I am broadly interested in the areas of Embodied Artificial Intelligence. My general interest lies in developing algorithmic formulations under real-world constraints, that are capable of synthesizing complex behaviors on physical hardware.

Biological designs are a result of years of evolution. They are effective, efficient and conceal within themselves enormous wisdom -- mechanical as well as intellectual. Complex movements exhibited by the animal kingdom is a result of a tightly integrated system of bio-muscular structures and fast reactive motor control. If artificial counterparts are to exhibit comparable behaviors, the solution is likely to be situated at the intersection of mechanism and computation. I use tools from reinforcement learning, robotics, optimal control, and optimization to reason at the intersection of mechanisms and algorithms to design robust sample-efficient techniques that scale beyond human level dexterity and agility, as well as succeed on the physical hardware.


Publications

2024

Open X-Embodiment: Robotic Learning Datasets and RT-X Models

Open X-Embodiment Collaboration
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2024
IEEE ICRA BEST PAPER AWARD
webpage

Semantically Controllable Augmentations for Generalizable Robot Learning

Zoey Chen, Zhao Mandi, Homanga Bharadhwaj, Mohit Sharma, Shuran Song, Abhishek Gupta, Vikash Kumar
International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR) 2024
Arxiv

HOPMan: Towards generalizable zero-shot manipulation via translating human interaction plans

Homanga Bharadhwaj, {Abhinav Gupta*, Vikash Kumar*, Shubham Tulsiani*}
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2024
IEEE ICRA Best Paper Award in Robot Manipulation Finalist
webpage

RoboAgent: Generalization and efficiency in robot manipulation via semantic augmentations and action chunking

Homanga Bharadhwaj, Jay Vakil, Mohit Sharma, Abhinav Gupta, Shubham Tulsiani, Vikash Kumar
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2024
Robot Learning Workshop - CoRL 2023 | Outstanding Presentation Award
webpage

RoboHive: A Unified Framework for Robot Learning

Vikash Kumar, Rutav Shah, Gaoyue Zhou, Vincent Moens, Vittorio Caggiano, Abhishek Gupta, Aravind Rajeswaran
Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) 2023
webpage

D'Manus: All the Feels - a dexterous hand with large area sensing

Raunaq Bhirangi, Abigail DeFranco, Jacob Adkins, Carmel Majidi, Abhinav Gupta, Tess Hellebrekers, Vikash Kumar
IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RAL) 2023,
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2024
webpage

MoDem-V2: Visuo-Motor World Models for Real-World Robot Manipulation

Patrick Lancaster, Nicklas Hansen, Aravind Rajeswaran, Vikash Kumar
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2024
webpage

TorchRL: A data-driven decision-making library for PyTorch

Albert Bou, Matteo Bettini, Sebastian Dittert, Vikash Kumar, Shagun Sodhani, Xiaomeng Yang, Gianni De Fabritiis, Vincent Moens
International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) 2024
webpage

2023

MyoDex: Generalizable Representations for Dexterous Physiological Manipulation

Vittorio Caggiano, Sudeep Dasari, Vikash Kumar
International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) 2023
webpage

Natural and Robust Walking using Reinforcement Learning without Demonstrations in High-Dimensional Musculoskeletal Models

Pierre Schumacher, Thomas Geijtenbeek, Vittorio Caggiano, Vikash Kumar, Syn Schmitt, Georg Martius, Daniel Häufle
Under Review
webpage

LIV: Language-Image Representations and Rewards for Robotic Control

Jason Ma, Vikash Kumar, Amy Zhang, Osbert Bastani, Dinesh Jayaraman
International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) 2023
webpage

SAR: Generalization of Dexterity via Synergistic Action Representation

Cameron Berg, Vittorio Caggiano, Vikash Kumar
Proceedings of Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS) 2023
webpage

ACT: Learning Fine-Grained Bimanual Manipulation with Low-Cost Hardware

Tony Zhao, Vikash Kumar, Sergey Levine, Chelsea Finn
Proceedings of Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS) 2023
webpage

Visual Dexterity: In-hand Dexterous Manipulation from Depth

Tao Chen, Megha Tippur, Siyang Wu, Vikash Kumar, Edward Adelson, Pulkit Agrawal
Published in Science Robotics
webpage

GenAug: Retargeting behaviors to unseen situations via Generative Augmentation

Zoey Chen, Sho Kiami, Abhishek Gupta, Vikash Kumar
Proceedings of Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS) 2023
RSS Best Paper Award Finalist
webpage

H2R: Zero-Shot Robot Manipulation from Passive Human Videos

Homanga Bharadhwaj, Abhinav Gupta, {Shubham Tulsiani*, Vikash Kumar*}
Pretraining for Robotics workshopat icra 2023
webpage

Dexterous Manipulation from Images: Autonomous Real-World RL via Substep Guidance

Kelvin Xu, Zheyuan Hu, Ria Doshi, Aaron Rovinsky, Vikash Kumar, Abhishek Gupta, Sergey Levine
International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2023
webpage

MoDem: Accelerating Visual Model-Based Reinforcement Learning with Demonstrations

Nicklas Hansen, Yixin Lin, Hao Su, Xiaolong Wang, Vikash Kumar, Aravind Rajeswaran
International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) 2023
webpage

Reboot: Reuse data for bootstrapping efficient real-world dexterous manipulation

Zheyuan Hu, Aaron Rovinsky, Jianlan Luo, Vikash Kumar, Abhishek Gupta, Sergey Levine
Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL), 2023
webpage

Real World Offline Reinforcement Learning with Realistic Data Source

Gaoyue Zhou*, Liyiming Ke*, Siddhartha Srinivasa, Abhinav Gupta, Aravind Rajeswaran, Vikash Kumar
International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2023
webpage

VIP: Towards Universal Visual Reward and Representation via Value-Implicit Pre-Training

Jason Ma, Shagun Sodhani, Dinesh Jayaraman, Osbert Bastani, {Vikash Kumar*, Amy Zhang*}
International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) 2023
webpage

Learning Dexterous Manipulation from Exemplar Object Trajectories and Pre-Grasps

Sudeep Dasari, Abhinav Gupta, Vikash Kumar
International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2023
webpage

2022

CACTI: A Framework for Scalable Multi-Task Multi-Scene Visual Imitation Learning

Zhao Mandi, Homanga Bharadhwaj, Vincent Moens, Shuran Song, Aravind Rajeswaran, Vikash Kumar
Workshop on Pre-training Robot Learning, CORL 2022
webpage

Translating Robot Skills: Learning Unsupervised Skill Correspondences Across Robots

T Shankar, Y Lin, A Rajeswaran, V Kumar, S Anderson, J Oh
International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) 2022
webpage

Cross-Domain Transfer via Semantic Skill Imitation

Karl Pertsch, Ruta Desai, Vikash Kumar, Franziska Meier, Joseph J. Lim, Dhruv Batra, Akshara Rai
Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL), 2022
webpage

Curiosity Driven Self-supervised Tactile Exploration of Unknown Objects

Jianren Wang*, Yujie Lu*, Vikash Kumar,
webpage

R3M: A Universal Visual Representation for Robot Manipulation

Suraj Nair, Aravind Rajeswaran, Vikash Kumar, Chelsea Finn, Abhinav Gupta
Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL) 2022
Scaling Robot Learning Workshop - ICRA 2022 | Best Paper Award
webpage

Can Foundation Models Perform Zero-Shot Task Specification For Robot Manipulation?

Yuchen Cui, Scott Niekum, Abhinav Gupta, Vikash Kumar and Aravind Rajeswaran
Learning for Decision and Control (L4DC) 2022
Scaling Robot Learning Workshop - RSS 2022 | Best Paper Award Finalist
webpage

RRL: Resnet as representation for Reinforcement Learning

Rutav Shah, Vikash Kumar
International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) 2021
webpage

MyoChallenge 2022: Learning contact-rich manipulation using a musculoskeletal hand

Vittorio Caggiano, Guillaume Durandau, Huwawei Wang, Alberto Chiappa, Alexander Mathis, Pablo Tano, Nisheet Patel, Alexandre Pouget, Pierre Schumacher, Georg Martius, Daniel Haeufle, Yiran Geng, Boshi An, Yifan Zhong, Jiaming Ji, Yuanpei Chen, Hao Dong, Yaodong Yang, Rahul Siripurapu, Luis Eduardo Ferro Diez, Michael Kopp, Vihang Patil, Sepp Hochreiter, Yuval Tassa, Josh Merel, Randy Schultheis, Seungmoon Song, Massimo Sartori, Vikash Kumar
Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), Dataset & benchmark track 2022
webpage

Benchmarks

MyoSuite: A contact-rich simulation suite for musculoskeletal motor control

Learning for Decision and Control (L4DC) 2022

MyoSim: A contact-rich simulation suite for musculoskeletal motor control

International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2022
Vittorio Caggiano, Huawei Wang, Guillaume Durandau, Massimo Sartori, Vikash Kumar
webpage

RB2: Robotic Manipulation Benchmarking with a Twist

Sudeep Dasari, Jianren Wang, Joyce Hong, Shikhar Bahl, Yixin Lin, Austin Wang, Abitha Thankaraj, Karanbir Chahal, Berk Calli, Saurabh Gupta, David Held, Lerrel Pinto, Deepak Pathak, Vikash Kumar, Abhinav Gupta
NeurIPS, Datasets and Benchmarks Track, 2021
webpage

Benchmarking In-Hand Manipulation

Silvia Cruciani, Balakumar Sundaralingam, Kaiyu Hang, Vikash Kumar, Tucker Hermans, Danica Kragic
IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RAL) 2020
Special Issue: Benchmarking Protocols for Robotic Manipulation
webpage

ROBEL: RObotics BEnchmarks for Learning

Michael Ahn, Henry Zhu, Kristian Hartikainen, Hugo Ponte, Abhishek Gupta, Sergey Levine, Vikash Kumar
Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL) 2019
webpage

Multi-Goal Reinforcement Learning: Challenging Robotics Environments and Request for Research

Matthias Plappert, Marcin Andrychowicz, Alex Ray, Bob McGrew, Bowen Baker, Glenn Powell, Jonas Schneider, Josh Tobin, Maciek Chociej, Peter Welinder, Vikash Kumar, Wojciech Zaremba
Teach Report 2018
Paper, Movie, webpage, arxiv

Behavior Synthesis

Reset-Free Reinforcement Learning via Multi-Task Learning:
Learning Dexterous Manipulation Behaviors without Human Intervention

Abhishek Gupta*, Justin Yu*, Tony Z. Zhao*, Vikash Kumar*, Aaron Rovinsky, Kelvin Xu, Thomas Devlin, Sergey Levine
International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2021
webpage

A Game Theoretic Framework for Model-Based Reinforcement Learning

Aravind Rajeswaran, Igor Mordatch, Vikash Kumar
International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) 2020
webpage

Emergent Real-World Robotic Skills via Unsupervised Reinforcement Learning

Archit Sharma, Michael Ahn, Sergey Levine, Vikash Kumar, Karol Hausman, Shixiang Gu
Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS), 2020
webpage

Time Reversal as Self-Supervision

Suraj Nair, Mohammad Babaeizadeh, Chelsea Finn, Sergey Levine, Vikash Kumar
International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2020
webpage

The Ingredients of Real World Robotic Reinforcement Learning

Henry Zhu, Justin Yu, Abhishek Gupta, Dhruv Shah, Kristian Hartikainen, Avi Singh, Vikash Kumar, Sergey Levine
International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) 2020
webpage

Dynamics-Aware Unsupervised Discovery of Skills

Archit Sharma, Shixiang Gu, Sergey Levine, Vikash Kumar, Karol Hausman
International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) 2020
webpage

Deep Dynamics Models for Learning Dexterous Manipulation

Anusha Nagabandi, Kurt Konolige, Sergey Levine, Vikash Kumar
Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL) 2019
webpage

Multi-Agent Manipulation via Locomotion using Hierarchical Sim2Real

Ofir Nachum, Michael Ahn, Hugo Ponte, Shane Gu, Vikash Kumar
Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL) 2019
webpage

Relay Policy Learning: Solving Long-Horizon Tasks via Imitation and Reinforcement Learning

Abhishek Gupta, Vikash Kumar, Corey Lynch, Sergey Levine, Karol Hausman
Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL) 2019
webpage,

Learning Latent Plans from Play

Corey Lynch, Mohi Khansari, Ted Xiao, Vikash Kumar, Jonathan Tompson, Sergey Levine, Pierre Sermanet
Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL) 2019
webpage

Dexterous Manipulation with Deep Reinforcement Learning:Efficient, General, and Low-Cost

Henry Zhu*, Abhishek Gupta*, Aravind Rajeswaran, Sergey Levine, Vikash Kumar
International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2019
webpage

Learning Deep Visuomotor Policies for Dexterous Hand Manipulation

Divye Jain, Andrew Li, Shivam Singhal, Aravind Rajeswaran, Vikash Kumar, Emanuel Todorov
International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2019
webpage

Learning Complex Dexterous Manipulation with Deep Reinforcement Learning and Demonstrations

DAPG: Demo Augmented Policy Gradient

Vikash Kumar*, Aravind Rajeshwaran*, Abhiskek Gupta, John Schulman, Emanuel Todorov, and Sergey Levine
Proceedings of Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS) 2018
Paper, suppliment, Movie, webpage, arxiv

Divide-and-Conquer Reinforcement Learning

Dibya Ghosh, Avi Singh, Aravind Rajeswaran, Vikash Kumar, Sergey Levine
International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) 2018
Paper, Movie, webpage, arxiv, OpenReview

Variance Reduction for Policy Gradient with Action-dependent Baseline

Cathy Wu, Aravind Rajeswaran, Yan Duan, Vikash Kumar, Alexandre M Bayen, Sham Kakade, Igor Mordatch, Pieter Abbeel
International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) 2018
webpage

Learning Dexterous Manipulation Policies from Experience and Imitation

Vikash Kumar, Abhiskek Gupta, Emanuel Todorov, and Sergey Levine
Paper, Movie

BEST MANIPULATION PAPER AWARD

Optimal Control with Learned Local Models: Application to Dexterous Manipulation

Vikash Kumar, Emanuel Todorov, and Sergey Levine
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2016
Paper, Movie

Real-time behaviour synthesis for dynamic Hand-Manipulation

Vikash Kumar, Yuval Tassa, Tom Erez and Emanuel Todorov
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2014
Paper, Movie
webpage

An integrated system for real-time Model Predictive Control of humanoid robots

Tom Erez, Kendall Lowrey, Yuval Tassa, Vikash Kumar, Svetoslav Kolev, Emanuel Todorov
Humanoids 2013
Paper, Overview, Dynamics look at Dynamic walking Dynamic tracking

Synthesis of Complex Behaviors with Optimal Control

Todorov Emanuel, Tassa Yuval, Erez Tom, Mordatch Igor, Kulchenko Paul, Kumar Vikash
Computational and Systems Neuroscience (COSYNE) 2013
Abstract, Movie
Virtual reality

MuJoCo HAPTIX: A Virtual Reality System for Hand Manipulation

Vikash Kumar and Emanuel Todorov
IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots 2015
Paper, Movie

Tracking & calibration

Precise Calibration of Robots with small link lengths using Kinematic Extensions

Visak Chadalavada, Vikash Kumar
Paper, Movie

STAC: Simultaneous Tracking and Calibration

Tingfan Wu, Yuval Tassa, Vikash Kumar, Javier Movellan, Emanuel Todorov
Humanoids 2013
Paper, Movie

Robot design

A Low-cost and Modular, 20-DOF Anthropomorphic Robotic Hand: Design, Actuation and Modeling

Zhe Xu, Vikash Kumar, Emanuel Todorov
Humanoids 2013
Paper, Movie
webpage

Fast, strong and compliant pneumatic actuation for dexterous tendon-driven hands

Kumar Vikash, Todorov Emanuel
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2013
Paper, Movie
webpage

Design of an anthropomorphic robotic finger system with biomimetic artificial joints

Zhe Xhe, Kumar Vikash, Matsuoka Yoki, Todorov Emanuel
IEEE International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics (BioRob) 2012
Paper, Movie
webpage

Self and Mutual learning in Robotic Arm, based on Cognitive systems

Kumar Vikash, Patil Chetan, Sachan Sachan
International MultiConference of Engineers and Computer Scientists 2010
Best Paper Award Finalist
Paper, Movie

Manuscripts

High performance pneumatics using Model Predictive Control

Vikash Kumar, Visak CV, Emanuel Todorov
Paper

Optimizing fuzzy multi-objective problems using fuzzy genetic algorithms and FZDT test functions

Kumar Vikash, Chakroborty Debjani
Paper

The UW Hand: A Low-cost, 20-DOF Tendon-driven Hand with Fast and Compliant Actuation

Zhe X, Kumar V, Todorov E.
Paper, Movie,