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PI Luis Sentis had the sincere honor of addressing the talented students at the Fundación “la Caixa” fellowship ceremony. A great highlight of the event was a thoughtful conversation with H.M. the King of Spain, who showed a keen interest in the future of humanoid robotics.

The HCRL mourns the loss of a dear friend and colleague, Professor Jaeheung Park of Seoul National University. The photo below, taken in 2005, features Jaeheung alongside Professor Oussama Khatib. Together, Prof. Khatib, Jaeheung, and Luis worked to build the foundations of Whole-Body Control. Those were exciting times when humanoid robots were still a distant dream. The HCRL is profoundly grateful to Prof. Park for encouraging so many talented SNU and South Korean students to attend programs here at UT and within our lab. Jaeheung will be deeply missed by our lab and the broader robotics community.

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We are pleased to showcase the ARISTO (Anthropomorphic, Robotic, Integrated-Sensing, Tendon-Operated) Hand. Developed in collaboration with Sony Group Corporation. This research platform is engineered to address the complex requirements of manipulating small, thin, and fragile objects.

Visit the project website here: https://aristohand.github.io to read the full publication, view the mechanical architecture, and watch our task-level demonstrations.

Huge kudos to HCRL postdoc Alex Ambrose and PhD student Susan McLain for designing and teaching the first freshman Space Robotics Course at UT Austin. Check out the video below to see the students’ final project: a flywheel-controlled camera designed for precision tracking. Fantastic work by everyone involved!

We are proud to congratulate Mingyo Seo on the successful defense of his doctoral thesis:

“Embodiment-Aware Skill Learning for Diverse Robots”

Mingyo’s research addresses a fundamental challenge in robotics: how to enable robots with different physical structures—varying shapes, sizes, and capabilities—to learn and perform skills effectively. His work introduces novel approaches to embodiment-aware learning, allowing robotic systems to adapt skills based on their unique physical configurations rather than relying on one-size-fits-all solutions.

Carlos successfully defended his thesis, titled “Dynamic Whole-Body Planning for Humanoids in Confined Spaces: A Morphology-Aware Synthesis Approach”. His research significantly advances the state-of-the-art for humanoid robots navigating complex and unstructured environments. We are incredibly proud of Carlos’s hard work and dedication!

Huge congrats to Heeyong Huh on a fantastic defense! We had a packed house today to celebrate the 17th PhD to graduate from the lab. So proud of his hard work!

We are proud to inspire students interested in the world of robotics. Thank you to Apptronik for helping us bring these robots to life, and a special thanks to Microsoft for approaching us and placing their trust in our research.

We are thrilled to celebrate Apptronik’s recent raise, announced at the New York Stock Exchange. Spanning off from our laboratory and co-founded with our lab’s former student, CTO Nick Paine, this journey proves that academic research can solve massive real-world challenges. Our mission remains empowering our students to dream big, creating high-tech jobs in Austin, and ensuring Texas leads the way in humanoid robotics to change the world.

We usually take fingernails for granted, but they’re vital for fine-motor control and feeling textures. Our students have been doing some great work looking into the mechanics behind this.

arXiv: https://lnkd.in/gkC8f5nF
Website: https://lnkd.in/gAkCPmqd