Robert Platt

Robert Platt is an Associate Professor at Northeastern University's Khoury College of Computer Sciences, affiliated with the College of Engineering's Mechanical and Industrial Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering departments. His research focuses on perception, planning, and control algorithms for robots operating in unstructured environments, particularly in human-centric settings. He leads the Helping Hands Lab, advancing technologies for safe human-robot interaction and contact-rich manipulation. Platt has secured significant grants, including a $750K NSF grant for robotic arm development and an NSF CAREER Award. He advises numerous PhD students and collaborates on projects like Amazon's MARS conference and the Autotrans autonomous transportation system.

Key research interests include robotic manipulation, equivariant learning, reinforcement learning, and human-robot collaboration. His work emphasizes symmetry exploitation in algorithms to enhance policy robustness and generalization. Notable contributions include the development of SE(3)-equivariant grasp learning, Fourier Transporter networks for 3D manipulation, and the ThinkGrasp vision-language system for strategic grasping in cluttered environments.

• Grants: NSF CAREER Award (2018), $750K NSF Grant for Contact-Rich Manipulation (2018)
• Awards: NSF CAREER Award
• Students: Advises Ahmed Agha, Haojie Huang, Dian Wang, and others in advanced robotics topics
• Lab: Helping Hands Lab explores algorithms for real-world robotic applications
• Collaborations: Amazon MARS Conference, Autotrans Project