Utah Learning Lab for Manipulation Autonomy
Welcome to the Utah Learning Lab for Manipulation Autonomy–the LL4MA Lab–directed by professor Tucker Hermans. We are part of the University of Utah Robotics Center, the Kahlert School of Computing, and the Department of Mechanical Engineering in the John and Marcia Price College of Computing at the University of Utah.
Our research focuses on autonomous learning, planning, and perception for robot manipulation. We are particularly interested in enabling robots to autonomously discover and manipulate objects with which they have no previous knowledge or experience.
For more information about specific research efforts check out our projects and publications.
If you are a student interested in working with us, please read this prior to contacting Prof. Hermans.
News
- May 13, 2023: Workshop paper accepted to ICRA 2023 Workshop on Geometric Representations: “23 DoF Grasping Policies from a Raw Point Cloud”; Martin Matak, Karl Van Wyk, Tucker Hermans
- April 23, 2023: Paper Accepted to RSS 2023: “StructDiffusion: Language-Guided Creation of Physically-Valid Structures using Unseen Objects” Weiyu Liu, Yilun Du, Tucker Hermans, Sonia Chernova, Chris Paxton.
- January 16, 2023: 2 Papers Accepted to ICRA 2023:
- “Planning for Multi-Object Manipulation with Graph Neural Network Relational Classifiers”; Yixuan Huang, Adam Conkey, and Tucker Hermans. arxiv/pdf
- “DefGraspNets: Grasp Planning on 3D Fields with Graph Neural Nets”; Isabella Huang, Yashraj Narang, Ruzena Bajcsy, Fabio Ramos, Tucker Hermans, and Dieter Fox.
- December 14, 2022: Paper Accepted to RA-L “Planning Visual-Tactile Precision Grasps via Complementary Use of Vision and Touch”; Martin Matak and Tucker Hermans arxiv/pdf
- November 15, 2022: Paper Accepted to CoRL LangRob Workshop "StructDiffusion: Object-Centric Diffusion for Semantic Rearrangement of Novel Objects"; Weiyu Liu, Tucker Hermans, Sonia Chernova, Chris Paxton.
- August 19, 2022: Amir successfully defended his PhD! Congratulations Dr. Yazdani!
- August 8, 2022: Adam successfully defended his PhD! Congratulations Dr. Conkey!
- July 18, 2022: Paper Accepted to RA-L “Attracting Conductive Nonmagnetic Objects with Rotating Magnetic Dipole Fields”; Devin K Dalton, Griffin F Tabor, Tucker Hermans, Jake J Abbott.
- June 30, 2022: 2 Papers Accepted to IROS 2022:
- “DULA and DEBA: Differentiable Ergonomic Risk Models for Postural Assessment and Optimization in Ergonomically Intelligent pHRI”; Amir Yazdani, Roya Sabbagh Novin, Andrew Merryweather, Tucker Hermans. arxiv/pdf
- “A Pseudo-Tractor Beam for Conductive, Nonmagnetic Objects using Magnetic Fields”; Devin K Dalton, Griffin F Tabor, Tucker Hermans, Jake J Abbott.
- April 12, 2022: 2 Papers Accepted to RSS 2022:
- “Adaptive Manipulation of Conductive, Non-magnetic Objects via a Continuous Model of Magnetically Induced Force and Torque”; Griffin F Tabor, Lan N Pham, Jake J Abbott, Tucker Hermans.
- “Correcting Robot Plans with Natural Language Feedback”; Pratyusha Sharma, Balakumar Sundaralingam, Valts Blukis, Chris Paxton, Tucker Hermans, Antonio Torralba, Jacob Andreas, Dieter Fox. website
- February 18, 2022: Paper accepted to RA-L (Special Issue on Robotic Handling of Deformable Objects) “DefGraspSim: Physics-based Simulation of Grasp Outcomes for 3D Deformable Objects”; Isabella Huang, Yashraj Narang, Clemens Eppner, Balakumar Sundaralingam, Miles Macklin, Ruzena Bajcsy, Tucker Hermans, and Dieter Fox.
- January 31, 2022: 2 Papers Accepted to ICRA 2022:
- “Learning Visual Shape Control of Novel 3D Deformable Objects from Partial-View Point Clouds”; Bao Thach, Brian Y. Cho, Alan Kuntz, and Tucker Hermans. arXiv/pdf
- “StructFormer: Learning Spatial Structure for Language-Guided Semantic Rearrangement of Novel Objects”; Weiyu Liu, Chris Paxton, Tucker Hermans, Dieter Fox. arXiv/pdf
- November 11, 2021: Paper Accepted to Journal of Biomechanical Engineering: “In Vitro Simulation of Shoulder Motion Driven by 3D Scapular and Humeral Kinematics”; Hema J Sulkar, Tyler W. Knighton, Linda Amoafo, Klevis Aliaj, Christopher W. Kolz, Yue Zhang, Tucker Hermans, Heath B. Henninger;
- October 20, 2021: Paper Published in Nature: “Dexterous magnetic manipulation of conductive non-magnetic objects”; Lan N. Pham, Griffin F. Tabor, Ashkan Pourkand, Jacob L. B. Aman, Tucker Hermans & Jake J. Abbott.
- October 6, 2021: Roya received the Outstanding Graduate Researcher of the Year award from the Mechanical Engineering department!
- September 13, 2021: 2 Papers Accepted to CoRL 2021
- September 8, 2021: Paper Accepted to AAAI Fall Symposium on Artificial Intelligence for Human-Robot Interaction (AI-HRI) 2021, “Ergonomically Intelligent Physical Human-Robot Interaction: Postural Estimation, Assessment, and Optimization”; Amir Yazdani, Roya Sabbagh Novin, Andrew Merryweather, Tucker Hermans. arxiv/pdf
- August 5, 2021: Emma Pinegar is a UROP scholar for Fall 2021. Congrats Emma!
- July 30, 2021: 2 Papers Acceptted to 2021 International Symposium on Medical Robotics (ISMR):
- “Toward Learning Context-Dependent Tasks from Demonstration for Tendon-Driven Surgical Robots”; Yixuan Huang, Michael Bentley, Tucker Hermans, Alan Kuntz.
- “Planning Sensing Sequences for Subsurface 3D Tumor Mapping”; Brian Y. Cho, Tucker Hermans, Alan Kuntz.
- July 9, 2021: Short Paper Accepted to RSS 2021 workshop Robotics for People (R4P): Perspectives on Interaction, Learning and Safety, “DULA: A Differentiable Ergonomics Model for Postural Optimization in pHRI”; Amir Yazdani, Roya Sabbagh Novin, Andrew Merryweather, Tucker Hermans.
- July 1, 2021: 2 Short Papers Accepted to RSS 2021 Workshop on Deformable Object Simulation in Robotics (DO-Sim)
- “DeformerNet: A Deep Learning Approach to 3D Deformable Object Manipulation”; Bao Thach, Alan Kuntz, & Tucker Hermans.
- “DefGraspSim: Simulation-base grasping of 3D deformable objects”; Isabella Huang, Yashraj Narang, Clemens Eppner, Balakumar Sundaralingam, Miles Macklin, Tucker Hermans, & Dieter Fox.
- June 1, 2021: Paper Accepted to IEEE CASE 2021: “Is The Leader Robot an Adequate Sensor for Posture Estimation and Ergonomic Assessment of A Human Teleoperator?”; Amir Yazdani, Roya Sabbagh Novin, Andrew Merryweather, Tucker Hermans. arxiv/pdf
- May 27, 2021: We've posted Bala's ICRA Talk on In-Hand Dynamics Estimation
- April 20, 2021: Tucker received tenure and promotion to Associate Professor in the School of Computing effective July 1, 2021!
- April 1, 2021: Amir will be General Chair of HRI Pioneers 2022!
- February 28, 2021: Paper Accepted to ICRA 2021: “Risk-Aware Decision Making for Service Robots to Minimize Risk of Patient Falls in Hospitals”; Roya Sabbagh Novin, Amir Yazdani, Andrew Merryweather, Tucker Hermans. arXiv/pdf
- February 16, 2021: Tucker received a 2021 Sloan Fellowship. College of Engineering Article
- December 18, 2020: Paper Published in IJRR: “A Model Predictive Approach for Online Mobile Manipulation of Nonholonomic Objects using Learned Dynamics”; Roya Sabbagh Novin, Amir Yazdani, Andrew Merryweather and Tucker Hermans. PDF
- December 4, 2020: Roya successfully defended her PhD! Congratulations Dr. Sabbagh Novin!
- November 12, 2020: Paper Accepted to International Conference on Operations Research and Enterprise Systems (ICORES) 2021: “Optimizing Hospital Room Layout to Reduce the Risk of Patient Falls”; Sarvenaz Chaeibakhsh, Roya Sabbagh Novin, Tucker Hermans, Andrew Merryweather, and Alan Kuntz. [pdf coming soon!]
- November 5, 2020: Tucker presented at the iCub Robotics Seminar at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT).
- October 26, 2020: Paper Accepted to PLOS ONE: “Replicating dynamic humerus motion using an industrial robot”; Klevis Aliaj, Gentry Feeney, Balakumar Sundaralingam, Tucker Hermans, K. Bo Foremen, Kent N Bachus, Heath B. Henninger. [pdf coming soon!]
- October 21, 2020: Paper Accepted to IEEE Transactions on Robotics: “In-Hand Object-Dynamics Inference using Tactile Fingertips”; Balakumar Sundaralingam and Tucker Hermans preprint.
- October 19, 2020: College of Engineering story on Roya's fall risk work.
- Aug 28, 2020: Paper Accepted to Health Environments Research & Design Journal (HERD): “Development of a Novel Computational Model for Evaluating Fall Risk in Patient Room Design”; Roya Sabbagh Novin, Ellen Taylor, Tucker Hermans, Andrew Merryweather. PDF
- Aug 6, 2020: Michael Bentley won a 2020 DDS&T Excellence in Publication Award in the Student Category for the work on the FLiT system he did at LLNL! Congratulations Mike!
- July 29, 2020: Tucker gave a talk titled “Can common sense guide autonomous robot learning and exploration?” at the CogSci 2020 workshop on the Origins of Commonsense. video
- June 30, 2020: Paper accepted to IROS 2020: “Multi-Fingered Active Grasp Learning”; Qingkai Lu, Mark Van der Merwe, and Tucker Hermans. preprint
- June 29, 2020: Paper conditionally accepted to TRO: “In-Hand Object-Dynamics Inference using Tactile Fingertips”; Balakumar Sundaralingam and Tucker Hermans. preprint
- June 10, 2020: Paper Accepted to ASME Dynamic Systems and Control Conference (DSCC): “Autonomous Light Assessment Drone for Dark Skies Studies”; Matthew N. Goodell, Takara E. Truong, Stephanie R. Marston, Brett J. Smiley, Elliot R. Befus, Alex Bingham, Kent Allen, Joseph R. Bourne, Yi Wei, Kate E. Magargal, Vellachi Ganesan, Daniel L. Mendoza, Anil C. Seth, Stacy A. Harwood, Marc Bodson, Tucker Hermans and Kam K. Leang
- May 28, 2020: Tucker presented at the UCSD Robotics Seminar.
- April 16, 2020: Qingkai successfully defended his PhD! Congratulations Dr. Lu!
- April 13, 2020: Our improved BioTac force estimation model is now public: repo
- March 31, 2020: Mark Van der Merwe received an NSF GRFP Award!
- March 23, 2020: Bala successfully defended his PhD! Congratulations Dr. Sundaralingam!
- March 14, 2020: Paper Accepted to IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering: Katharin Jensen-Nau, Tucker Hermans, and Kam K. Leang. “Near-Optimal Area-Coverage Path Planning of Energy Constrained Aerial Robots with Application in Autonomous Environmental Monitoring.”
- February 20, 2020: Paper Accepted to IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine: “Multi-Fingered Grasp Planning via Inference in Deep Neural Networks”; Qingkai Lu, Mark Van der Merwe, Balakumar Sundaralingam, and Tucker Hermans. arxiv/pdf
- January 24, 2020: Tucker presented at the University of Michigan Robotics Seminar. video
- January 22, 2020: Paper Accepted to ICRA 2020, "Learning Continuous 3D Reconstructions for Geometrically Aware Grasping"; Mark Van der Merwe, Qingkai Lu, Balakumar Sundaralingam, Martin Matak, and Tucker Hermans. arxiv/pdf