Robotics and Artificial Intelligence

Three CS&E papers accepted to NeurIPS 2021
The Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) highlights research advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning.

'Smart hug' tech aims to improve health and well-being
Prototype system uses voice-based conversation and physiological data to monitor the stress level of a user, and if needed, offers a calming hug.

Researchers use 3D motion capture to study Minnesota Zoo monkeys
The study, on which CS&E assistant professor Hyun Soo Park is a collaborator, holds new insights for neuroscience and behavioral science.

CS&E wins best paper honorable mention at CVPR 2021
The work by Ph.D. student Yasamin Jafarian and assistant professor Hyun Soo Park used TikTok dance videos to learn high fidelity depths of dressed humans.

UMN robotics research showcased at ICRA 2021
Four papers from C&SE faculty and students will be shared during the 2021 International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

COVID-19 can't stop the Cowbot autonomous mower!
The project is a collaboration between the West Central Research and Outreach Center (WCROC), The Toro Company, and CS&E's Robotic Sensor Networks Lab.

Professor Isler featured in UMN Plant Breeding Seminar series
In the talk, he discusses how plant breeding and agriculture is an interesting research domain for robotics, and shares examples of relevant work from his lab.

Building a brighter future with robotics
From exploring shipwrecks to air-dropping supplies in a pandemic, CS&E faculty and students are designing robots for the 21st century.

AI helps scientists understand brain activity behind thoughts
CS&E associate professor Paul Schrater is part of the team who, for the first time, developed a method to measure thoughts.

CSE team receives $1.2 million NSF grant to develop smart e-scooters
CS&E assistant professor Ju Sun is part of the team aiming to add tracking systems on electric scooters to improve safety of riders on the road.

Researchers develop AI algorithm to analyze chest X-rays for COVID-19
Ju Sun is on a team that developed and validated an artificial intelligence algorithm that can evaluate chest X-rays to diagnose possible cases of COVID-19.

New discovery allows 3D printing of sensors directly on expanding organs
A team, including CS&E's Hyun Soo Park, is developing technology that could help diagnose and monitor COVID-19 patients.

Tinkering in different buoyancies
Minnebot, the amphibious robot that ultimately could help improve our knowledge of water quality in the state—and beyond.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a general term that implies the use of a computer to model and/or replicate intelligent behavior. Research in AI focuses on the development and analysis of algorithms that learn and/or perform intelligent behavior with minimal human intervention. These techniques have been and continue to be applied to a broad range of problems that arise in robotics, e-commerce, medical diagnosis, gaming, mathematics, and military planning and logistics, to name a few. Several research groups fall under the general umbrella of AI in the department, but are disciplines in their own right, including: robotics, natural language processing (NLP), computer vision, computational biology, and e-commerce. Specifically, research is being conducted in estimation theory, mobility mechanisms, multi-agent negotiation, natural language interfaces, machine learning, active computer vision, probabilistic language models for use in spoken language interfaces, and the modeling and integration of visual, haptic, auditory and motor information.
Faculty










Labs and selected projects
- Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and Vision Lab Maria Gini and Nikolaos Papanikolopoulos
- Interactive Robotics and Vision Laboratory Junaed Sattar
- Visual Information Processing Lab Catherine Qi Zhao
- Computational Perception and Action Lab Paul Schrater
- Applied Motion Lab Stephen Guy
- Monitoring Human Activity Nikolaos Papanikolopoulos
- Robotic Sensor Networks Lab Volkan Isler
- MAGNET: Intelligent Agents for Electronic Commerce Maria Gini
- TAC-SCM: Autonomous Agents for Supply-Chain Management Maria Gini
- Visual Computing and AI Seminar
- UMN Machine Learning Seminar Series
Related centers and programs
Latest research projects, publications, and talks

EMP: Edge-assisted Multi-vehicle Perception [conference paper]
Posted January 31, 2022
27th Annual International Conference On Mobile Computing And Networking (MobiCom 2021)

MC-DGCNN: A Novel DNN Architecture for Multi-Category Point Set Classification [preprint]
Posted December 22, 2021
Majid Farhadloo (Ph.D. student), Carl Molnar (M.S. student), Gaoxiang Luo (undergraduate research assistant), Yan Li (Ph.D. student), Shashi Shekhar (professor), Rachel L Maus, Svetomir N Markovic, Raymond Moore, Alexey Leontovich

Identification and characterization of a fungal-selective glutaminyl tRNA synthetase inhibitor with potent activity against Candida albicans [journal]
Posted December 17, 2021
Alice Xue, Amanda Veri, Xiang Zhang, Ci Fu, Emma Lash, Kali Iyer, Nicole Revie, Nicole Robbins, Charles Boone, Chad Myers (professor), Leah Cowen
Access Microbiology

About a Proof Pearl: A Purported Solution to a POPLMARK Challenge Problem that is Not One [preprint]
Posted December 17, 2021
Gopalan Nadathur (professor)

Perceptions of Visual and Multimodal Symbolic Mediated Social Touch: Role of Technology Modality, Relationship, and Task Emotional Salience [journal]
Posted December 17, 2021
Svetlana Yarosh (associate professor), Xizi Wang, Yuan Yao
International Journal of Human-Computer Studies

A Label Correction Algorithm Using Prior Information for Automatic and Accurate Geospatial Object Recognition [conference paper]
Posted December 15, 2021
Weiwei Duan, Yao-Yi Chiang (associate professor), Stefan Leyk, Johannes H. Uhl, Craig A. Knoblock
IEEE International Conference on Big Data (IEEE BigData)

Guided Generative Models using Weak Supervision for Detecting Object Spatial Arrangement in Overhead Images [conference paper]
Posted December 15, 2021
Weiwei Duan, Yao-Yi Chiang (associate professor), Stefan Leyk, Johannes H. Uhl, Craig A. Knoblock
IEEE International Conference on Big Data (IEEE BigData)

AggNet: Cost-Aware Aggregation Networks for Geo-distributed Streaming Analytics [conference paper]
Posted December 14, 2021
Dhruv Kumar (Ph.D. student), Sohaib Ahmad, Abhishek Chandra (professor), Ramesh Sitaraman
6th ACM/IEEE Symposium on Edge Computing

Early Stopping for Deep Image Prior [preprint]
Posted December 11, 2021
Hengkang Wang (Ph.D. student), Taihui Li (Ph.D. student), Zhong Zhuang (Ph.D. student), Tiancong Chen (Ph.D. student), Hengyue Liang, Ju Sun (assistant professor)

TempoQR: Temporal Question Reasoning over Knowledge Graphs [preprint]
Posted December 10, 2021
Costas Mavromatis (Ph.D. student), Prasanna Lakkur Subramanyam, Vassilis N Ioannidis, Soji Adeshina, Phillip R Howard, Tetiana Grinberg, Nagib Hakim, George Karypis (professor)
More About Research areas
- Architectures, Compiler Optimization, and Embedded Systems
- Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
- Data Mining, Databases, and Geographical Information Systems
- Graphics and Immersive Computing
- High Performance Computing
- Human Computer Interaction (HCI)
- Networks, Distributed Systems, and Security
- Software Engineering and Programming Languages
- Theoretical Foundations