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Alberto Rodriguez

Contact Info

room

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

77 Massachusetts Avenue

Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139

Administrative Contact Maxwell, Lisa 5-207 617.253.9709

Education

  • 2013

    CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY

    Ph.D Robotics
  • 2006

    Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya

    Degree in Telecommunications Engineering
  • 2005

    Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya

    Degree in Mathematics

Research Interests

  • Autonomous robotic manipulation.
  • Dexterous Manipulation and Grasping.
  • End-effector design.
  • Automation.

Bio

Alberto is the Class of 1957 Associate Professor at the Mechanical Engineering Department at MIT, and leads the Manipulation and Mechanisms Lab at MIT (MCube) researching autonomous robotic dexterous manipulation. He is also the Associate Head of House at MIT's Sidney-Pacific graduate dorm, where he lives with his family. Alberto graduated in Mathematics ('05) and Telecommunication Engineering ('06) from the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya and earned his PhD (’13) from the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. Alberto has received Best Paper Awards from conferences RSS’11, ICRA’13, RSS’18, IROS'18, RSS'19, ICRA'21 and ICRA'22, as well as the 2020 IEEE Transactions on Robotics King-Sun Fu Memorial Best Paper Award. He has also been finalist for best paper awards at IROS’16, IROS'18, ICRA'20, RSS'20, and ICRA'21. He has led Team MIT-Princeton in the Amazon Robotics Challenge between 2015 and 2017. He has received Faculty Research Awards from Amazon and Google, and is the recipient of the 2020 IEEE Early Academic Career Award in Robotics and Automation.

 

Honors + Awards

Professional Service

  • 2022-present, member of advisory board at RSS
  • 2021-present, member of CESAR: IEEE Committee to Explore Synergies in Automation and Robotics
  • 2021-present, RSS Sponsorhip chair
  • 2020, Co-created "Robotics Today", an open series of technical talks in robotics.
  • 2020-19, RSS Area chair for manipulation.

MIT Service

  • 2021, MIT, Re-imagining Public Safety at MIT Working Group.
  • 2021, MIT, MechE, General Faculty Search committee.
  • 2020, MIT, MechE, Committee Strategic Integration of Data Science in Mechanical Engineering.
  • 2020, MIT Team 2020, evaluating MIT’s options for the Fall semester.
  • 2018-present, Lead MIT Robotics Seminar
  • 2016-present, Associate Head of House, Sidney-Pacific, MIT
  • 2013-present, MechE Graduate Admissions Committee
  • 2016-17, Controls and Dynamics Curriculum Revision Committee, MechE, MIT

Teaching

  • 2.003 Dynamics and Controls I
  • 2.12 Introduction to Robotics

Publications

MCube Lab publications page

 

Patents

  • 2022 Jul, (pending) "Robotic Grippers", US20220105642-A1
  • 2024 Jan, (issued) "Tactile Dexterity and Control", US20210146532-A1, US11878415-B2, WO2021097166-A1
  • 2022 Feb, (issued) "Robotic Manipulation of Objects using External Contacts", US20200055152-A1, WO2020041120-A1
  • 2022 Feb, (issued) "Robotic Manipulation of Objects for Grip Adjustment", US20200055680-A1, WO2020041117-A1
  • 2017 Nov, (issued) "Two-Phase Gripper to Reorient and Grasp", US9808936-B2
  • 2014 Oct, (issued) "Method and Apparatus for Using Post Assembly Process Interaction Signatures to Detect Assembly Failures", WO2014160760-A3, CN105229548-A