Wataru
Tsujita
Jose
Amaya
Anoop
Cherian
Radu
Corcodel
Pedro
Miraldo
Joshua
Rapp
Jing
Liu
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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
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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AWARD Arvind Raghunathan receives Roberto Tempo Best CDC Paper Award at 2022 IEEE Conference on Decision & Control (CDC) Date: December 8, 2022
Awarded to: Arvind Raghunathan
MERL Contact: Arvind Raghunathan
Research Areas: Control, OptimizationBrief- Arvind Raghunathan, Senior Principal Research Scientist in the Data Analytics group, received the IEEE Control Systems Society Roberto Tempo Best CDC Paper Award. The award was presented at the 2022 IEEE Conference on Decision & Control (CDC).
The award is given annually in honor of Roberto Tempo, the 44th President of the IEEE Control Systems Society (CSS). The Tempo Award Committee selects the best paper from the previous year's CDC based on originality, potential impact on any aspect of control theory, technology, or implementation, and for the clarity of writing. This year's award committee was headed by Prof. Patrizio Colaneri, Politecnico di Milano. Arvind's paper was nominated for the award by Prof. Lorenz Biegler, Carnegie Mellon University, with supporting letters from Prof. Andreas Waechter, Northwestern University, and Prof. Victor Zavala, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
- Arvind Raghunathan, Senior Principal Research Scientist in the Data Analytics group, received the IEEE Control Systems Society Roberto Tempo Best CDC Paper Award. The award was presented at the 2022 IEEE Conference on Decision & Control (CDC).
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AWARD Outstanding Presentation Award at the 28th Conference of Information Processing Society of Japan/Consumer Device & Systems Date: October 20, 2020
Awarded to: Yukimasa Nagai, Takenori Sumi, Jianlin Guo, Philip Orlik, Hiroshi Mineno
MERL Contacts: Jianlin Guo; Philip V. Orlik
Research Areas: Communications, Optimization, Signal ProcessingBrief- MELCO and MERL researchers have won "Outstanding Presentation Award" at 28th Conference of Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ)/Consumer Device & Systems held on September 29-30, 2020. The paper titled "IEEE 802.19.3 Standardization for Coexistence of IEEE 802.11ah and IEEE 802.15.4g Systems in Sub-1 GHz Frequency Bands" reports IEEE 802.19.3 standard development on coexistence between IEEE 802.11ah and IEEE 802.15.4g systems in the Sub-1 GHz frequency bands. MERL and MELCO have been leading this standard development and made major technical contributions, which propose methods to mitigate interference in smart meter systems. The authors are Yukimasa Nagai, Takenori Sumi, Jianlin Guo, Philip Orlik and Hiroshi Mineno.
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News & Events
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NEWS MERL at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2024 Date: May 13, 2024 - May 17, 2024
Where: Yokohama, Japan
MERL Contacts: Anoop Cherian; Radu Corcodel; Stefano Di Cairano; Chiori Hori; Siddarth Jain; Devesh K. Jha; Jonathan Le Roux; Diego Romeres; William S. Yerazunis
Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Optimization, Robotics, Speech & AudioBrief- MERL made significant contributions to both the organization and the technical program of the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2024, which was held in Yokohama, Japan from May 13th to May 17th.
MERL was a Bronze sponsor of the conference, and exhibited a live robotic demonstration, which attracted a large audience. The demonstration showcased an Autonomous Robotic Assembly technology executed on MELCO's Assista robot arm and was the collaborative effort of the Optimization and Robotics Team together with the Advanced Technology department at Mitsubishi Electric.
MERL researchers from the Optimization and Robotics, Speech & Audio, and Control for Autonomy teams also presented 8 papers and 2 invited talks covering topics on robotic assembly, applications of LLMs to robotics, human robot interaction, safe and robust path planning for autonomous drones, transfer learning, perception and tactile sensing.
- MERL made significant contributions to both the organization and the technical program of the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2024, which was held in Yokohama, Japan from May 13th to May 17th.
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NEWS Diego Romeres gave an invited talk at the Padua University's Seminar series on "AI in Action" Date: April 9, 2024
MERL Contact: Diego Romeres
Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Dynamical Systems, Machine Learning, Optimization, RoboticsBrief- Diego Romeres, Principal Research Scientist and Team Leader in the Optimization and Robotics Team, was invited to speak as a guest lecturer in the seminar series on "AI in Action" in the Department of Management and Engineering, at the University of Padua.
The talk, entitled "Machine Learning for Robotics and Automation" described MERL's recent research on machine learning and model-based reinforcement learning applied to robotics and automation.
- Diego Romeres, Principal Research Scientist and Team Leader in the Optimization and Robotics Team, was invited to speak as a guest lecturer in the seminar series on "AI in Action" in the Department of Management and Engineering, at the University of Padua.
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Research Highlights
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Internships
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ST2083: Deep Learning for Radar Perception
The Computation Sensing team at MERL is seeking a highly motivated intern to conduct fundamental research in radar perception. Expertise in deep learning-based object detection, multiple object tracking, data association, and representation learning (detection points, heatmaps, and raw radar waveforms) is required. Previous hands-on experience on open indoor/outdoor radar datasets is a plus. Familiarity with the concept of FMCW, MIMO, and range-Doppler-angle spectrum is an asset. The intern will collaborate with a small group of MERL researchers to develop novel algorithms, design experiments with MERL in-house testbed, and prepare results for patents and publication. The expected duration of the internship is 3 months with a flexible start date.
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CA2182: Motion Planning and Control for Articulated Vehicles
MERL is seeking a highly skilled and self-motivated intern to work on motion planning of articulated vehicles. The ideal candidate should have solid backgrounds in established path/motion planning algorithms (A*, D*, graph-search) and optimization-based control for ground and articulated vehicles. Excellent coding skills in MATLAB/Simulink and publication records are necessary. Experience with CasADi and dSPACE is a plus. Ph.D. students in robotics, computer science, control, electrical engineering, or related areas are encouraged to apply. Start date for this internship is flexible, and the expected duration is about 4-6 months.
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CA2131: Collaborative Legged Robots
MERL is seeking a highly motivated and qualified intern to collaborate with the Control for Autonomy team in research on control and planning algorithms for legged robots for support activities of and collaboration with humans. The ideal candidate is expected to be working towards a PhD with strong emphasis in robotics control and planning and to have interest and background in as many as possible of: motion planning algorithms, control for legged robot locomotions, legged robots, perception and sensing with multiple sensors, SLAM, vision-based control. Good programming skills in Python or C/C++ are required. The expected start of of the internship is flexible, with duration of 3--6 months.
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Openings
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Recent Publications
- "Chance-Constrained Optimization for Contact-rich Systems using Mixed Integer Programming", Nonlinear Analysis: Hybrid Systems, 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,
- month = dec,
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2024-008}
- }
, - "Safe multi-agent motion planning under uncertainty for drones using filtered reinforcement learning", IEEE Transactions on Robotics, DOI: 10.1109/TRO.2024.3387010, Vol. 40, pp. 2529-2542, July 2024.BibTeX TR2024-048 PDF Video
- @article{Safaoui2024jul,
- author = {Safaoui, Sleiman and Vinod, Abraham P. and Chakrabarty, Ankush and Quirynen, Rien and Yoshikawa, Nobuyuki and Di Cairano, Stefano},
- title = {Safe multi-agent motion planning under uncertainty for drones using filtered reinforcement learning},
- journal = {IEEE Transactions on Robotics},
- year = 2024,
- volume = 40,
- pages = {2529--2542},
- month = jul,
- doi = {10.1109/TRO.2024.3387010},
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2024-048}
- }
, - "Leveraging Computational Fluid Dynamics in UAV Motion Planning", American Control Conference (ACC), July 2024.BibTeX TR2024-050 PDF Video
- @inproceedings{Huang2024jul,
- author = {Huang, Yunshen and Greiff, Marcus and Vinod, Abraham P. and Di Cairano, Stefano}},
- title = {Leveraging Computational Fluid Dynamics in UAV Motion Planning},
- booktitle = {American Control Conference (ACC)},
- year = 2024,
- month = jul,
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2024-050}
- }
, - "Distributed Co-Design of Motors and Motions for Robotic Manipulators", European Control Conference (ECC), June 2024.BibTeX TR2024-083 PDF
- @inproceedings{Lu2024jun,
- author = {Lu, Zehui and Wang, Yebin and Sakamoto, Yusuke and Mou, Shaoshuai}},
- title = {Distributed Co-Design of Motors and Motions for Robotic Manipulators},
- booktitle = {European Control Conference (ECC)},
- year = 2024,
- month = jun,
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2024-083}
- }
, - "Structural Exploitation for the Homogeneous Reformulation of Model Predictive Control Problems", European Control Conference (ECC), June 2024.BibTeX TR2024-080 PDF
- @inproceedings{Hall2024jun,
- author = {Hall, Jonas F and Raghunathan, Arvind}},
- title = {Structural Exploitation for the Homogeneous Reformulation of Model Predictive Control Problems},
- booktitle = {European Control Conference (ECC)},
- year = 2024,
- month = jun,
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2024-080}
- }
, - "Data-driven monitoring with mobile sensors and charging stations using multi-arm bandits and coordinated motion planners", American Control Conference (ACC), June 2024.BibTeX TR2024-078 PDF
- @inproceedings{Nayak2024jun,
- author = {Nayak, Siddharth and Greiff, Marcus and Raghunathan, Arvind and Di Cairano, Stefano and Vinod, Abraham P.}},
- title = {Data-driven monitoring with mobile sensors and charging stations using multi-arm bandits and coordinated motion planners},
- booktitle = {American Control Conference (ACC)},
- year = 2024,
- month = jun,
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2024-078}
- }
, - "Sizing of Electric Vehicle Power Converter Based on Distributed Operating Points", 2024 IEEE Transportation Electrification Conference & Expo, June 2024.BibTeX TR2024-075 PDF
- @inproceedings{Rahman2024jun2,
- author = {Rahman, Syed and Wang, Yebin and Menner, Marcel and Liu, Dehong}},
- title = {Sizing of Electric Vehicle Power Converter Based on Distributed Operating Points},
- booktitle = {2024 IEEE Transportation Electrification Conference & Expo},
- year = 2024,
- month = jun,
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2024-075}
- }
, - "Equivariant Deep Learning of Mixed-Integer Optimal Control Solutions for Vehicle Decision Making and Motion Planning", IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, May 2024.BibTeX TR2024-056 PDF
- @article{Reiter2024may2,
- author = {Reiter, Rudolf and Quirynen, Rien and Diehl, Moritz and Di Cairano, Stefano}},
- title = {Equivariant Deep Learning of Mixed-Integer Optimal Control Solutions for Vehicle Decision Making and Motion Planning},
- journal = {IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology},
- year = 2024,
- month = may,
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2024-056}
- }
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- "Chance-Constrained Optimization for Contact-rich Systems using Mixed Integer Programming", Nonlinear Analysis: Hybrid Systems, December 2024.
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Videos
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