Chad Jenkins
Professor of Robotics, College of Engineering
Bio
I am a Professor of Robotics and a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan. I am the leader of the Laboratory for Progress (Perceptive RObotics and Grounded REasoning SystemS).
My work and collaborations aim to discover methods for computational reasoning and perception that will enable robots to effectively learn from and assist people in common human environments. Essentially, we explore how to make the real world programmable by regular people through the control of autonomous robots. Critical challenges towards this goal are enabling robots to perceive our world, understand the form and function of objects, reason under uncertainty, and learn from human users. This research pertains primarily to robot learning from demonstration, semantic perception, and mobile manipulation towards enabling the usability of this technology by people in real situations.
Because science is exactly independently verifiable knowledge, open-source contributions and reproducibility are critical features of my work. My open-source approach to scholarship emphasizes a balance of theory and practice, a balance of research and teaching, and prioritization on equity and excellence.
Abstract
Start with a simple question: What is the best major for a student to become a roboticist? In my role leading the creation of the Robotics Undergraduate Major at Michigan, we tackled this question through the curricular challenge of how to both: 1) educate people to put ideas of the robotics discipline into practice and 2) endow them with the intellectual lens for creating new ideas that extend the frontiers of the robotics discipline — where mobility and dexterity through humanoid robots are poised to have a transformative impact in our increasingly AI-driven world.
In this talk, I will discuss my work to both advance the state of the art in semantic understanding for robotics and prepare students for possible futures where robotics and AI are abundant and ubiquitous. I will present the design, launch, and innovations for the Michigan Robotics Major for undergraduates, as robotics emerges into its own as a true academic discipline. I will describe highlights from research in semantic 3D perception for mobile manipulation robots (including humanoids) to understand the form and function (or affordances) for a diversity of objects in common environments. I will also share insights from my role as Program Chair of the AAAI-26 Conference (and its roughly 30,000 submissions) and how this role, and my experiences with Amazon AWS Machine Learning University, has reshaped my perspective on AI for teaching at the university level. Finally, I will discuss new efforts in my course this semester to formulate “mutation assessments” that gauge student understanding of agentically coded projects.
Parking/Accessibility
The closest public parking garage to the Samuel T. Dana building is the Forest Ave. Parking Garage located at 650 S Forest Ave, Ann Arbor, MI 48104.
Forest Ave. Parking Garage located at 650 S Forest Ave, Ann Arbor, MI 48104.
For guidance on directions, U-M faculty/staff parking, and accessibility, please visit: https://maps.studentlife.umich.edu/building/samuel-trask-dana-building
This series is co-sponsored by
Please reach out to Ben Surgalski ([email protected]) with any questions.