Abstract:

Robots that operate reliably in the real world must reason about forces, not just positions. I will present a robotics architecture designed around force intelligence—the ability to decide when, where, and how much force to apply. I will show how this perspective unifies whole-body control and dexterous manipulation, and argue that force-centric design is a key missing ingredient for scalable real-world autonomy.

Bio:

Pulkit Agrawal is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. He earned his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley and co-founded Eka Robotics and SafelyYou. Pulkit completed his bachelor’s from IIT Kanpur and was awarded the Director’s Gold Medal. His work has received multiple Best Paper Awards, the IEEE Early Career Award in Robotics and Automation, the IROS Toshio Fukuda Young Professional Award, the IIT Kanpur Young Alumnus Award, the Sony Faculty Research Award, the Salesforce Research Award, the Amazon Research Award, the Signatures Fellow Award, and the Fulbright Science and Technology Award.