Research Activities:

• I am currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, expecting to graduate Spring/Summer 2004.

• I work principally with Sebastian Thrun and Geoff Gordon, as part of the Robot Learning Lab.

• Most of my days are spent trying to solve ever-larger POMDPs.
  - If you don't know what is a POMDP, try Tony Cassandra's excellent POMDP page.

• Research Phase I:
  - I developed a hierarchical POMDP planning and execution algorithm that exploits structure in the problem domain to facilitate POMDP planning.
  - This hierarchical algorithm was used to perform high-level control and dialogue modelling onboard a robotic nursing-assistant robot named Pearl (see model parameters for this problem).
  - We took Pearl to an assisted-living facility to test the POMDP dialogue manager with elderly residents (see video footage of elderly residents interacting with the robot).

• Research Phase II:
  - I developed the Point-Based Value Iteration (PBVI) algorithm, which selects point samples from the belief simplex and performs value iteration updates over these points only.
  - This algorithm has been used to solve a robotic laser-tag planning problem with 870 states (see model parameters for this problem).
  - Recent extensions on this work include using metric-trees to organize belief points, and as a result accelerate value updates.

Publications:

• See relevant publications and talks on my research.

• Curriculum vitae: [.ps] [.pdf]
• Research statement: [.ps] [.pdf]
• Teaching statement: [.ps] [.pdf]

Contact Information:

Address::
Smith Hall 221, Robotics Institute, CMU
5000 Forbes Ave
Pittsburgh PA 15213

Phone: 412-268-4857

Fax: 412-268-5571

Email: jpineau [at] cs [dot] cmu [dot] edu