GRASP Lab

Join us TODAY for the GRASP SFI Seminar featuring GRASP's own Fernando Cladera, who will be presenting “Communication and Perception as Enablers for Robust and Resilient Field Robotics” from 3PM-4PM. More info: www.grasp.upenn.edu/events/fall-... #GRASP #GRASPLab #GRASPSFI

We hope everyone had a wonderful time at the GRASP & Pennovation Works 2026 Pumpkin Paint N' Sip Event! Who said Engineers couldn't be creative?! See you all again next year!!! #GRASP #GRASPLab #PumpkinPaintNSip

STARTING SOON! The GRASP seminar featuring Dr. Oliver Gross, who will present “Geometry for Physics Simulation,” is TODAY from 1:30PM-2:30PM. More Info: www.grasp.upenn.edu/events/fall-... #GRASP #GRASPLab #GRASPSeminar

Researchers in Kumar Lab developed a motion-planning method that helps quadrotors safely navigate dynamic environments, achieving over 95% success in tests with moving obstacles! Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2409.10647 Video: shorturl.at/o1bNY #GRASP #GRASPLab #KumarLab

We are proud to have Dr. Alan Stocker for the GRASP on Robotics seminar talk, who will present "Embodied and Efficient: Toward a Resource-Rational Theory of Human Cognition" TOMORROW from 10:30AM-11:45AM. More info: www.grasp.upenn.edu/events/fall-... #GRASP #GRASPLab #GRASPonRobotics

Join us TOMORROW for the GRASP SFI seminar featuring Hanxiao Jiang, who will be presenting "Physics Meets Robotics: Modeling and Simulating the Physical World" from 3PM-4PM. More info: www.grasp.upenn.edu/events/fall-... #GRASP #GRASPLab #GRASPSFI

It was wonderful to have Penn Engineering's Development and Alumni Relations office visit the GRASP Lab today! We also want to thank our amazing GRASP students who presented their research to our visitors! #GRASP #GRASPLab #GRASPTours

We hope the parents and students from Reach Cyber Charter School had a wonderful time touring the GRASP Lab! A BIG Thank You to the wonderful GRASP students who presented at the tour today! #GRASP #GRASPLab #GRASPTour

Join us TOMORROW for the GRASP on Robotics seminar featuring Dr. Andrea Bajcsy who will be presenting “What Does Safety Mean for Generalist Robots?” from 10:30AM-11:45AM. More info: www.grasp.upenn.edu/events/fall-... #GRASP #GRASPLab #GRASPonRobotics

STARTING SOON! GRASP's own Dr. Jean Gallier will be presenting “The Math Behind Equivariant CNNs: Group Representations” from 3:30PM-4:30PM TODAY!!! More info: www.grasp.upenn.edu/events/fall-... #GRASP #GRASPLab #GRASPSeminar

STARTING SOON! The GRASP SFI Seminar featuring Dr. Patrick Slade will begin from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. TODAY! Dr. Slade will be presenting “Towards Personalizing Assistive Technology in the Real World” More info: www.grasp.upenn.edu/events/fall-... #GRASP #GRASPLab #GRASPSFI

CONGRATULATIONS to GRASP's own Dr. Vijay Kumar on receiving the 2026 A.C. Eringen Medal at the Society of Engineering Science 2026 Annual Technical Meeting in recognition of sustained outstanding achievements in Engineering Science! Link: socengsci.org/eringen-medal/ #GRASP #GRASPLab #EringenMedal

Join us TOMORROW for a GRASP Seminar featuring Dr. Huaizu Jiang who will be presenting “Do 3D Vision Models Still Need Geometric Principles?” from 1:45PM-2:45PM. For more info: www.grasp.upenn.edu/events/fall-... #GRASP #GRASPLab #GRASPSeminar

Last Friday's Fall 2026 GRASP Industry Day ended with tabling and networking sessions featuring 11 companies from the robotics industry. We hope our lab members made some great connections! Thank you to all those who attended! #GRASP #GRASPLab #GRASPIndustryDay

CONGRATULATIONS to Kumar Lab members Yuwei Wu, Jinyuan Zhang, Jonathan Diller, and Dr. Vijay Kumar on receiving Best Paper Award at the Foundation Models in Multi-Robot Systems workshop! Read more: zhourobotics.github.io/fm-mrs/ #GRASP #GRASPLab #BestPaperAward

Our Fall 2026 GRASP Industry Day kicked off this morning with presentations from 9 companies in the robotics industry! We hope our lab members were excited to learn more about their work before our upcoming networking portion of the day! #GRASP #GRASPLab #GRASPIndustryDay

The GRASP Lab is proud to announce the signing of a new Master Research Agreement with Singapore's Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTA). This collaboration marks another major step forward for multi-robot systems! Read more here: shorturl.at/fRxgI #GRASP #GRASPLab

STARTING SOON! Join us for the GRASP SFI featuring Dr. Jesse Zhang who will be presenting “Making Robot Data Count: Toward Robots That Keep Learning After Deployment” from 3PM - 4PM TODAY! More info: www.grasp.upenn.edu/events/fall-... #GRASP #GRASPLab #GRASPSFI

CONGRATULATIONS to Sung Lab's Gabe Unger, Ellen Li, Sophie Lin, and Dr. Cynthia Sung on receiving the 2026 IROS Best Paper Award on Robot Mechanisms and Design for their co-publication with Allison Okamura's CHARM LAB at Stanford! Paper: shorturl.at/CRBSb #GRASP #GRASPLab #BestPaperAward #IROS2026

CONGRATULATIONS to GRASP's own Pei-An Hsieh (ESE PhD) and Fengjun Yang (CIS PhD '26) and their advisors, Dr. M. Ani Hsieh and Dr. Nikolai Matni, on receiving the IROS 2026 Best Student Paper Award!!! Read the paper here: arxiv.org/abs/2607.12275 #GRASP #GRASPLab #BestStudentPaperAward #IROS2026

GRASP SFI seminars are back for the Fall Semester!!! Join us TOMORROW for the seminar featuring GRASP's own Benjamin Shaffer who will be presenting “Structured learning for Robotic Navigation, Modeling, and Sensing” from 3PM - 4PM. More info: www.grasp.upenn.edu/events/fall-... #GRASP #GRASPLab

Tomorrow, GRASP researchers in Sung Lab will present their work on the design of a robotic zipper for self-donning clothing at IROS 2026 as finalist for the Best Paper Award on Robot Mechanisms and Design! Read the paper here: repository.upenn.edu/entities/pub... #GRASPLab #GRASPatIROS #IROS2026

We at the GRASPLab are pleased to announce our capstone partnership with PrismaX! With PrismaX's support, we will empower the next generation of robotic researchers to explore reinforcement learning for adaptive robot policies!

The GRASP Lab is going to IROS 2026! Check out this program to see what our lab members will be up to at the conference: grasp.upenn.edu/news/grasp-l... #GRASP #GRASPLab #IROS2026 #GRASPatIROS

On Monday, GRASP researchers will be presenting "Flatness-Preserving Residual Learning for Real-Time Tight Quadrotor Formation Flight" at IROS 2026 as a finalist for the Best Paper / Best Student Paper Award! www.youtube.com/watch?v=uF26...

Join us TOMORROW in welcoming Dr. Stephanie Gil who will be presenting "Trust, Sensing, and Learning for Provable Multi-Robot Performance" from 10:30am - 11:45am. For more info: www.grasp.upenn.edu/events/fall-... #GRASP #GRASPLab #GRASPonRobotics

GRASP's Kumar Lab developed an indoor exploration framework that uses learning to predict unseen area environments to plan Safe Efficient Exploration for Aerial Robots (SEER). Video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZBk...

We hope the students from Wilmington Montessori School and Friends Select School had a wonderful time during their tour of the GRASP Lab today! A HUGE Thank You to all of our lab members who presented their research! #GRASP #GRASPLab #GRASPTour

Researchers at the GRASP Lab have developed a planner that can construct environments, plan motion in the environments, and combine the planners seamlessly. Video: youtu.be/xLHHDw3IQr4?... #GRASP #GRASPLab #GRASPResearchers

Multi-Robot Target Tracking is a collaborative project between GRASP researchers, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Drexel University. Check out their findings in the video below! Video: youtu.be/uSYPI817Y6c?... #GRASP #GRASPLab #GRASPResearch

Join us TOMORROW in welcoming Dr. Georgia Gkioxari who will be presenting "Towards Self-Improving Machine Perception" from 10:30am - 11:45am. For more info: www.grasp.upenn.edu/events/fall-... #GRASP #GRASPLab #GRASPonRobotics

Check out this article highlighting GRASP grad students who successfully applied their experience from the RoboRacer ESE course to global RoboRacer conference competitions! www.grasp.upenn.edu/news/grasp-g... #GRASP #GRASPLab #RoboRacer

The GRASP Lab will be at the AI Horizons Pittsburgh Summit! Come say hi at our booth! #GRASP #GRASPLab #AIHorizons

Check out this article highlighting the 2026 summer internship experiences of six GRASP Lab graduate students! www.grasp.upenn.edu/news/grasp-l... #GRASP #GRASPLab

Join us TOMORROW for the GRASP Research Overview Day 2 Seminar starting at 10:30AM - 11:45AM. For more info on the seminar, visit: www.grasp.upenn.edu/events/fall-... #GRASP #GRASPLab #GRASPSeminar #GRASPResearch

Thank you all for coming to the GRASP Research Overview Day 1! We hope this seminar gave you a sneak peek at who we are as the GRASP Lab! See you next Friday for Day 2!!! Recording: youtu.be/aTUOtiWvpuM #GRASP #GRASPLab #GRASPSeminar

GRASP Seminars are back! Please join us tomorrow for the GRASP Research Overview Day 1 seminar! More info: www.grasp.upenn.edu/events/fall-... #GRASP #GRASPLab #GRASPSeminars

GRASP's Kumar Lab collaborated with researchers from MIT to develop a new algorithm to find optimized, safe flight paths for robots by mapping areas and planning collision-free trajectories. Video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pvb-... #GRASP #GRASPLab #KumarLab

EvMAPPER is a GRASP collaborative project that introduces the first orthomosaic approach for event cameras, enabling map generation even in challenging light conditions such as direct sunlight or after sunset. Website: evmapper.fcladera.com #GRASP #GRASPLab #GRASPResearchers

GRASP's Kumar Lab developed a novel learning-based trajectory planning framework for quadrotors that optimizes their trajectory by changing the optimization problem into a quadratic programming problem. Video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=tA02... #GRASP #GRASPLab #KumarLab

We hope everyone had a wonderful time at the GRASP Welcome Back BBQ! Wishing you all a wonderful start to the semester!!! #GRASP #GRASPLab #GRASPBBQ #Fall2026

Congratulations to GRASP's own Dr. Lingjie Liu on receiving the 2026 ACM SIGGRAPH Significant New Researcher Award, for her "outstanding contributions to neural representations, human performance capture and animation, and 3D reconstruction”. #GRASP #GRASPLab

Researchers at GRASP have developed M3ED, a multi-sensor event camera that provides high-quality, synchronized, and labeled data that can be used on multiple robotic platforms. Website: m3ed.io #GRASP #GRASPLab #GRASPResearchers

The Perception, Action, and Learning Group has found that sensory information is rarely task-critical in many commonly studied task setups. Read more on their findings: sites.google.com/view/vosi-ro... #GRASP #GRASPLab #PAL

GRASP's Perception, Action, and Learning Group proposes evaluating robots through "interactive reward functions" (IRFs) for training reinforcement learning policies. Website: sites.google.com/view/lirf-co... #GRASP #GRASPLab #PAL

GRASP's Figueroa Lab has developed the OCR framework, a policy that addresses the challenges in out-of-distribution scenarios in visuomotor policy learning. Website: sites.google.com/view/ocr-penn #GRASP #GRASPLab #FigueroaLab

GRASP Researchers have tested both reinforcement learning (RL) and geometric controllers (GC) to find which would be best for a quadrotor with a fixed arm. Read the results here: pratikkunapuli.github.io/rl-vs-gc/ #GRASP #GRASPLab #GRASPResearchers

OmniGuide is a GRASP collaborative project to build a flexible framework that improves Vision-language-action (VLA) model performance, such as 3D foundation models, semantic reasoning VLMs, and human pose models. Website: omniguide.github.io #GRASP #GRASPLab

The Perception, Action, and Learning group has developed Robot-Aware Control (RAC), a reinforcement learning policy that exploits readily available knowledge about the robot. Website: edwardshu.com/rac/ #GRASP #GRASPLab #PAL

GRASP's Kumar Lab has developed EvDNeRF, a program that generates event data by combining the perception advantages of event cameras with the rendering advantages of NeRFs. Website: www.anishbhattacharya.com/research/evd... #GRASP #GRASPLab #KumarLab