Related papers: Convergent Functions, Divergent Forms
Visual design is critical to product success, and the subject of intensive marketing research effort. Yet visual elements, due to their holistic and interactive nature, do not lend themselves well to optimization using extant…
Generative design refers to computational design methods that can automatically conduct design exploration under constraints defined by designers. Among many approaches, topology optimization-based generative designs aim to explore diverse…
The agent-environment co-design paradigm jointly optimises agent policies and environment configurations in search of improved system performance. With application domains ranging from warehouse logistics to windfarm management, co-design…
We present Decalf, a directed, effectful cost-aware logical framework for studying quantitative aspects of functional programs with effects. Like Calf, the language is based on an internal phase distinction between the behavior of a program…
Natural organisms utilize distributed actuation through their musculoskeletal systems to adapt their gait for traversing diverse terrains or to morph their bodies for varied tasks. A longstanding challenge in robotics is to emulate this…
We present a new method of blackbox optimization via gradient approximation with the use of structured random orthogonal matrices, providing more accurate estimators than baselines and with provable theoretical guarantees. We show that this…
Biological and artificial agents need to deal with constant changes in the real world. We study this problem in four classical continuous control environments, augmented with morphological perturbations. Learning to locomote when the length…
When performing tasks like laundry, humans naturally coordinate both hands to manipulate objects and anticipate how their actions will change the state of the clothes. However, achieving such coordination in robotics remains challenging due…
Cross-robot policy learning -- training a single policy to perform well across multiple embodiments -- remains a central challenge in robot learning. Transformer-based policies, such as vision-language-action (VLA) models, are typically…
Developing controllers that generalize across diverse robot morphologies remains a significant challenge in legged locomotion. Traditional approaches either create specialized controllers for each morphology or compromise performance for…
Imitation learning in robotics faces significant challenges in generalization due to the complexity of robotic environments and the high cost of data collection. We introduce RoCoDA, a novel method that unifies the concepts of invariance,…
Current image compression models often require separate models for each quality level, making them resource-intensive in terms of both training and storage. To address these limitations, we propose an innovative approach that utilizes…
Large Language Model (LLM)-based optimization has recently shown promise for autonomous problem solving, yet most approaches still cast LLMs as passive constraint checkers rather than proactive strategy designers, limiting their…
Real-world machine learning applications may require functions that are fast-to-evaluate and interpretable. In particular, guaranteed monotonicity of the learned function can be critical to user trust. We propose meeting these goals for…
Predictive manipulation has recently gained considerable attention in the Embodied AI community due to its potential to improve robot policy performance by leveraging predicted states. However, generating accurate future visual states of…
Modeling multimodal human behavior has been a key barrier to increasing the level of interaction between human and robot, particularly for collaborative tasks. Our key insight is that an effective, learned robot policy used for human-robot…
Manipulating deformable and fragile objects remains a fundamental challenge in robotics due to complex contact dynamics and strict requirements on object integrity. Existing approaches typically optimize either end-effector design or…
Simulation-based design space exploration (DSE) aims to efficiently optimize high-dimensional structured designs under complex constraints and expensive evaluation costs. Existing approaches, including heuristic and multi-step reinforcement…
Design requirements for moving parts in mechanical assemblies are typically specified in terms of interactions with other parts. Some are purely kinematic (e.g., pairwise collision avoidance) while others depend on physics and material…
Achieving versatile humanoid locomotion with a single policy presents a critical scalability challenge. Prevailing methods often rely on distilling multiple terrain-specific teacher policies into a unified student policy. However, while…