Collaborators

Most of this page refers to my time at Willow Garage.

Academic Collaborators

I have collaborated with several of the world's leading academics in Robotics. Some of these collaborations have led to research papers, others have also led to the development of new software packages that have since become the standard in open-source Robotics.

  • Lydia Kavraki (Rice University) - I have been collaborating with Professor Lydia Kavraki's group since 2008. This collaboration led to the development of OMPL - the Open Motion Planning Library - open-source software for motion planning. OMPL is now the most used motion planning library for randomized planning.

  • Dinesh Manocha (UNC, Chapel Hill) - I collaborated with Professor Dinesh Manocha and his group, one of the world's leaders in collision checking and motion planning, to develop FCL - an open-source library for collision checking that is fast becoming the standard in collision checking.

  • Maxim Likhachev (CMU) - I collaborated with Max's group to develop SBPL - the premier open source library for motion planning using search-based techniques. The collaboration led to several demonstrations extending the use of ARA* like planners to high-dimensional problems in manipulation.

Visitors

I worked with several world class researchers who visited Willow Garage.

  • Sami Haddadin (DLR) - Sami co-founded Franka Emika which builds the Panda collaborative robot.

  • Shaun Edwards (SwRI) - Shaun is the co-founder of the ROS-Industrial consortium and Plus One Robotics. [Video]

  • Roland Phillipsen (Stanford) - Roland is now at Applied Intuition.

Interns


I had worked with and mentored some of the best interns Willow Garage had. Here's (in reverse chronological order) the set of interns I have worked with or mentored over the last 6 years (Interns for whom I was the primary mentor are marked with a *):

  • Robert Wilson* (Stanford, 2012-2013) - now with Google X

  • Scott Niekum* (UMass Amherst, Fall and Winter 2012 - now faculty at UT Austin) - Robot Programming through Demonstration: Building IKEA Furniture [Video]

  • Alexandru Ichim (EPFL, 2012) - Simplifying the Process of Mapping and Modeling with Low Cost Sensors using only Depth Information [Video]

  • Pablo Speciale - Enabling robots to see better through improved camera calibration [Video]

  • David Lu!! (Washington U. St. Louis, Spring 2013) - Improving Navigation Interactions [Video]

  • Tomasso Cavallari* (Bologna, 2012) - Object Detection on a Rotating Platform [Video]

  • Dan Walker (Stanford, 2012)

  • Sarah Elliott* (Waterloo, Fall 2012) - now at Fetch Robotics

  • Jenny Barry (MIT, Spring 2012 - now with Boston Dynamics) - The ICRA Mobile Manipulation Challenge [Video]

  • Jon Binney (USC, Spring 2012 - now with Iron Ox) - The ICRA Mobile Manipulation Challenge [Video]

  • Tobias Kunz* (Georgia Tech, Summer 2012 - now with Google X) - Dynamic Butler Trajectories [Video]

  • Michael Phillips* (CMU - now with Aurora, Summer 2011)

  • Jia Pan* (University of North Carolina, Summer 2011, Summer 2012) - Flexible Collision Library and Motion Planning with Uncertainty [Video], [Video]

  • Christian Connette* (Fraunhoffer IPA) - Path Optimization by Elastic Band [Video]

  • Armin Hornung (University of Freiburg - now with Sick) - 3D Collision Avoidance for Navigation in Unstructured Environments using Octomap [Video]

  • Joseph Romano (University of Pennsylvania, Summer 2010 - now with Berkshire Grey) - Tactile Sensing [Video]

  • Jonathan Scholz* (Georgia Institute of Technology, Summer 2010 - now with DeepMind) - Cart Pushing [Video]

  • Peter Pastor* (USC, Fall 2009, Summer 2010 - now with Google X) - Policy Learning [Video], Dynamic Motion Primitives [Video]

  • Mrinal Kalakrishnan* (USC, Summer 2009, Summer 2010 - now with Google X) - STOMP [Video], CHOMP [Video]

  • Jurgen Sturm (University of Freiburg - now with Google X) - Gripper Object Recognition

  • Ioan Sucan* (Rice, Summer 2009 - now with Waymo) - Arm Navigation and the Grasping Pipeline

  • Ben Cohen* (University of Pennsylvania, Summer 2009 - now with Berkshire Grey) - Search-based Planning for Manipulation [Video], The ICRA Mobile Manipulation Challenge [Video]

  • Ruben Smits (Leuven - co-founded Intermodalics, Inc.) - Milestone 2 [Video]

  • Matthew Piccoli* (University of Pennsylvania, Summer 2009 and Summer 2008 - now CEO of a startup in Philadelphia) - Open-loop grasping with the PR2 gripper [Video]

  • Paul Vernaza (University of Pennsylvania, Summer 2008 - now at Aurora)

  • Advait Jain* (Georgia Tech, Summer 2008 - now with Google)

  • Matei Ciocarlie* (Columbia, Summer 2008 - now faculty at Columbia)

  • Jimmy Sastra* (University of Pennsylvania, Summer 2008 - now founder and CEO of a Silicon Valley Robotics Startup)

To see the publications corresponding to these projects, please visit my Publications page.