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Zac Manchester

@zacmanchester.bsky.social

Assistant Professor of Robotics at CMU, Engineer, Spacecraft Hacker.

228 Followers  |  174 Following  |  5 Posts  |  Joined: 11.02.2024  |  1.2556

Latest posts by zacmanchester.bsky.social on Bluesky

Biped walking from left to right across (top) flat, (middle) sinusoidal, and (bottom) piecewise linear terrain using the same policy.

Biped walking from left to right across (top) flat, (middle) sinusoidal, and (bottom) piecewise linear terrain using the same policy.

This T-RO paper will be presented at #ICRA2025 develops a Contact-Implicit MPC method for controlling #robots making/breaking contact. The bilevel planner uses LCPs to reason about contact timing/forces online, generating new contact modes in real-time.

ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/103...

13.05.2025 21:28 — 👍 3    🔁 2    💬 0    📌 0
Optimal Control (CMU 16-745) 2024 Lecture 24: Data-Driven Control and Behavior Cloning
YouTube video by CMU Robotic Exploration Lab Optimal Control (CMU 16-745) 2024 Lecture 24: Data-Driven Control and Behavior Cloning

Did a fun lecture this week on data-drive control with hints of behavior cloning and diffusion policies, but all grounded in classical linear systems theory. Most of the ideas are drawn from the behavioral control theory literature: youtu.be/fnajY4Ip13w?...

19.04.2025 22:42 — 👍 8    🔁 1    💬 1    📌 0
MIT Robotics - Zac Manchester - Composable Optimization for Robotic Motion Planning and Control
YouTube video by MIT Robotics MIT Robotics - Zac Manchester - Composable Optimization for Robotic Motion Planning and Control

Had a great visit to MIT for the robotics seminar a couple of weeks ago: www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSle...

21.03.2025 03:52 — 👍 4    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Just made first contact with our satellite PROMETHEUS-1 in collaboration with @cmurexlab.bsky.social @istecnico.bsky.social @uminho.bsky.social @cmurobotics.bsky.social @scsatcmu.bsky.social

See where our satellite is here: tinygs.com/satellite/PR...

23.01.2025 22:58 — 👍 22    🔁 5    💬 0    📌 1

It's difficult to convey how amazing Jonathan's collection is. This is truly a treasure that every space nerd should support.

23.01.2025 00:42 — 👍 8    🔁 2    💬 0    📌 0

Cool work by my student @fogmb.bsky.social trying to scale joint robot design and control optimization to realistic problems. These are super challenging optimization problems that are often handled separately by expert designers. We're trying to automate it.

10.12.2024 14:47 — 👍 7    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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🚀 Co-Optimizing Robots for Performance 🚀

🌟 CAPO: A scalable optimization method:
✅ Jointly optimizes actuators & control traj.
✅ Scales to complex systems
✅ Finds robust, efficient designs

🏋️ Tested on:
🚁 Multirotors 🛰️ Space structures 🧥 Cloth 🐟 Soft robots

📄 rexlab.ri.cmu.edu/papers/CAPO_...

10.12.2024 14:11 — 👍 7    🔁 3    💬 0    📌 1
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End of an era as Kevin Tracy defends his PhD. Kevin has been with the lab since the very beginning at Stanford, through the move to CMU. He's done amazing optimization-based control work with applications spanning aerospace and robotics and it has been an absolute pleasure working with him.

22.11.2024 19:08 — 👍 12    🔁 4    💬 1    📌 0

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