IPAB Seminar - 13/04/2023

Title: Towards Physics-Based Manipulation in Mixed (Rigid-and-Soft) Multi-Object Containers

Abstract: In this talk, I will give an overview of our work on robotic object manipulation. Particularly, I will talk about robot motion planners and controllers that use predictions about the motion of contacted objects. We are interested in developing such planners for cluttered scenes, where multiple objects might simultaneously move as a result of robot contact. We currently have an EPSRC project (2022-2026) on "picking and packing with physical reasoning", which aims to develop robotic systems that can pick from and pack in shelves/boxes with multiple objects. I will present our initial results within this project.

Bio: Mehmet Dogar is an Associate Professor at the School of Computing, University of Leeds, UK. His research focuses on planning and control for robotic object manipulation. He is a Fellow of the EPSRC and a Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute. He is an Associate Editor for the International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR) and for the IEEE Robotics and Automation - Letters (RA-L). He joined Leeds in 2015. Previously, he was a postdoctoral researcher at MIT (2013-2015). He received his PhD from the Carnegie Mellon University (2008-2013).