Robotics
Where hardware, software and machine intelligence come together.
Our research is interdisciplinary and focuses on sensing, planning, reasoning, and control of single and multi-agent systems, including both manipulation and mobile robots. We strive to develop algorithms and methods for factory automation, smart building and transportation applications using machine learning, computer vision, RF/optical sensing, wireless communications, control theory and signal processing. Key research themes include bin picking and object manipulation, sensing and mapping of indoor areas, coordinated control of robot swarms, as well as robot learning and simulation.
Quick Links
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Researchers
Devesh K.
Jha
Diego
Romeres
Daniel N.
Nikovski
Arvind
Raghunathan
Stefano
Di Cairano
Yebin
Wang
Mouhacine
Benosman
Toshiaki
Koike-Akino
William S.
Yerazunis
Karl
Berntorp
Scott A.
Bortoff
Radu
Corcodel
Siddarth
Jain
Tim K.
Marks
Kei
Ota
Ye
Wang
Matthew E.
Brand
Rien
Quirynen
Bingnan
Wang
Avishai
Weiss
Jianlin
Guo
Jonathan
Le Roux
Hassan
Mansour
Marcel
Menner
Philip V.
Orlik
Koon Hoo
Teo
Anthony
Vetro
Pedro
Miraldo
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Awards
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AWARD Best student paper award at RSS22 Date: June 29, 2022
Awarded to: Weizhe Chen
MERL Contact: Diego Romeres
Research Area: RoboticsBrief- Weizhe Chen, a current intern at MERL from Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA, won the best student paper award at the Robotics Science and Systems (RSS) 2022 conference. The research at Weizhe Chen's university leading up to the awarded paper titled 'AK: Attentive Kernel for Information Gathering', proposes a novel non stationary kernel called, Attentive Kernel, for Gaussian Process Regression. The novel kernel is used to guide a planner to accumulate more valuable data in an elevation mapping task.
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AWARD MERL Researcher Devesh Jha Wins the Rudolf Kalman Best Paper Award 2019 Date: October 10, 2019
Awarded to: Devesh Jha, Nurali Virani, Zhenyuan Yuan, Ishana Shekhawat and Asok Ray
MERL Contact: Devesh K. Jha
Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Control, Data Analytics, Machine Learning, RoboticsBrief- MERL researcher Devesh Jha has won the Rudolf Kalman Best Paper Award 2019 for the paper entitled "Imitation of Demonstrations Using Bayesian Filtering With Nonparametric Data-Driven Models". This paper, published in a Special Commemorative Issue for Rudolf E. Kalman in the ASME JDSMC in March 2018, uses Bayesian filtering for imitation learning in Hidden Mode Hybrid Systems. This award is given annually by the Dynamic Systems and Control Division of ASME to the authors of the best paper published in the ASME Journal of Dynamic Systems Measurement and Control during the preceding year.
See All Awards for MERL -
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News & Events
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EVENT MERL's Virtual Open House 2022 Date & Time: Monday, December 12, 2022; 1:00pm-5:30pm ET
Location: Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL)/Virtual
Research Areas: Applied Physics, Artificial Intelligence, Communications, Computational Sensing, Computer Vision, Control, Data Analytics, Dynamical Systems, Electric Systems, Electronic and Photonic Devices, Machine Learning, Multi-Physical Modeling, Optimization, Robotics, Signal Processing, Speech & Audio, Digital VideoBrief- Join MERL's virtual open house on December 12th, 2022! Featuring a keynote, live sessions, research area booths, and opportunities to interact with our research team. Discover who we are and what we do, and learn about internship and employment opportunities.
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NEWS Rien Quirynen to give an invited talk at the University of California Santa Cruz Date: November 14, 2022
Where: Zoom
MERL Contact: Rien Quirynen
Research Areas: Control, Dynamical Systems, Optimization, RoboticsBrief- Rien Quirynen will give an invited talk at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of California Santa Cruz on "Real-time Motion Planning and Predictive Control by Mixed-integer Programming for Autonomous Vehicles". The talk will present recent work on a tailored branch-and-bound method for real-time motion planning and decision making on embedded processing units, and recent results for two applications related to automated driving and traffic control.
See All News & Events for Robotics -
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Internships
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CA1940: Autonomous vehicle planning and contro in uncertain environments
MERL is seeking a highly motivated and qualified intern to collaborate with the Control for Autonomy team in research on planning and control for autonomous vehicles in uncertain surrounding environments. The research domain includes algorithms for path planning and control in environments that are uncertain and perceived by sensing and predicted according to models and data. The ideal candidate is expected to be working towards a PhD with strong emphasis in vehicle guidance and control, and to have interest and background in as many as possible of: vehicle dynamics modeling and control, sensor uncertainty modeling, data-driven prediction, predictive control for uncertain systems, motion planning. Good programming skills in MATLAB, Python are required, knowledge of C/C++, rapid prototyping systems, automatic code generation, vehicle simulation packages (CarSim, CarMaker) or ROS are a plus. The expected start of of the internship is in the late Spring/Early Summer 2022, for a duration of 3-6 months.
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CV1992: High precision pose estimation of deformable objects
MERL is seeking a highly motivated intern to conduct original research in high precision pose estimation of deformable objects. Applicants are required to have a strong background in image processing, machine vision and point cloud processing using depth cameras. The internship is open to PhD students, preferably specializing in Computer Vision, with a strong publication record, solid programming skills in Python and/or C/C++, and preferably some experience using tactile sensors. Internship duration and start date are flexible.
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DA1963: Multimodal understanding for robotic manipulation tasks
MERL is looking for a self-motivated intern to work on multimodal reasoning problems for robotic manipulation using vision and large-language models. The ideal candidate would be a PhD student with strong mathematical background and peer-reviewed publications in machine learning/reinforcement learning/imitation learning, robotic manipulation, and experience in working with training deep models on large scale computer vision and language models.
Proficiency in PyTorch, robotic simulators and working with physical robots is expected. The intern will conduct original research with MERL researchers towards scientific publications. The expected duration of internship is 3-4 months with start date in May/June 2023. This internship is preferred to be onsite at MERL.
See All Internships for Robotics -
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Recent Publications
- "Model-Based Policy Search Using Monte Carlo Gradient Estimation with Real Systems Application", IEEE Transaction on Robotics, DOI: 10.1109/TRO.2022.3184837, Vol. 38, No. 6, pp. 3879-3898, December 2022.BibTeX TR2022-154 PDF
- @article{Romeres2022dec,
- author = {Amadio, Fabio and Dalla Libera, Alberto and Antonello, Riccardo and Nikovski, Daniel N. and Carli, Ruggero and Romeres, Diego},
- title = {Model-Based Policy Search Using Monte Carlo Gradient Estimation with Real Systems Application},
- journal = {IEEE Transaction on Robotics},
- year = 2022,
- volume = 38,
- number = 6,
- pages = {3879--3898},
- month = dec,
- doi = {10.1109/TRO.2022.3184837},
- issn = {1941-0468},
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2022-154}
- }
, - "Homogeneous Infeasible Interior Point Method for Convex Quadratic Programs", IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), December 2022.BibTeX TR2022-157 PDF
- @inproceedings{Raghunathan2022dec,
- author = {Raghunathan, Arvind and Jha, Devesh K. and Romeres, Diego},
- title = {Homogeneous Infeasible Interior Point Method for Convex Quadratic Programs},
- booktitle = {IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC)},
- year = 2022,
- month = dec,
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2022-157}
- }
, - "Active Exploration for Robotic Manipulation", IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), October 2022.BibTeX TR2022-139 PDF
- @inproceedings{Schneider2022oct,
- author = {Schneider, Tim and Belousov, Boris and Chalvatzaki, Georgia and Romeres, Diego and Jha, Devesh K. and Peters, Jan},
- title = {Active Exploration for Robotic Manipulation},
- booktitle = {IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)},
- year = 2022,
- month = oct,
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2022-139}
- }
, - "Motion Planning and Model Predictive Control for Automated Tractor-Trailer Hitching Maneuver", IEEE Conference on Control Technology and Applications (CCTA), DOI: 10.1109/CCTA49430.2022.9966181, August 2022, pp. 676-682.BibTeX TR2022-109 PDF
- @inproceedings{Wang2022aug,
- author = {Wang, Zejiang and Ahmad, Ahmad and Quirynen, Rien and Wang, Yebin and Bhagat, Akshay and Zeino, Eyad and Zushi, Yuji and Di Cairano, Stefano},
- title = {Motion Planning and Model Predictive Control for Automated Tractor-Trailer Hitching Maneuver},
- booktitle = {IEEE Conference on Control Technology and Applications (CCTA)},
- year = 2022,
- pages = {676--682},
- month = aug,
- publisher = {IEEE},
- doi = {10.1109/CCTA49430.2022.9966181},
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2022-109}
- }
, - "Imitation and Supervised Learning of Compliance for Robotic Assembly", European Control Conference (ECC), DOI: 10.23919/ECC55457.2022.9838102, July 2022, pp. 1882-1889.BibTeX TR2022-099 PDF Video
- @inproceedings{Jha2022jul,
- author = {Jha, Devesh K. and Romeres, Diego and Yerazunis, William S. and Nikovski, Daniel N.},
- title = {Imitation and Supervised Learning of Compliance for Robotic Assembly},
- booktitle = {European Control Conference (ECC)},
- year = 2022,
- pages = {1882--1889},
- month = jul,
- publisher = {IEEE},
- doi = {10.23919/ECC55457.2022.9838102},
- isbn = {978-3-9071-4407-7},
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2022-099}
- }
, - "EEG-GAT: Graph Attention Networks for Classification of Electroencephalogram (EEG) Signals", International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine & Biology Society (EMBS), DOI: 10.1109/EMBC48229.2022.9871984, July 2022.BibTeX TR2022-097 PDF
- @inproceedings{Demir2022jul,
- author = {Demir, Andac and Koike-Akino, Toshiaki and Wang, Ye and Erdogmus, Deniz},
- title = {EEG-GAT: Graph Attention Networks for Classification of Electroencephalogram (EEG) Signals},
- booktitle = {International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine & Biology Society (EMBS)},
- year = 2022,
- month = jul,
- publisher = {IEEE},
- doi = {10.1109/EMBC48229.2022.9871984},
- issn = {2694-0604},
- isbn = {978-1-7281-2782-8},
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2022-097}
- }
, - "Python-based Open Source Package for Optimization of Contact-rich Systems", Robotics: Science and Systems, June 2022.BibTeX TR2022-089 PDF
- @inproceedings{Raghunathan2022jun,
- author = {Raghunathan, Arvind and Jha, Devesh K. and Romeres, Diego},
- title = {Python-based Open Source Package for Optimization of Contact-rich Systems},
- booktitle = {Robotics: Science and Systems},
- year = 2022,
- month = jun,
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2022-089}
- }
, - "Robust Pivoting Manipulation Using Bilevel Contact-Implicit Optimization", RSS Workshop on The Science of Bumping into Things, June 2022.BibTeX TR2022-090 PDF
- @inproceedings{Shirai2022jun,
- author = {Shirai, Yuki and Jha, Devesh K. and Raghunathan, Arvind and Romeres, Diego},
- title = {Robust Pivoting Manipulation Using Bilevel Contact-Implicit Optimization},
- booktitle = {RSS Workshop on The Science of Bumping into Things},
- year = 2022,
- month = jun,
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2022-090}
- }
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- "Model-Based Policy Search Using Monte Carlo Gradient Estimation with Real Systems Application", IEEE Transaction on Robotics, DOI: 10.1109/TRO.2022.3184837, Vol. 38, No. 6, pp. 3879-3898, December 2022.
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Videos
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Tactile tool manipulation
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Robot Locomotion by Automated Controller Tuning
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Real-time Mixed-integer Programming for Vehicle Decision Making and Motion Planning
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[MERL Seminar Series Spring 2022] Hybrid robotics and implicit learning
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[MERL Seminar Series Spring 2022] Exact Structural Analysis of Multimode Modelica Models
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[MERL Seminar Series Spring 2022] Self-Supervised Scene Representation Learning
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[MERL Seminar Series 2021] Learning to See by Moving: Self-supervising 3D scene representations for perception, control, and visual reasoning
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Robotic Research at MERL
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Control of Mechanical Systems via Feedback Linearization Based on Black-Box Gaussian Process Models
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Modelica-Based Modeling and Control of a Delta Robot
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Towards Human-Level Learning of Complex Physical Puzzles
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Assembly of Belt Drive Units
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Examples of Robotic Manipulation
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Tactile-RL for Insertion: Generalization to Objects of Unknown Geometry
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Cooperating Modular Goal Selection and Motion Planning for Autonomous Driving
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Deep Reactive Planning in Dynamic Environments
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Monte Carlo Probabilistic Inference for Learning Control
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Experimental Validation of Reachability-based Decision Making for Autonomous Driving
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Software Downloads