Uploaded May 2025 | Updated September 2026, 18 minutes ago
Future Leaders in Robotics and AI Seminar Series: Embodied Multimodal Intelligence with Foundation Models
Online Seminar
Oier Mees
Postdoctoral Fellow
University of California Berkeley
Despite considerable progress in robot learning and contrary to the expectations of the general public, the vast majority of robots deployed out in the real world today continue to remain restricted to a narrow set of preprogrammed behaviors for specific tasks. As robots become ubiquitous across human-centred environments, the need for "generalist" robots grows: how can we scale robot learning systems to generalize and adapt, allowing them to perform a wide range of everyday tasks in unstructured environments based on arbitrary, multimodal instructions from the users? In my work, I have focused on addressing the challenging problems of relating human language to a robot’s multimodal perceptions and actions by introducing techniques that leverage self-supervision from uncurated data and common sense reasoning from foundation models from and for robotics.
For more information, please visit:
https://robotics.umd.edu/FutureLeaders
Future Leaders in Robotics and AI Seminar Series: Embodied Multimodal Intelligence with Foundation Models
Online Seminar
Oier Mees
Postdoctoral Fellow
University of California Berkeley
Despite considerable progress in robot learning and contrary to the expectations of the general public, the vast majority of robots deployed out in the real world today continue to remain restricted to a narrow set of preprogrammed behaviors for specific tasks. As robots become ubiquitous across human-centred environments, the need for "generalist" robots grows: how can we scale robot learning systems to generalize and adapt, allowing them to perform a wide range of everyday tasks in unstructured environments based on arbitrary, multimodal instructions from the users? In my work, I have focused on addressing the challenging problems of relating human language to a robot’s multimodal perceptions and actions by introducing techniques that leverage self-supervision from uncurated data and common sense reasoning from foundation models from and for robotics.
For more information, please visit:
https://robotics.umd.edu/FutureLeaders
![Maryland Robotics Center Seminar, January 31, 2025: Markus P. Nemitz [REUPLOAD]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/g1aHjIuysYI/mqdefault.jpg "Maryland Robotics Center Seminar, January 31, 2025: Markus P. Nemitz [REUPLOAD]
Maryland Robotics Center Seminar: Design. Print. Deploy. Enabling Swarm Robotics via Additive Manufacturing
Markus P. Nemitz, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering
Tufts University
Swarm robots offer transformative potential for applications where rapid and efficient coverage of large areas is critical. However, the high cost and fragility of advanced robots, coupled with the limited functionality of affordable alternatives, have historically hindered their large-scale deployment, confining much of swarm robotics research to simulations. While drones have successfully evolved into capable, low-cost swarm robots through commercialization, their fragility and inability to physically interact with the environment have limited their use in contact-based tasks and underwater operations. To address these challenges, our research focuses on the rapid design and fabrication of low-cost, capable, and scalable terrestrial swarm robots using additive manufacturing. In this talk, I will present strategies for creating increasingly intelligent yet affordable robots, advancing the cost-capability trade-off in robotics. I will showcase developments in 3D-printed soft quadrupeds, fluidic actuators, and controllers, exploring their current performance, future potential, and how they bridge the gap between laboratory prototypes and real-world applications. By advancing swarm engineering, we unlock new opportunities for distributed problem solving, such as explosive ordnance disposal, where expendable robots can be produced at a cost lower than the landmines they neutralize.
For more information on the Maryland Robotics Center see:
https://robotics.umd.edu")
