Alap Kshirsagar

Research Interests

Human-Robot Interaction, Robotic Manipulation, Tactile Perception, Robot Learning, Dynamic Motor-Skill Learning

Affiliations

TU Darmstadt, Intelligent Autonomous Systems, Computer Science Department

Contact

alap.kshirsagar@tu-darmstadt.de
Room E326, Building S2|02, TU Darmstadt, FB-Informatik, FG-IAS, Hochschulstr. 10, 64289 Darmstadt
+49-6151-16-25380

Alap Kshirsagar joined the Intelligent Autonomous Systems lab at TU Darmstadt in July 2022 as a postdoctoral researcher. Alap's research interests include Human-Robot Interaction, Robotic Manipulation, and Tactile Perception. Alap is currently part of the Adaptive Mind research cluster that brings together scientists from Cognitive Science, Experimental Psychology, Clinical Psychology and Artificial Intelligence in order to understand how the human mind successfully adapts to changing conditions, and what happens when these adaptive processes fail.

Alap received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at the Cornell University, USA in 2022. His thesis was titled "Robot Controllers, Gaze Behaviors and Human Motion Datasets for Object Handovers", and was supervised by Prof. Guy Hoffman. Before his Ph.D., Alap completed a Master's in Mechanical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras and a Bachelor's in Mechanical Engineering at IIT Bombay. He was a visiting student researcher at the University of California-Berkeley in 2016, Rheinisch-Westfalische Technische Hochschule Aachen in 2017 and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in 2020.

Key References

    •       Bib
      Hoffman, G.; Kshirsagar, A.; Law, M. V. (2022). Human-Robot Interaction Challenges in the Workplace, in: Matz, S. C. (eds.), The Psychology of Technology: Social Science Research in the Age of Big Data, APA.
    •       Bib
      Kshirsagar, A.; *Hoffman, G.; *Biess, A. (2021). Evaluating Guided Policy Search for Human-Robot Handovers, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, and IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), IEEE.
    •       Bib
      Kshirsagar, A.; Lim, M.; Christian, S.; Hoffman, G. (2020). Robot Gaze Behaviors in Human-to-Robot Handovers, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, and IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), IEEE.
    •       Bib
      Kshirsagar, A.; Kress-Gazit, H.; Hoffman, G. (2019). Specifying and Synthesizing Human-Robot Handovers, Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), IEEE.
    •       Bib
      Kshirsagar, A.; Dreyfuss, B.; Ishai, G.; Heffetz, O.; Hoffman G. (2019). Monetary-Incentive Competition between Humans and Robots: Experimental Results, Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), IEEE.

A complete list of my publications is available on my personal webpage.

Supervised Theses and Projects

YearTypeTogether withStudent(s)Topic
2024Master ThesisOliver HahnYasemin GöksuRobotic Pouring with Self-supervised Learning from Video Demonstrations
2024Master ThesisBoris BelousovFelix NonnengießerVisuotactile In-Hand Pose Estimation
2024Integrated Project : 1Kai PloegerMarcus Kornmann, Qimeng HeLearning to accurately throw Paper Planes using Reinforcement Learning
2024Integrated Project : 2Vignesh PrasadFabian HahneLanguage Conditioned Grasp Planning for Robot-to-Human Handovers
2024Bachelor ThesisBoris Belousov, Tim Schneider, Guillaume DuretDuc Huy NguyenSimulation of GelSight Tactile Sensors for Reinforcement Learning
2024Bachelor ThesisTim Schneider, Guillaume DuretFrederik HellerLearning Object Stress and Deformation With Graph Neural Networks
2023Integrated Project : 1Vignesh PrasadFabian HahneObject Perception For Human-to-Robot Handovers
2023Bachelor ThesisBoris Belousov, Tim SchneiderDominik HorstkötterInsertionNet for Autonomous Assembly of Self-Interlocking Blocks
2023Integrated Project : 2Boris Belousov, Tim SchneiderDuc Huy NguyenTacEx: A Library for Simulating Tactile Sensors in Isaac Orbit
2023Integrated Project : 2Vignesh PrasadYasemin Göksu, Antonio De Almeida CorreiaKinematically Constrained Humanlike Bimanual Robot Handovers
2022Master ThesisDorothea KoertLi LiuRobot Gaze for Communicating Collision Avoidance Intent in Shared Workspaces
2022Bachelor ThesisTim Schneider, Boris BelousovAlina BoehmActive Exploration for Tactile Texture Perception
2022Integrated Project : 1Tim Schneider, Boris BelousovIrina Rath, Dominik HorstkötterShape Exploration and Classification using Tactile Sensing
2022Integrated Project : 1Julen Urain De JesusHanjo Schnellbächer, Christoph DickmannsSE(3) Diffusion Fields Enabled Bi-Manual Grasps
2022Integrated Project : 1Boris Belousov, Tim SchneiderDuc Huy Nguyen, Ruben SpariSimulation of Vision-based Tactile Sensors
2022Integrated Project : 1Firas Al-HafezZeyuan SunCharacterizing Fear-induced Adaptation of Balance by Inverse Reinforcement Learning
2022Integrated Project : 1Boris Belousov, Tim SchneiderMario Gomez, Frederik HellerObject Hardness Classification and Similarity Detection Using a Vision-Based Tactile Sensor
2022Integrated Project : 1Vignesh PrasadYasemin Göksu, Antonio De Almeida CorreiaKinematically Constrained Humanlike Bimanual Robot Handovers