Pieter Abbeel

Assistant Professor

Research Areas

• Artificial Intelligence (AI)
• Control, Intelligent Systems, and Robotics (CIR)
• Machine Learning

Teaching Schedule (Fall 2013)

• CS 188. Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, T T 12:30-2:00P, 245 Li Ka Shing
• CS 287. Advanced Robotics, T T 3:30-5:00P, 310 Soda
• EE 98-3. Pioneers in Engineering, Tu 6-8P, 285 Cory
• EE 198-3. Pioneers in Engineering, Tu 6-8P, 285 Cory

Biography

He received a BS/MS in Electrical Engineering from KU Leuven (Belgium) and received his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Stanford University in 2008. He joined the faculty at UC Berkeley in Fall 2008, with an appointment in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences. His research focuses on robotics, machine learning and control. Professor Abbeel has won various awards, including the Sloan Research Fellowship, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Program (AFOSR-YIP) award, the Okawa Research Grant, the 2011 TR35, the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) Early Career Award, and the Dick Volz Best U.S. Ph.D. Thesis in Robotics and Automation Award. He has developed apprenticeship learning algorithms which have enabled advanced helicopter aerobatics, including maneuvers such as tic-tocs, chaos and auto-rotation, which only exceptional human pilots can perform. His group has also enabled a robot to reliably pick up randomly shaped, crumpled pieces of laundry and fold them. His work has been featured in many popular press outlets, including BBC, The New York Times, MIT Technology Review, Discovery Channel, SmartPlanet and Wired.

Selected Publications

• J. van den Berg, P. Abbeel, and K. Goldberg, "LQG-MP: Optimized Path Planning for Robots with Motion Uncertainty and Imperfect State Information," in Proceedings of Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS), 2010.
• P. Abbeel, A. Coates, and A. Y. Ng, "Autonomous Helicopter Aerobatics through Apprenticeship Learning," International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR), June 2010.
• J. Maitin-Shepard, M. Cusumano-Towner, J. Lei, and P. Abbeel, "Cloth Grasp Point Detection based on Multiple-View Geometric Cues with Application to Robotic Towel Folding," in Proceedings 2010 Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2010.
• J. Tang, A. Singh, N. Goehausen, and P. Abbeel, "Learning Parameterized Maneuvers for Autonomous Helicopter Flight," in Proceedings 2010 Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2010.
• J. van den Berg, S. Miller, D. Duckworth, H. Hu, X. Fu, K. Goldberg, and P. Abbeel, "Superhuman Performance of Surgical Tasks by Robots using Iterative Learning from Human-Guided Demonstrations (Best Medical Robotics Paper Award)," in Proceedings 2010 Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2010.
• P. J. From, J. T. Gravdahl, and P. Abbeel, "On the Influence of Ship Motion Prediction Accuracy on Motion Planning and Control of Robotic Manipulators on Seaborne Platforms," in Proceedings 2010 Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2010.
• S. Gleason, M. Quigley, and P. Abbeel, "An Open Source AGPS/DGPS Capable C-coded Software Receiver," in Proceedings of the 22nd International Technical Meeting of The Satellite Division of the Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2009), 2009, pp. 1926 - 1931.
• S. Gleason, M. Quigley, and P. Abbeel, "A GPS Software Receiver," in GNSS: Applications and Methods, GNSS Technology and Applications Series, Artech House, 2009, pp. 121-148.
• A. Coates, P. Abbeel, and A. Y. Ng, "Apprenticeship Learning for Helicopter Control," Communications of the ACM, July 2009.