STARS Laboratory

Congratulations to Selina Leveugle and Jinbang Huang on their final MASc research presentation! 👩🎓👨🎓🎉 On to new adventures!

We're delighted to have Ivan Bilić, a PhD student in the LAMoR (https://lamor.fer.hr) group at the University of Zagreb / Sveučilište u Zagrebu, Croatia, visiting for a few months! He is working on vision-based methods in the context of robotic manipulation. Outside of robotics, Ivan loves guitar & soccer. Welcome!

Rahul Goel holds a bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Toronto's Engineering Science program, where he also founded the Robotics for Space Exploration (RSX) team. Rahul is a serial entrepreneur with a passion for helping aerospace engineers commercialize their research. He currently is the CEO at NordSpace, a Canadian space company building an end-to-end orbital launch system for Canada. 🚀 Rahul will be joining our laboratory as a part-time PhD student in September, with research interests focused on small-scale space robotics for in-orbit servicing and lunar exploration!

Karyna Volokhatiuk is a recent Computer Science graduate from the Ukrainian Catholic University. She was part of the university's robotics club, where she discovered her passion for robots. Since November 2023, she has worked on human-to-robot handover research with the STARS Lab. This September, Karyna will pursue a MASc degree focused on task and motion planning with our laboratory!

Introducing Silica, our newest server! (We have a rock theme going 🪨) Silica will support our many research efforts with performant computational hardware. And yes, it features two liquid-cooled NVIDIA RTX 4090 GPUs!

We're excited to attend the Toronto Robotics Conference tomorrow, happening on the University of Toronto St. George campus! Stop in to hear about work in STARS and at the University of Toronto Robotics Institute. The event is sold out! 🤖 https://lnkd.in/davSHw5P

Throwback to our work on robotic manipulator singularity avoidance using Riemannian geometry, which appeared in the Robotics and Autonomous Systems journal. 🤖 💪 This effort was led by now STARS lab alumn, Dr. Filip Marić! . University of Toronto Robotics Institute University of Toronto Engineering https://lnkd.in/eUJyTfs2

Discover how computer vision (CV) enables a robot to balance a hammer on a small peg! 🔨 PhD candidate Philippe Nadeau connects CV and physics through part segmentation for inertial parameter identification of manipulated objects. Philippe will showcase his work today at the Vector Institute CV workshop taking place in the Schwartz Reisman Innovation Campus. Say hello if you happen to be there! Project page: https://lnkd.in/dskEY8v5 Video: https://lnkd.in/dTvkEdA9

If you're attending the IEEE Aerospace Conferences this week, come say hi! PhD student Olivier Lamarre will present his work on safe mobility at the lunar south pole with a solar-powered rover. The presentation is today at 5:20pm MST, in room Dunraven.

Exploring the lunar south pole with a solar-powered rover is a challenge. And accounting for mission risks and objectives makes it even harder. PhD candidate Olivier Lamarre will be presenting his work at the IEEE Aerospace Conferences this March, in Montana! Preprint: https://lnkd.in/gnc2TZEa