CREATE ADVENTOR Presents: Dr. Russell Buchanan

The Role of Contact in Robot Perception

Contact, especially when unexpected, presents a major challenge in robotics. Collisions can be dangerous to both people and robots; the hybrid dynamics of contact are difficult to model, and contact is often poorly represented in simulation. This pushes much of robotics research to filter out, avoid, or design around contact, treating it as a disturbance to be rejected. However, contact is also a valuable source of information that can improve robot perception and, in turn, task performance. 

In this talk, I will present my lab's work on embracing contact as a sensing modality for both perception and learning. From dynamic legged robots in challenging terrain, to visuo-tactile manipulation for small-parts assembly, to system identification of deformable objects, I will show how even sparse contact events can be highly informative across a wide range of robot tasks. I will conclude by discussing how robots might intentionally establish contacts for the purpose of reducing uncertainty. 

Russell Buchanan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering at the University of Waterloo, where he leads the Robotic Interaction, Perception and Learning (RIPL) Lab. His research focuses on perception and learning for mobile robots operating in real-world environments. His work spans state estimation for legged robots, deep inertial navigation systems, and robot learning for manipulation. Before joining Waterloo in 2024, he was an Alan Turing Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Edinburgh. He received his DPhil in Engineering Science from the University of Oxford in 2023. While there, he contributed to Team CERBERUS, winners of the DARPA Subterranean Challenge. He also holds an MSc in Robotics from ETH Zürich and has held research positions at ETH Zürich and at CSIRO Data61 in Australia. His lab's research is supported by NSERC, CFI, and industry partners in the nuclear, mining, and robotics sectors.

Join us in person or online for the December installment of the ADVENTOR Seminar Series!

Link to Seminar