2025-2026 Seminar Series
Upcoming Seminar
Speaker: Thomas Lew (Toyota Research Institute)
Title: Uncertainty-Aware Control at the Limits
Abstract: Expert drivers can reliably pilot vehicles at their performance limits, lap after lap, and despite changes in vehicle behavior due to tire temperature, wear, and weather conditions. Current planning and control algorithms still struggle in such settings. In this talk, I will present recent advances in uncertainty-aware control taking us one step closer to expert assistive driving systems: Bayesian information gathering methods for efficient data collection and adaptation, new tools for uncertainty-aware model predictive control (MPC), and a scalable GPU-accelerated differentiable MPC solver suitable for reinforcement learning. I will present drifting and racing results on high-performance cars, and discuss next steps toward scalable, differentiable, data-driven, and uncertainty-aware methods for reliably controlling systems at their limits.
Date: Thursday, February 19th, 2026
Time: 11:00-12:00 AM EST
Link: https://dartmouth.zoom.us/j/94765993258?pwd=aErnkjFBqQaOTEgonxZkeNTbojHRbp.1
Line-Up and Video Links
| Date | Speaker | Title | YouTube |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dec. 11, 2025 | Heng Yang | Semidefinite Relaxations for Robot Perception and Control: From Theory to Practice and Back | (link) |
| Jan. 15, 2026 | Anirudha Majumdar | Video World Models That Know When They Don't Know | (link) |
| Feb. 19, 2026 | Thomas Lew | Uncertainty-Aware Control at the Limits | |
| March 12, 2026 | Yan Gu | Topic coming soon | |
| April 9, 2026 | Somil Bansal | Topic coming soon |