The Maryland Robotics Center Robotics Seminar Series presents an exciting variety of speakers and topics related to robotics research. The majority of seminars are presented in person and are recorded with the speakers' permission. Seminars given in person are also streamed. Streaming links are provided in the seminar announcements (click on the seminar title link).
The list of currently scheduled and previous speakers can be found below. Recordings of previous seminars are linked below the seminar description.
September 6
Maryland Robotics Center Seminar
Human-Machine Partnerships in Computer-Integrated INterventional Medicine: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow
Russell H. Taylor
Johns Hopkins University
September 13
Maryland Robotics Center Seminar
Materials, Mechanisms, and Math: Towards $1 Makers
Ankur Mehta
UCLA
Seminar Recording
October 4
Maryland Robotics Center Seminar
Robot Planning for Underwater Sensing and Perception
Jaejeong "Jane" Shin
University of Florida
Seminar Recording
October 25
Maryland Robotics Center Seminar
Exploring the Use of Soft Robotics, Mixed Reality, and Deep Learning for Diagnostic and Surgical Procedures
Bobak Mosadegh, Ph.D.
Weill Cornell Medicine
May 3
Maryland Robotics Center Seminar
Learning Hamilton dynamics from video
Christine Allen-Blanchette
Princeton University
Seminar Recording
April 19
Maryland Robotics Center Seminar
Towards Autonomous Robots for Healthcare
Ron Alterovitz
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Seminar Recording
February 23
Maryland Robotics Center Seminar
From Sea to Space: Machine Learning for Robot Perception in the Wild
Katie Skinner
University of Michigan
Seminar Recording
February 9 (POSTPONED)
Maryland Robotics Center Seminar
Vision-Language Maps: Planning over Spatially Grounded Semantic Information
Bernadette Bucher
Boston Dynamics AI Institute
October 20
Maryland Robotics Center Seminar
Soft Material Robotics and Next-Generation Surgical Robots
Sheila Russo
Boston University
October 6
Maryland Robotics Center Seminar
From Neural Certificates to Certificate-based RL in Large-Scale Autonomy Design
Chuchu Fan
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Seminar Recording
September 29
Maryland Robotics Center Seminar
Drones 101: UMD's UAS Research and Operations Center (UROC)
John Slaughter
University of Maryland
Seminar Recording
September 22
Maryland Robotics Center Seminar
Active State Estimation, Learning, and Adaptive Control in Weakly Electric Fish
Noah J. Cowan
Johns Hopkins University
Seminar Recording
September 15
Maryland Robotics Center Seminar
Gore Robots: From Blood and Guts to Bits and Bytes
Juan Wachs
Purdue University
Seminar Recording
May 5
Maryland Robotics Center Seminar
Origami-Inspired Design for Compliant and Reconfigurable Robots
Cynthia Sung
University of Pennsylvania
Seminar Recording
April 28
Maryland Robotics Center Seminar
Neuromuscular actuators for robotics and health
Ritu Raman
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
April 21
Maryland Robotics Center Seminar
Enabling robots to function in complex and unstructured environments
Tom Ranzani
Boston University
March 31
Maryland Robotics Center Seminar
Flexible Surgical Robots: Design, Sensing, and Control
Tania Morimoto
University of California, San Diego
March 10
Maryland Robotics Center Seminar
Additive Manufacturing of Structures and Electronics: Robotic metamaterials that walk, talk, and listen
Xiaoyu (Rayne) Zheng
University of California, Berkeley
February 10
Distinguished Robotics Colloquium
Human interactions with autonomous vehicles: Calibrating trust
Dawn M. Tilbury
University of Michigan
Seminar Recording
December 9
Maryland Robotics Student Seminar
PiP-X: Funnel-based Online Feedback Motion Planning/Replanning in Dynamic Environments
Mohamed Khalid
Graduate Assistant, Aerospace Engineering
December 2
Maryland Robotics Center Seminar
It's Alive! Bioinspired and biohybrid approaches towards life-like and living robots
Vickie Webster-Wood
Carnegie Mellon University
Seminar Recording
November 18
Maryland Robotics Student Seminar
Distributed Multi-Robot Information Gathering using Path-Based Sensors in Entropy-Weighted Voronoi Regions
Alkesh Kumar Srivastava
Graduate Assistant, Motion and Teaming Lab
November 11
Maryland Robotics Center Seminar
Soft, Architected Robots: Single Material Approaches to Motorized Soft Actuators that Sense
Ryan Truby
Northwestern University
November 4
Maryland Robotics Center Seminar
Multifunctional magnetic origami robots
Renee Zhao
Stanford University
October 14
Maryland Robotics Student Seminar
A Control Theoretic Approach to Monocular Computer Vision
Levi Burner
PhD Student, Electrical & Computer Engineering
October 7
Maryland Robotics Center Seminar
Deploying Autonomous Service Mobile Robots, And Keeping Them Autonomous
Joydeep Biswas
University of Texas at Austin
Seminar Recording
September 23
Maryland Robotics Center Seminar
Embodying Dexterity: Contact models for the design of robotic grasping and manipulation systems
Hannah Stuart
University of California at Berkeley
Seminar Recording
September 16
Maryland Robotics Center Seminar
Biologically Inspired Soft Mobile Robots
Michael T. Tolley
UC San Diego
Seminar Recording
August 12
Robotics Seminar
Ariadne, a common-sense thread for enabling provable safety in air mobility systems with unreliable components
Eric Feron
King Abdullah University of Science and Technology
Seminar Recording
May 6
Lockheed Martin Robotics Seminar
Data-driven design of soft robotic sensors
Po-Yen Chen
University of Maryland
Seminar Recording
April 29
Lockheed Martin Robotics Seminar
Deployable Robots that Learn
Xuesu Xiao
University of Texas at Austin
Seminar Recording
April 15
Maryland Robotics Student Seminar
Fast and Replicable Deployment of Robotics Software: Docker 101 for Fun and Profit
Kanishka Ganguly
PhD. Candidate, Computer Science
Seminar Recording
April 8
Lockheed Martin Robotics Seminar
Using Knowledge-based Neural Ordinary Differential Equations to Learn Complex Dynamics for Control
M. Ani Hsieh
University of Pennsylvania
Seminar Recording
March 18
Lockheed Martin Robotics Seminar
Robot Imagination Affordance-Based Reasoning about Unknown Objects
Gregory S. Chirikjian
National University of Singapore
Seminar Recording
March 4
Maryland Robotics Student Seminar
Dynamics and Control of a Buoyancy-Driven Underwater Vehicle
Rachel Jacqueline Suitor
PhD Student, Aerospace Engineering
February 25
Maryland Robotics Student Seminar
Bio-Inspired, Underwater Soft Robot
Sophie Roberts-Weigert
Undergraduate Student, Mechanical Engineering
February 18
Lockheed Martin Robotics Seminar
Introducing Astro, Amazon's First Consumer Robot
Adam Fineberg
Amazon Lab126
February 11
Maryland Robotics Student Seminar
Path Planning for Information When Hazards Corelate with Targets
Alkesh Kumar Srivastava
PhD Student, Mechanical Engineering
December 10
Lockheed Martin Robotics Seminar
What can we learn from Autonomous Racing?
Rahul Mangharam
University of Pennsylvania
Seminar Recording
December 3
Lockheed Martin Robotics Seminar
Variables, Measures, and Metrics for Autonomy
Kristin Schaefer-Lay
DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory
November 19
Lockheed Martin Robotics Seminar
Towards Safe and Trustworthy Cyber-Physical Systems
Lu Feng
University of Virginia
Seminar Recording
November 12
Lockheed Martin Robotics Seminar
Reinforcement Learning with Temporal Logic Specifications
Derya Aksaray
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Seminar Recording
November 5
Lockheed Martin Robotics Seminar
Safety-Critical Control of Dynamic Robots
Aaron D. Ames
California Institute of Technology
Seminar Recording
October 29
Maryland Robotics Student Seminar
Learning Latent Representations and Intrinsic Laws of Complex Systems
Christos N. Mavridis
PhD Candidate, Electrical and Computer Engineering
October 22
Maryland Robotics Student Seminar
Generating Virtual Human Agents with Emotive Body Expressions
Uttaran Bhattacharya
PhD Student, Computer Science
October 15
Maryland Robotics Student Seminar
Grasping In The Dark: Compliant and Adaptive Grasping
Kanishka Ganguly
PhD Student, CS/UMIACS Perception and Robotics Group
October 8
Lockheed Martin Robotics Seminar
Human-Centered Machine Learning for Autonomous Navigation
Maggie Wigness
Army Research Laboratory
Seminar Recording
October 1
Lockheed Martin Robotics Seminar
Optimization-based Formal Synthesis of Control Strategies for Dynamical Systems
Calin Belta
Boston University
Seminar Recording
September 24
Maryland Robotics Student Seminar
Improving Flight Time in Flapping Wing UAVs using Bio-Inspired Intermittent Gliding Techniques
Lena Johnson
PhD Student, Mechanical Engineering
September 17
Lockheed Martin Robotics Seminar
Deploying Autonomous Vehicles for Micro-mobility on a University Campus
Henrik Christensen
University of California San Diego
Seminar Recording
September 10
Maryland Robotics Student Seminar
Towards Interactive Perception: Synergy of Action and Perception in Robots
Chahat Deep Singh
PhD Student, Computer Science, Perception and Robotics Group
February 15
Interactive Autonomy: A human centered approach to learning and control
Dorsa Sadigh
Stanford University
Seminar Recording
March 1
Autonomous Exploration and Mapping using Visual, Inertial and Semantic Information
Nikolay A. Atanasov
University of California, San Diego
Seminar Recording
March 29
Efficient Robot Skill Learning: Grounded Simulation Learning and Imitation Learning from Observation
Peter Stone
University of Texas at Austin
Seminar Recording
April 5
Robots in Farms and Wildlife
Volkan Isler
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
April 19
Planning Beyond Motion Planning
Lydia Kavraki
Rice University'
April 26
Toward autonomous flying insect-sized robots: recent results in fabrication, design, power systems, control, and sensing
Sawyer Buckminster Fuller
University of Washington, Seattle
Seminar Recording
September 14
Rehabilitation Robotics and Movement Primitives
Hermano Igo Krebs
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
October 26
Autonomous Drone Racing
Davide Scaramuzza
University of Zurich and ETH, Zurich
November 16
From Unmanned Aerial Systems to Robonaut2: On-board Runtime Reasoning in Air and Space
Kristin Yvonne Rozier
Iowa State University
November 30
Sensory Mediated Propulsion and Touch in Biorobotic Fins
James Tangorra
Drexel University
December 7
Modern Challenges in Motion Planning for Autonomous Robots
Stephen Guy
University of Minnesota
February 16
Temporal Logic Planning for Mobile Robots
Georgios Fainekos
Arizona State University
March 30
Teaching Drones to Soar
Jack Langelaan
Penn State University
April 13
Biologically Inspired Drones
Dario Floreano
Swiss National Center of Competence in Robotics
April 20
Robotic pioneers on Mars and the simulators that drive them
Vandi Verma
California Institute of Technology
May 4
Making Robots Behave
Leslie Kaelbling
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
September 22
Synthesis for Robots: Guarantees and Feedback for Complex Behaviors
Hadas Kress-Gazit
Cornell University
October 20
Cognizant Autonomous Exploration and Mapping Using Aerial Robots
Kostas Alexis
University of Nevada, Reno
November 10
Controlling Agile Robots with Formal Safety Guarantees
Anirudha Majumdar
Princeton University
March 10
Cognitive Priming in Human and Autonomous Systems
Laura Hiatt
U.S. Naval Research Laboratory
March 17
Grasping and Manipulation: Towards Humanlike Dexterity
Nancy Pollard
Carnegie Mellon University
March 31
Smart Robots for Surgery
Axel Krieger
Children's National Health System
April 7
Sampling-Based Motion Planning: From Intelligent CAD to Crowd Simulation to Protein Folding
Nancy Amato
Texas A&M University
April 21
Robotic Gait Therapy: Are We Finally Getting It Right?
Anindo Roy
Maryland Robotics Center
April 28
Adaptive Robotic Manipulation Devices for Human Augmentation
Frank L. Hammond III
Georgia Institute of Technology
September 23
Haptics: The Technology of Touch
Katherine Kuchenbecker
University of Pennsylvania
October 28
Bioinspired Aerial and Underwater Robots: Design, Fabrication, and Mathematical Modeling Challenges
Kamran Mohseni
University of Florida
November 4
Advanced Human-Robot Control and Interaction Interfaces
Panagiotis Artemiadis
Arizona State University
November 11
Terradynamics of Animal and Robot Locomotion in Complex Terrains
Chen Li
John Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering
December 2
MIT Cheetah: New Design Paradigm Shift Toward Mobile Robots
Sangbae Kim
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
February 19
Distributed Data Fusion: Neighbors, Rumors, and the Art of Collective Knowledge
Mark Campbell
Cornell University
March 23
Robophysics: Robotics Meets Physics
Daniel Goldman
Georgia Tech
April 8
Magnetic Control of Therapy to Hard-to-Reach Disease Targets
Benjamin Shapiro
University of Maryland
April 29
Another RoboSeed – Autonomy & Some Applications of Bio-Inspired Wholly Rotating Micro Air Vehicles
Kingsley Fregene
Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Laboratories, Cherry Hill, NJ
May 6
Mapping, Localization, and Autonomous Vehicles
John Leonard
MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
October 9
Tethered Pelvic Assist Device (TPAD) and Cable-driven Exoskeletons for Human Movement Training
Sunil Agrawal
Columbia University
October 30
Fish 'n' Robots: not a take-out food
Maurizio Porfiri
New York University
November 6
Ants as inspiration for modular and soft robotics
David Hu
Georgia Institute of Technology
November 20
Manufacturing, actuation, sensing, and control for robotic insects
Robert J. Wood
Harvard University
December 4
Stretching the Boundaries of Medical Robots
Pierre Dupont
Harvard Medical School
February 27
Robots Learning Action Plans by Watching YouTube Videos
Yiannis Aloimonos
Maryland Robotics Center
March 13
Inference and Planning for Aggressive Autonomous Flight
Nicholas Roy
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
April 17
Scalable 3D fabrication of soft machines
Rob Shepherd
Cornell University
April 24
Design and Integration of Novel Field Robots and Robotic Exoskeletons
Pinhas Ben-Tzvi
George Washington University
May 15
Working Well With Others: The Future of Collaborative Robotics in Manufacturing
Jeremy Marvel
National Institute of Standards and Technology
September. 10
(Gliding) Robotic Fish: Swim or Not Swim(link is external)
Xiaobo Tan
Michigan State University
October. 3
Analysis and Simulation for Robotic Systems Performing Contact Tasks: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly(link is external)
Jeff Trinkle
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
October. 10
Virtual Reality: The Next Generation(link is external)
Steve LaValle
University of Illinois
October. 10
Soft Multifunctional Materials for Soft Robotics(link is external)
Carmel Majidi
Carnegie Mellon University
December. 12
Cognitive Robotics and Human Robot Interaction(link is external)
Greg Trafton
Naval Research Laboratory
April 11
Recent algorithms for the assignment problem in multi-robot task allocation
Dylan Shell
Texas A&M University
May 9
Computation of Robot Motion Plans from Complex High-Level Specifications
Lydia E. Kavraki
Rice University
May 16
Secure state-estimation and control for dynamical systems under adversarial attacks
Paulo Tabuada
UCLA Electrical Engineering
October 11
Robots (and Informatics) to the Rescue.
Robin Murphy
Texas A&M University
October 14
Artificial mind with emotion and sociality.
Minoru Asada
Osaka University
October 25
Feedback Control of Bipedal Locomotion: Theory and Experiment
Jessy W. Grizzle
University of Michigan
March 1
Visual Guidance of Flight in Bees & Birds, & Applications to Robotics
Mandyam Srinivasan
The University of Queensland
March 8
FIRST Robotics in Maryland – Inspiring STEM Excellence
Bill Duncan
STEMaction, Inc.
April 5
Design and Control of Complex Dynamical Systems at United Technologies Corp
Sonja Glavaski
United Technologies Research Center
April 26
Coordinated Robotics: From Agility to Perception
Thomas Bewley
University of California
May 16
Grounding Natural Language in Robot Control and Perception Systems
Dieter Fox
University of Washington
November 2
Feedback Controllers in Locomoting Animals
Noah J Cowan
Johns Hopkins University
November 30
National Robotics Initiative & Innovation Corps
Richard Voyles
NSF
December 14
Collaborative Robot Tracking of Geophysical Flows: How Local Measurements Discover Global Structures
M. Ani Hsieh
Drexel University
February 17
Enabling better Human-Robot Interaction Through Cognition(link is external)
Alan C. Schultz
Naval Research Laboratory
March 9
Applying Principles from Biology to the Design and Operation of Robots
Mark Cutkosky
Stanford University
April 6
Self-Organization in Networks of Autonomous Systems
Daniela Rus
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
April 27
Why drive (autonomously) when you can fly (autonomously)?
Sanjiv Singh
Carnegie Mellon University
May 3
Modular & Reconfigurable Robots
Mark Yim
University of Pennsylvania
November 18
Stochastic Models in Robotics
Greg Chirikjian
Johns Hopkins University
October 28
Biologically-Inspired Approaches for Collaboration of Heterogeneous Autonomous Naval Systems
Marc Steinberg
Office of Naval Research
October 21
Planning and Decision-Making for Underwater Robot Teams: Algorithms and Experiments
Gaurav Sukhatme
University of Southern California
October 7
Biomimetic Millirobots
Ron Fearing
UC Berkeley
September 23
Algorithms for Feedback Motion Planning with examples using Walking Robots and Robotics Birds
Russ Tedrake
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
January 28
Hovering Quad-Rotor Control: A Comparison of Nonlinear Controllers Using Visual Feedback
Rogelio Lozano
Université de Technologie de Compiègne
February 25
Autonomous 3-D Flight and Cooperative Control of Multiple Micro Aerial Vehicles
Vijay Kumar
University of Pennsylvania
April 1
Human-Centered Control Systems for Robot-Assisted Medical Interventions
Allison Okamura
Johns Hopkins University
April 22
Robots and the Human
Oussama Khatib
Stanford University
April 29
Motion Planning for Physical Robotics
Dinesh Manocha
University of North Carolina
September 17
Nereus Hybrid Underwater Robotic Vehicle
Louis Whitcomb
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
October 29
Partitioned and Hybrid Methods for Visual Servo Control
Seth Hutchinson
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
November 12
A National Robotics Effort
Henrick Christensen
Georgia Institute of Technology
April 23
Pursuit and Cohesion: Bio-inspiration for Collective Robotics
P.S. Krishnaprasad
Institute for Systems Research and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
April 30
Generality and Simple Hands: Automation and Robotics
Matthew T. Mason
Carnegie Mellon University
May 14
Microsurgery Assistant System for Retinal Surgery
Russell Taylor
Johns Hopkins University
