Tarik Tosun

Welcome to my site!

I’m a roboticist and machine learning engineer, currently working as part of the Waymo ML Planner team in New York City.

Previously, I was a Research Scientist at the New York Samsung AI Center, where I worked on deep learning for robotic manipulation.

I did my Ph.D in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania with Mark Yim in ModLab, part of the GRASP Lab. During my Ph.D, I developed robots that can transform between different shapes (like a car, snake, or arm) and build structures.

Featured Research

Pixels to Plans

We present a novel method enabling robots to quickly learn to manipulate objects by leveraging a motion planner to generate “expert” training trajectories from a small amount of human-labeled data. In contrast to the traditional sense-plan-act cycle, we propose a deep learning architecture and training regimen called PtPNet that can ...

Autonomous Modular Robots

Science Robotics, 2018. The theoretical ability of modular robots to reconfigure in response to complex tasks in a priori unknown environments has frequently been cited as an advantage and remains a major motivator for work in the field. We present a modular robot system capable of autonomously completing high-level tasks by ...

Environment Augmentation with Modular Robots

Featured on IEEE Spectrum and TechCrunch! We present a system enabling a modular robot to autonomously build structures in order to accomplish high-level tasks. Building structures allows the robot to surmount large obstacles, expanding the set of tasks it can perform. This addresses a common weakness of modular robot systems, ...

SMORES-EP

SMORES-EP is a modular robot designed and built at the University of Pennsylvania, and used by researchers at Penn and Cornell. SMORES stands for Self-Assembling MOdular Robot for Extreme Shapeshifting, and EP refers to the Electro-Permanent magnets the modules use to connect ...