<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><font style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:inherit"><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><b>When:</b>    </font></font><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><font style="color:rgb(0,0,0)">    Monday</font><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">, January 9th</span><font style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"> at</font><b style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"> <span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"><u><font face="verdana, sans-serif">10:00</font></u></span></b><b><u><font face="verdana, sans-serif" color="#000000" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"> a</font></u></b><font face="verdana, sans-serif"><b><u><font color="#000000" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)">m CT</font></u><font color="#000000"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)">   </span></font></b></font></font></font><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><div><p style="color:rgb(80,0,80);font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-stretch:normal;line-height:normal;margin:0px"><font face="arial, sans-serif" color="#000000"><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><b><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"><br></span></b></font></font></font></p><div class="gmail_default"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b><font color="#500050">Where:       </font></b><font color="#000000">Talk will be given </font><font color="#0000ff" style="font-weight:bold"><u>live, in-person</u></font><font style="color:rgb(80,0,80);font-weight:bold"> </font><font style="color:rgb(80,0,80)">at</font></font></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><font color="#500050">               </font><font color="#000000">    TTIC, 6045 S. Kenwood Avenue</font></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="arial, sans-serif" color="#000000">                   5th Floor, Room 530<b> </b></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;color:rgb(80,0,80);line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b><span style="color:black"><br></span></b></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><b style="color:rgb(60,64,67);font-family:Roboto,Arial,sans-serif;letter-spacing:0.2px;white-space:pre-wrap">Virtually:</b><span style="font-size:14px;color:rgb(60,64,67);font-family:Roboto,Arial,sans-serif;letter-spacing:0.2px;white-space:pre-wrap">    <i>via</i> Panopto </span>(<b><a href="https://uchicago.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=6a5b241c-16ae-42c3-b12c-af7e015746e5" target="_blank">livestream</a></b><span style="font-size:14px;color:rgb(60,64,67);font-family:Roboto,Arial,sans-serif;letter-spacing:0.2px;white-space:pre-wrap">)</span><br></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;color:rgb(80,0,80);line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><br></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><font style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"><b>Who: </b> </font><font color="#500050" style="color:rgb(80,0,80)">    </font><font color="#000000"><font color="#500050">    David Held, Carnegie Mellon University</font></font></font></font></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;color:rgb(80,0,80);line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><br></p><div class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:11pt;text-align:center;line-height:15.6933px;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><hr size="2" width="100%" align="center"></div><div><p style="color:rgb(60,64,67);letter-spacing:0.2px;white-space:pre-wrap"><b style="letter-spacing:normal;color:rgb(34,34,34)">Title:</b><span style="letter-spacing:normal;color:rgb(34,34,34)">          Relational Affordance Learning for Robot Manipulation</span><br></p></div></div></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><br><b>Abstract:</b> Robots today are typically confined to interact with rigid, opaque objects with known object models. However, the objects in our daily lives are often non-rigid, can be transparent or reflective, and are diverse in shape and appearance. I argue that, to enhance the capabilities of robots, we should develop perception methods that estimate what robots need to know to interact with the world. Specifically, I will present novel perception methods that estimate “relational affordances”: task-specific geometric relationships between objects that allow a robot to determine what actions it needs to take to complete a task. These estimated relational affordances can enable robots to perform complex tasks such as manipulating cloth, articulated objects, grasping transparent and reflective objects, and other manipulation tasks, generalizing to unseen objects in a category and unseen object configurations. By reasoning about relational affordances, we can achieve robust performance on difficult robot manipulation tasks.<br></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><br></p><p style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><b>Bio: </b><span>David</span> <span>Held</span> is an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University in the Robotics Institute and is the director of the RPAD lab: Robots Perceiving And Doing. His research focuses on perceptual robot learning, i.e. developing new methods at the intersection of robot perception and planning for robots to learn to interact with novel, perceptually challenging, and deformable objects. Prior to coming to CMU, <span>David</span> was a post-doctoral researcher at U.C. Berkeley, and he completed his Ph.D. in Computer Science at Stanford University.  <span>David</span> also has a B.S. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering at MIT.  <span>David</span> is a recipient of the Google Faculty Research Award in 2017 and the NSF CAREER Award in 2021.</p></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><b>Host:</b> <a href="mailto:mwalter@ttic.edu" target="_blank">Matthew Walter</a></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div><div dir="ltr" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:x-small">Mary C. Marre</span><br></div><div><div><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="1">Faculty Administrative Support</font></div><div><i><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" color="#3d85c6" size="1"><b>Toyota Technological Institute</b></font></i></div><div><i><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" color="#3d85c6" size="1">6045 S. Kenwood Avenue, Rm 517</font></i></div><div><font size="1"><i><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" color="#3d85c6">Chicago, IL  60637</font></i><br></font></div><div><font size="1"><i><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" color="#3d85c6">773-834-1757</font></i></font></div><div><b><i><a href="mailto:mmarre@ttic.edu" target="_blank"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="1">mmarre@ttic.edu</font></a></i></b></div></div></div></div></div></div>