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Associate Professor
Alberto Rodriguez
Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering
Interests
- Autonomous robotic manipulation
- Hand dexterity
- End-effector Design
Faculty Details
Education
-
2013
CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY
Ph.D Robotics -
2006
Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya
Degree in Telecommunications Engineering -
2005
Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya
Degree in Mathematics
Research Interests
- Autonomous robotic manipulation.
- Hand dexterity.
- End-effector design.
- Automation.
Bio
Alberto Rodriguez is an Associate Professor (without tenure) at the Mechanical Engineering Department at MIT. Alberto graduated in Mathematics ('05) and Telecommunication Engineering ('06) from the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, and earned his PhD (’13) from the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. He leads the Manipulation and Mechanisms Lab at MIT (MCube) researching autonomous dexterous manipulation, robot automation, and end-effector design. Alberto has received Best Paper Awards at conferences RSS’11, ICRA’13, RSS’18, IROS'18, and RSS'19, the 2018 Best Manipulation System Paper Award from Amazon, and has been finalist for best paper awards at conferences IROS’16 and IROS'18. He has lead Team MIT-Princeton in the Amazon Robotics Challenge between 2015 and 2017, and has received Faculty Research Awards from Amazon in 2018, 2019 and 2020, and from Google in 2020. He is also the recipient of the 2020 IEEE Early Academic Career Award in Robotics and Automation.
Honors + Awards
- 2020, IEEE Early Academic Career Award in Robotics and Automation
"For contributions to dexterous robot manipulation" - 2020, Amazon Faculty Research Award.
- 2020, Google Faculty Research Award.
- 2019, Best Systems Paper Award RSS 2019
"TossingBot: Learning to Throw Arbitrary Objects with Residual Physics" - 2019, Amazon Faculty Research Award.
- 2018, Best Cognitive Paper Award at IROS 2018
"Augmenting Physical Simulators with Stochastic Neural Networks: Case Study of Planar Pushing and Bouncing" - 2018, Finalist Best Cognitive Paper Award at IROS 2018
"Learning Synergies between Pushing and Grasping with Self-Supervised Deep Reinfrcement Learning" - 2018, Amazon Robotics Best Systems Paper Award
"Robotic pick-and-place of novel objects in clutter with multi-affordance grasping and cross-domain image matching" - 2018, Finalist Amazon Robotics Best Technical Paper Award
"GelSlim: A High-Resolution, Compact, Robust, and Calibrted Tactile-Sening Finger" - 2018, Best Student Paper Award at RSS 2018
"In-hand Manipulation via Motion Cones" - 2018, Amazon Faculty Research Award.
- 2017, Amazon Robotics Challenge - Stow Task, 1st place.
- 2016, Walter Henry Gale (1929) Career Development Professor
- 2016, Finalist Best Paper Award IROS 2016
"More than a Million Ways to Be Pushed. A high-Fidelity Experimental Dataset of Planar Pushing" - 2016, Amazon Picking Challenge 2016, 3rd and 4th place
- 2015, Amazon Picking Challenge 2015, 2nd place
- 2014, Finalist for Best Video Award
"Regrasping Objects with Extrinsic Dexterity" - 2013, Best Student Paper Award at ICRA 2013
"Effector Form Design for 1DOF Planar Actuation" - 2011, Best Student Paper Award at RSS 2011
"From Caging to Grasping"
MIT Service
- 2018-present, Organize MIT Robotics Seminar
- 2016-present, Associate Head of House, Sidney-Pacific, MIT
- 2013-present, MechE Graduate Admissions Committee
- 2016-17, Controls and Dynamics Curriculum Revision Committee, MechE, MIT
Teaching
- 2.003 Dynamics and Controls I
- 2.12 Introduction to Robotics
Patents
- 2019, Nov, Provisional "Tactile Dexterity and Control"
- 2018 Aug, Pending "Shape-Shifting Fingers for Robotic Grippers"
- 2018 Aug, Pending "Robotic Manipulation of Objects for Grip Adjustment"
- 2018 Aug, Pending "Robotic Manipulation of Objects using External Contacts"
- 2017 Feb, “Two-Phase Gripper to Reorient and Grasp”, US20170036354 A1
- 2014 Nov, “Method and Apparatus for Using Post Assembly Process Interaction Signatures to Detect Assembly Failures”, WO2014160760 A3, CN105229548 A