Chao Liu 刘超

Chao Liu 刘超

Postdoctoral Associate

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Biography

I am currently a Postdoctoral Associate at MIT CSAIL working with Professor Daniela Rus. I obtained my Ph.D. degree from the University of Pennsylvania advised by Professor Mark Yim (ModLab in UPenn GRASP Lab ). My PhD thesis is about swarm, modular, and parallel robotics, including hardware design, modeling, control, and motion planning of two robotic systems — SMORES-EP and Variable Topology Truss. I am currently working on soft robotics and control, contact modeling, and multimodal sensing for robotics manipulation, including a multimodal dataset of human activities, dexterous robotic hands, textile-based sensing and actuation, and contact modeling of soft materials.

News

  • [01/2024] Two papers are accepted to ICRA 2024!
  • [01/2024] Three papers are accepted to ICLR 2024!
  • [11/2023] One paper is accepted by Nature Communication!
Interests
  • Swarm and Modular Robotics
  • Soft Robotics
  • Grasping and Manipulation
  • Control
  • Motion Planning
  • Multimodal Sensing
Education
  • PhD in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, 2021

    University of Pennsylvania

  • MS in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, 2014

    University of Pennsylvania

  • BS in Mechanical Engineering and Automation, 2012

    Dalian Jiaotong University

Projects

Machine Perception

Machine Perception

Advanced proprioceptive and exteroceptive sensing approaches for robot control.

Soft Material Modeling

Soft Material Modeling

Simulation engines of soft materials for manipulation tasks.

Textile-based Sensing and Actuation

Textile-based Sensing and Actuation

Textile-based digital fabrication for sensing and actuation.

Robotic Manipulation

Robotic Manipulation

Bio-inspired dexterous robotic hands and human-level manipulation skill imitation.

ActionSense

ActionSense

A multimodal dataset for human activities

Whole-Body Motion Control in Real Time

Whole-Body Motion Control in Real Time

Control and planning for dexterous manipulation in real time.

SMORES-EP

SMORES-EP

SMORES-EP, a hybrid swarm and modular robotic system.

Variable Topology Truss

Variable Topology Truss

Variable Topology Truss robots are hyper-redundant parallel modular robots.

Aerial Manipulation

Aerial Manipulation

A novel manipulator for aerial manipulation.

Publications

Learning Object Properties Using Robot Proprioception via Differentiable Robot-Object Interaction
Learning Object Properties Using Robot Proprioception via Differentiable Robot-Object Interaction
Unifying 3D Representation and Control of Diverse Robots with a Single Camera
Unifying 3D Representation and Control of Diverse Robots with a Single Camera
Thin-Shell Object Manipulations with Differentiable Physics Simulations
Thin-Shell Object Manipulations with Differentiable Physics Simulations
Learning to Jointly Understand Visual and Tactile Signals
Learning to Jointly Understand Visual and Tactile Signals
DiffTactile: A Physics-Based Differentiable Tactile Simulator for Contact-Rich Robotic Manipulation
DiffTactile: A Physics-Based Differentiable Tactile Simulator for Contact-Rich Robotic Manipulation
Directly 3D Printed, Pneumatically Actuated Multi-Material Robotic Hand
Directly 3D Printed, Pneumatically Actuated Multi-Material Robotic Hand

Contact