DSI Seminar – Prof. Fabio Ramos

Presented by Prof. Fabio Ramos

12pm-1pm, Wednesday 30th Aug 2024

Venue: Rm 277, Sydney Knowledge Hub

Abstract

Much has been said about the need for diversity in robotics. From diverse datasets for training large vision-action models to diverse planners that can infer multi-modal trajectories, the word ‘diversity’ has been a common theme in the last few years of robotics research. But how do we define or even measure diversity in robotics? In this talk, I will provide a probabilistic interpretation for ‘diversity’ and show that modern tools designed for deep learning such as differentiable programming languages and parallel computation in GPUs can be conveniently utilized for large-scale probabilistic inference that naturally captures the notion of diversity. Specifically, I will describe a powerful nonparametric inference method that uses both differentiability and parallelism to provide nonparametric posterior approximations for problems such as model predictive control, motion planning, state estimation, simulator parameter estimation and more. Finally, I will define diversity in trajectory planning in terms of a new mathematical tool–signature transforms–and how it can lead to novel planning methods in the future. 

About the speaker

Fabio Ramos is a Professor in robotics and machine learning at the School of Computer Science at the  University of Sydney and  Principal Research Scientist at NVIDIA. He received the BSc and MSc degrees in Mechatronics Engineering at University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, and the PhD degree at the University of Sydney, Australia. His research focuses on statistical machine learning techniques for large-scale Bayesian inference and decision making with applications in robotics, mining, environmental monitoring and healthcare. Between 2008 and 2011 he led the research team that designed the first autonomous open-pit iron mine in the world. He has over 150 peer-review publications and received Best Paper Awards and Student Best Paper Awards at several conferences including International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation (ACRA), European Conference on Machine Learning (ECML), and Robotics Science and Systems (RSS).