Michigan Robotics

The last few months in robotics? • soft micro robots that seek out pests in agriculture • open-source quadruped for studying evolution • a VEX U qualifier in the Ford Robotics Atrium and a lot more! All in our latest newsletter.

Our #HRI2026 late-breaking report looks at how to generate legible robot motion in pedestrian environments, specifically focusing on 2 Qs: 🔸what should a robot be legible over? 🔸how does human distraction impact the benefits of legibility? @fluentrobotics @UMRobotics

Read more on the concentrations: robotics.umich.edu/news/2026/five…

Having trouble concentrating? Not in Robotics. Five new undergraduate robotics concentrations, coming this fall.

Congratulations to Xin Ye! Our paper on promoting cooperation with security robots through fairness and value alignment is being presented today at #HRI2026 @ieeeras @HRI_Conference @umsi @UMRobotics @UMich @BlackInRobotics @iKnightscope dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/37…

Excited to share our #HRI2026 paper! 🎉 Over the past two years, my @fluentrobotics lab @UMRobotics & the group of Rachid Alami (LAAS Toulouse) ran an ambitious project to study the implications of human motion prediction fidelity for downstream MPC navigation performance

Enjoying #hri2026 @HRI_Conference @umsi @UMRobotics @BlackInRobotics

After a day of exceptional performances, these 6 teams will represent the Michigan Region at the @RoboNationInc International @seaperch Challenge at the @UofMaryland in late May. Good luck to all!! Thanks to our supporters @ccs_super @UMRobotics @NAMEatUM @CHS_LeadsTheWay

Read on Substack: open.substack.com/pub/umrobotics…

The last few months in robotics? • soft micro robots that seek out pests in agriculture • open-source quadruped for studying evolution • a VEX U qualifier in the Ford Robotics Atrium and a lot more! All in our latest newsletter.

Has visual fidelity outpaced dynamic fidelity in tactile simulation for sim-to-real transfer of policies? Introducing HydroShear 🏄‍♂️ : a hydroelastic tactile shear simulation for training zero-shot sim-to-real tactile policies in contact-rich tasks where fingertip force and shear matter most! Webpage: hydroshear.github.io Robot videos in 1x 🧵👇

Read: robotics.umich.edu/news/2026/soft…

$1M in @USDA_NIFA funding for caterpillar-size pest control robots: Professors Xiaonan Huang and Dmitry Berenson will be designing and building a 5cm robot for agriculture to deploy among crops and be an early-warning system for pests, allowing farmers to treat proactively.

We have 5 papers accepted at @CVPR 2026 across my teams at @UMich @UMRobotics @UMichECE @michigan_AI and @Voxel51. Coupling these with a handful of workshops I'm participating in, descending on the great city of Denver in June is going to be great fun! These papers range from 4D Vector indexing and Mistake Attribution to Spline-controlled 3D character generation. The list is below. Over the coming weeks I'll be posting more details about them as camera-readies, project pages, and open-source code is available! 1️⃣ R4: Retrieval-Augmented Reasoning for Vision-Language Models in 4D Spatio-Temporal Space; @SohnTin73632 Tin Stribor Sohn, Maximilian Dillitzer, Jason J Corso, Eric Sax 2️⃣ Mistake Attribution: Fine-Grained Mistake Understanding in Egocentric Videos; @YayuanLi Yayuan Li, Aadit Jain, Filippos Bellos, Jason J Corso 3️⃣ BiMotion: B-spline Motion for Text-guided Dynamic 3D Character Generation; Miaowei(Michael) Wang, Qingxuan Yan, Zhi Cao, Yayuan Li, @oisinmchugh Oisin Mac Aodha, Jason J Corso, @amirvaxman_dgp Amir Vaxman 4️⃣ Bridging Facial Understanding and Animation via Language Models; Luchuan Song, Pinxin Liu, Haiyang Liu, Zhenchao Jin, Yolo Yunlong Tang, Zichong Xu, Susan Liang, Jing Bi, Jason J Corso, @ChenliangXu Chenliang Xu 5️⃣ When to Think and When to Look: Uncertainty-Guided Lookback; Jing Bi, Filippos Bellos, JunJia Guo, Yayuan Li, Chao Huang, Yolo Yunlong Tang, Luchuan Song, Susan Liang, Zhongfei Zhang, Jason J Corso, Chenliang Xu 🧲 Follow me here on X/Twitter to stay up to date on these coming posts!

The project received an award from the @UMichResearch Bold Challenges Initiative. Read more: robotics.umich.edu/news/2026/usin…

Professor Yulun Tian's new project: "AI-Enabled Digital Twins for Closed-Loop Robotic 3D Concrete Printing." “The project will develop a real-time digital twin that continuously reconstructs and predicts the evolving state of the 3D concrete printing process,” said Tian.

Want a free tour of robotics at the University of Michigan? We've added new Friday tour dates: sign up now! tours.robotics.umich.edu/signup

Great short podcast interview on Imaginze World, "Robotics: Shaping Inequality in Global Labor " with Jane McConnell. Let me know what you think @umsi @UMRobotics @um_midas @UMichResearch @BlackInRobotics @ieeeras youtube.com/shorts/SfVeQME… via @YouTube

Read: umrobotics.substack.com/p/soft-origami…

Don't worry if you haven't paid attention this semester, here's your cheatsheet for what's happened this Fall! Including: - Soft origami robots - Scaling up microsurgery - Exploring Mars with ground penetrating radar

📝 Class is in session! Prof. @_JasonCorso_—@Voxel51 Co-Founder & Chief Scientist—dropped by the @superdatasci Podcast with @JonKrohnLearns🎙️to discuss how #Voxel51 is solving #ComputerVision’s data problem. Drawing on 20+ years in computer vision research, Corso discusses data-centric #ML, how Voxel’s new Verified Auto-Labeling eliminates computer vision’s biggest bottleneck & the background to improving autonomous vehicles. 🎧 Listen to the full podcast: bit.ly/4aoWOJ0