people

Negar Mehr

Negar is an assistant professor in the Mechanical Engineering department at UC Berkeley. The focus of her research is to develop control algorithms that allow autonomous systems to safely and intelligently interact with each other and with humans.

Jean-Baptiste Bouvier

Jean-Baptiste is a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at UC Berkeley. He is interested in guaranteeing the resilience of autonomous systems by leveraging reinforcement learning, control theory, machine learning and game theory. Jean-Baptiste completed his PhD in Aerospace Engineering at the Univervsity of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in 2023 where he developed analytical resilience theory. Prior to this, he received a dual MSc degree in Aerospace Engineering from UIUC and ISAE Supaéro in France where his research focused on astrodynamics and optimal control.

Maulik Bhatt

Maulik is a graduate student in the Mechanical Engineering department at UC Berkeley. He is interested in leveraging game theory, stochastic control, and machine learning to enable robotic multi-agent interactions and safe motion planning. Previously, he graduated from IIT Bombay with an interdisciplinary dual degree. During his undergraduate, he worked in the area of state estimation using geometric control and variational principle.

Kanghyun Ryu

Kanghyun is a graduate student in the Mechanical Engineering department at UC Berkeley. He received his B.S in Aerospace Engineering at Seoul National University in 2022. His current research interests lie in optimal control, machine learning, robotics, and their intersection for safe learning and operation of autonomous systems.

Kartik Nagpal

Kartik is a PhD Student in Mechanical Engineering at UC Berkeley. He graduated with a B.S. in Computational Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, where he developed a background in Optimization, Controls, and Orbital Mechanics. Now, his research is focused on safety for multi-agent robotic systems with a focus on space applications. His PhD is funded by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship(NSF GRFP).

Aayushi Shrivastava

Aayushi Shrivastava is a PhD student in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at UC Berkeley. She completed her Masters in Robotics at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor in 2024 where she worked on Multi-terrain locomotion of bipedal robots. Prior to this, she received B.Tech. in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee in India. Her research focuses on developing safe motion planning algorithms for highly dynamical robots.

Dayi Ethan Dong

Dayi Ethan Dong is a PhD Student in Mechanical Engineering at UC Berkeley. He graduated with a B.S. in Engineering Sciences (Mechanical) and Computer Science from Yale University. While there, he worked in Dr. Ian Abraham’s Intelligent Autonomy Lab doing work on trajectory optimization and information-driven search, specifically focused on ergodic search. In the ICON Lab, his research focuses on multi-robot path planning in uncertain environments.

Seoyeon Choi

Seoyeon Choi is a PhD Student in Mechanical Engineering at University of California, Berkeley. She received B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Yonsei University in South Korea where she worked on MPCs and RL for autonomous driving and contact-rich manipulation. Her current research interests lie in machine learning, optimal control, manipulation, and multi-agent systems.

Hongrui Zhao

Hongrui Zhao is a PhD student in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). He is interested in improving multi-agent active perception by leveraging neural implicit representations. He received his M.S in Aerospace Engineering at UIUC in 2020 where he worked on star tracker for satellite navigation.

Antoine Bergerault

Antoine is a visiting student in the Mechanical Engineering department at UC Berkeley. He is interested in game theory, optimization and machine learning for multi-agent systems. He received his BSc in Communication Systems from EPFL, and is currently pursuing a MSc of Data Science from the same institution as an Excellence Fellow.

Milou

Milou is a Unitree GO2 EDU quadrupedal robot with a low-level torque controller, a high-level sport controller, a LiDAR, and a camera.

Milou is named after our favorite white Wire Fox Terrier from the hit comic series “The Adventures of Tintin” by Hergé.

Finot

Finot is also a Unitree GO2 EDU quadrupedal robot, but also a 4-DoF Robotic Arm.

Finot is named after our favorite beagle sidekick from the animated series “Inspecteur Gadget”. Finot was always very smart and resourceful, allowing him to utilize nifty hi-tech gadgets.

Harry

Harry is our Kinova Gen3 7-DoF robotic arm equipped with the Robotiq 2F-85.

Harry is named after one of the Doc Ock’s robotic arms in Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man 2”, as nicknamed by actor Alfred Molina.

Larry

Larry is our Ufactory xArm7 7-DoF robotic arm equipped with an UFactory X-Arm Gripper.

Larry is similarly named after one of the Doc Ock’s robotic arms from “Spider-Man 2”.

Goblin Glider

Goblin Glider is our custom quadcopter designed for full on-board policy deployment. This drone is equipped with a Nvidia Jetson Orin NX for policy computation, a Pixhawk 6c Mini flight controller, and a KAYAM speed controller. This robotic platform is still in development.

Goblin Glider is named after the hoverboard that Green Goblin use in the “Spiderman” comics.

Oogway

Oogway is a TurtleBot4 based on the iRobot Create3 mobile base, a powerful Raspberry Pi 4 running ROS 2, OAK-D spatial AI stereo camera, and 2D LiDAR.

Oogway is named after one of our favorite wise turtles from the hit animated movie “Kung-Fu Panda” by Dreamworks Studios.

Miriel

Miriel is also a TurtleBot 4, and is named after the huge silver tortoise wearing a mitre in the hit game “Elden Ring”.