Expanding robot perception

Associate Professor Luca Carlone is working to give robots a more human-like awareness of their environment.

Robots have come a long way since the Roomba. Today, drones are starting to deliver door to door, self-driving cars are navigating some roads, robo-dogs are aiding first responders, and still more bots are doing backflips and helping out on the factory floor. Still, Luca Carlone thinks the best is yet to come.

Carlone, who recently received tenure as an associate professor in MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AeroAstro), directs the SPARK Lab, where he and his students are bridging a key gap between humans and robots: perception. The group does theoretical and experimental research, all toward expanding a robot’s awareness of its environment in ways that approach human perception. And perception, as Carlone often says, is more than detection.