We have our third seminar for the TC seminar series on Friday (2/17) at 10:00AM EST. Please find the flyer with all the details at this link.

Speaker: Justin Carpentier
Title: Progress and prospects in optimization for control and learning in robotics
Date: Friday, February 17th
Time: 10:00 - 11:00AM EST (GMT -05:00)

More details on upcoming seminars (and video links for past ones) can be found
here: https://www.ieee-ras.org/model-based-optimization-for-robotics/activities/current-tc-events

We are pleased to announce the call for nominations for the IEEE-RAS Technical Committee on Model-Based Optimization for Robotics 2022 Best Paper Award.

Eligible papers for this year's award will have appeared at a conference or in a journal in 2022 (online or in print). We encourage TC members and community members to
nominate their favorite papers of the past year (including their own!).

Nominations Due: March 15th, 2023 [self-nominations encouraged]
Nomination Form: https://forms.gle/KoXu3a6XbLvHawBr6

Full policies and procedures for the best paper award can be found here.

We have our second seminar for the TC seminar series on Friday (1/13) at 9:30AM EST. We'll mix up the format and have two talks this time with joint Q&A. Please find the flyer with all the details at this link.

Speaker 1: Carlos Mastalli
Title: Building athletic intelligence in legged robots: a top-down approach

Speaker 2: Majid Khadiv
Title: Optimal Control and Learning for Agile Locomotion

Date: Friday, January 13th
Time: 9:30 - 10:30AM EST (GMT -5:00)
Link: https://columbiauniversity.zoom.us/j/91247893326?pwd=L2JWU21aQzc4cU1ZQklEb0Qr WGQvdz09

More details on upcoming seminars (and video links for past ones) can be found
here: https://www.ieee-ras.org/model-based-optimization-for-robotics/activities/current-tc-events

The Technical Committee on Model-Based Optimization for robotics is excited to kick off a new virtual seminar series.

We'll be getting started with a talk from Zac Machester of CMU at 10AM EST on Friday November 18th. It should be an engaging start to the series, and we hope to see many of you there!

Speaker: Zac Manchester

Title: Composable Optimization for Robotic Motion Planning and Control

Date: Friday, November 18th
Time: 10-11 AM EST (GMT -05:00)

Link:https://columbiauniversity.zoom.us/j/91247893326?pwd=L2JWU21aQzc4cU1ZQklEb0QrWGQvdz09

Please see attached document for details on the speaker and the abstract.

Stay tuned for more details to come on other TC seminars that we'll be holding this spring. Our rough schedule is below. We're looking forward to this fantastic slate of speakers to help keep everyone in touch across the long gap in conferences until ICRA. 

January: Carlos Mastalli and Majid Khadiv
February: Justin Carpentier
March: Nathan Ratliff
April: Hae-Won Park and Ioannis Havoutis 

Please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions at tc.opt.rob@gmail.com or visit out website https://www.ieee-ras.org/model-based-optimization-for-robotics.

TC on Model-Based Optimization for Robotics Best Paper Award 2021

Thank you all for the overwhelming response to the call for nominations for the 2021 TC Best Paper Award. We have had a few delays in the process, so thanks to all the nominees for their patience. We are now happy to announce the finalists and winners of the 2021 edition!

Winners (two winners were selected per our best paper award rules, as there was a tie):

• Fast UAV Trajectory Optimization Using Bilevel Optimization With Analytical Gradients (W Sun, G Tang, K Hauser)
• Efficient Multicontact Pattern Generation With Sequential Convex Approximations of the Centroidal Dynamics (B Ponton, M Khadiv, A Meduri, L Righetti

Finalists:

• Stabilization of Complementarity Systems via Contact-Aware Controllers (A Aydinoglu, P Sieg, VM Preciado, M Posa)
• Robot-Safe Impacts with Soft Contacts Based on Learned Deformations (N Dehio, A Kheddar)

A special thanks goes to our jury members (Christian Ott, Dongheui Lee, Scott Kuindersma, Aaron Johnson, Alessandro Saccon, Jaeheung Park), who have been doing the lion’s share of the effort in helping us arrive at a winner.

Congratulations once again to the winners!