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    • Fall 2024 GRASP on Robotics: Damion Shelton, Agility Robotics, “What do we want from our machines?”

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    Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

    This will be a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Wu and Chen and virtual attendance on Zoom. ABSTRACT In 2022 I represented Agility Robotics at the first “Philadelphia Summit” on the weaponization of autonomous robots, co-hosted by the GRASP lab and Boston Dynamics. By late fall, this yielded a joint statement, signed by Agility, […]

    ESE 2024 Jack Keil Wolf Lecture – “Army of Ants: The Power of Working in Concert”

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    Glandt Forum, Singh Center for Nanotechnology 3205 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

    Synchronized operation of a large number of similar entities can generate behavior that cannot be expected from single one. This principle combined with the physical concept of coherence in waves enables creation of programmable 3-dimensional focal points that can be used to enable many applications such as wireless energy transfer at distance on earth and […]

    Fall 2024 GRASP Seminar: Yunzhu Li, Columbia University, “Foundation Models for Robotic Manipulation: Opportunities and Challenges”

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    Levine 307 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

    *This seminar will be held in-person in Levine 307 as well as virtually via Zoom. ABSTRACT Foundation models, such as GPT-4 Vision, have marked significant achievements in the fields of natural language and vision, demonstrating exceptional abilities to adapt to new tasks and scenarios. However, physical interaction—such as cooking, cleaning, or caregiving—remains a frontier where foundation […]

    ESE Ph.D. Thesis Defense: “Learning-based Model Predictive Control for Aerial Vehicles”

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    Levine 307 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

    Learning-based model predictive control (MPC) is an increasingly prominent control paradigm in recent years. One primary approach in learning-based MPC is to leverage machine or deep learning tools to construct accurate dynamics models. These models are then deployed into optimization-based control schemes. Although these frameworks can potentially provide significant performance improvements, a number of key […]

    MEAM Seminar: “Can Materials From the 1930’s Really Revolutionize Battery Manufacturing?”

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    Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

    Fluorinated polymers offer a plethora of unique and sometimes perplexing properties. One of the most interesting is the ability for specific types of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) to undergo room-temperature, sheer-induced, structural transformations leading “unwinding” of crystallites and the formation of nano-scale fibers. This process is commonly referred to as “fibrillation”. The material properties required for this […]

    ESE Fall Seminar – “Non-Parametric Analysis of Dynamical Systems: From Recurrent Sets to Generalized Lyapunov and Barrier Conditions”

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    Raisler Lounge (Room 225), Towne Building 220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

    This talk presents novel non-parametric methods for analyzing dynamical systems using solely trajectory data. Our critical insight is to replace the notion of invariance, a core concept in Lyapunov Theory, with the more relaxed condition of recurrence. Specifically, a set is τ-recurrent if every trajectory that starts within the set returns to it after at […]

    CIS Seminar: ” Just Infrastructures”

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    Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

    Sociotechnical systems enable large-scale connection and the dissemination of timely, engaging information. However, these systems are shaped by complex, often invisible governance structures—comprising rules, roles, and relationships—that significantly influence how they operate. Gaining even a basic understanding of these governance structures is key to using them more effectively and deliberately. Yet, many of the millions […]

    CIS Seminar: “Just Infrastructures”

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    Wu & Chen Auditorium

    Sociotechnical systems enable large-scale connection and the dissemination of timely, engaging information. However, these systems are shaped by complex, often invisible governance structures—comprising rules, roles, and relationships—that significantly influence how they operate. Gaining even a basic understanding of these governance structures is key to using them more effectively and deliberately. Yet, many of the millions […]

    ASSET Seminar: “Control with Coarse Measurements: Perception Contracts and Indistinguishable Sets”

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    Raisler Lounge (Room 225), Towne Building 220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

    Abstract: Performance of control systems depend on the nature of available measurements. Perception of edges, keypoints, landmarks and other natural semantic features make certain coarse measurements available to control systems operating in complex environments.  This talk explores two problems related to control and estimation with such coarse measurements. First, I will introduce perception contracts—an approach for analyzing visual […]

    CIS Special Industry Colloquium: “Scaling Paradigms for Large Language Models”

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    Glandt Forum, Singh Center for Nanotechnology 3205 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

    In this talk I will tell you how scaling has been the engine of progress in AI for the past five years. In the first scaling paradigm, our field scaled large language models by training with more compute on more data. Such scaling led to the success of ChatGPT and other AI chat engines, which were surprisingly capable […]

    GRASP Special Panel featuring the 2024 John Scott Award Recipients

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    This is an in-person event only and is not open to the public. Event Registration and Penncards are required. A link to register for the event will be sent via email. PANEL DISCUSSION Please join us for a panel discussion featuring the 2024 John Scott Award Recipients, Dr. Takeo Kanade (CMU), Dr. Vijay Kumar (Penn), […]

    CBE Seminar: “Scalable Access to the Hidden Topologies of Biology” (Albert Keung, North Carolina State University)

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    Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

    Abstract: Biology is characterized by a diversity of phenotypes and functions that outpace the limited molecular diversity encoded in genomes. How this is achieved is a fundamental and enduring mystery of the cell. It is clear that networks defining how biological molecules interact can drive diverse and complex phenotypes, but the intermolecular interactions or edges […]