News

2024

April 4 - GRAB Lab PhD Student Josh Grace was awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Congrats, Josh!

2023

Aug 1 - Long-time GRAB Lab graduate student Sam Noh was awarded Second Place in the ASME Student Mechanism and Robotics Design Competition for his legged robot design.

March 3 - Andrew Morgan successfully defended his dissertation today. Way to go, Andy!

2022

May 17 - PhD Student Andrew Morgan was selected to attend the RSS Pioneers Workshop. Congrats, Andy!

April 6 - GRAB Lab PhD Student Hector Castillo was awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Congrats, Hector!

2021

December 18 - One of our papers was selected as a Top 5 Editor's Pick from Science Robotics (IF 23.75) for 2021! Congrats to Hang and the other authors!

December 17 - Walter Bircher successfully defended his dissertation today. Way to go, Walter!

April 29 - Michael Leddy successfully defended his dissertation today. Congratulations Mike!

April 1 - Two papers from the lab were accepted into Science Robotics, for a special issue on Robot Manipulation. Congratulations to Walter, Hang, and Andrew!

March 11 - Yuri Gloumakov successfully defended his dissertation today. Congratulations Yuri!

2020

May 1 - GRABLab Postdoc Kaiyu Hang has accepted a tenure-track faculty job at Rice University, and will start next summer. Congrats, Hang!

April 15 - The GRABLab-led special issue in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters on Benchmarking Robotics Grasping and Manipulation has been published, with the papers accessible here

March 30 - Former GRABLab Postdoc/Scientist Adam Spiers has accepted a tenure-track faculty job at Imperial College, London, and will start this summer. Congrats, Ad!

March 3 - GRAB Lab welcomed its newest member, a Mr. Coffee Café Barista Espresso Machine!

2019

July 1 - Professor Dollar has officially been promoted to Full Professor!

April 12 - GRAB Lab PhD Student Andrew Morgan was awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Congrats, Andy!

March 30 - A paper led by GRAB Lab Postdoc Kaiyu Hang was selected as a finalist for Best Manipulation Paper at ICRA 2019. Congrats, Hang!

March 26 - Former GRAB Lab Postdoc Julia Borras Sol has been granted a permanent faculty position at IRI Barcelona, likely the top Robotics Research Institute in Spain. Congrats and Good Luck, Julia!

Feb. 24 - Prof. Dollar and the GRAB Lab were featured in a six-page spread in the Yale Alumni Magazine.

Feb. 1 - The Call for Papers for a GRAB Lab-led Special Issue on Benchmarking for Robotic Grasping and Manipulation in the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters Journal has been released.

Jan. 31 - All 7 GRAB Lab submissions to ICRA 2019 were accepted (statistically a 0.3% chance for seven submissions, which is itself impressive). Congrats, to all the authors!!!!!

2018

Dec. 1 - A $2M proposal led by Prof. Dollar on muscle-inspired modular soft robots was funded by the National Science Foundation. Congrats to the whole team, which includes Tom Roberts (Brown), Josh Smith (U. Washington), and Jeff Trinkle (RPI)!

Aug. 1 - Recent GRAB Lab Postdoc Berk Calli began his new job as Assistant Professor in Computer Science at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). Congrats and Good Luck, Berk!

July 1 - Former GRAB Lab Assoc. Research Scientist Ravi Balasubramanian was granted tenure at Oregon State University. Congrats and well-deserved, Ravi!

May 21 - Long-time GRAB Lab undergrad researcher Connor McCann was award the McCrosky Prize for top graduating Mechanical Engineering student at Yale. Congrats, Connor!

March 15 - A paper led by GRAB Lab Postdoc Berk Calli was selected as a finalist for Best Manipulation Paper at ICRA 2018. Congrats, Berk!

2017

Aug 1 - Long-time GRAB Lab undergrad researcher Connor McCann was awarded Second Place in the ASME Student Mechanism and Robotics Design Competition for his work on the "Stewart Hand".

May 20 - Long-time GRAB Lab undergrad researcher Connor McCann was award the Belle and Carl Morse Junior Prize for most outstanding scholarship by a Junior Engineering Student (all disciplines) at Yale. Congrats, Connor!

March 15 - A paper led by GRAB Lab PhD student Walter Bircher was selected as a finalist for Best Manipulation Paper at ICRA 2017. Congrats, Walter!

Feb. 17 - GRAB Lab PhD Recipients Raymond Ma and Spencer Backus start their new jobs as Mechanical Engineers at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Congrats, Ray and Spencer!

Jan. 1 - GRAB Lab Postoc Minas Liarokapis starts his new job as a Lecturer (Assistant Professor equivalent) in the Dept. of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Congrats, Minas!

2016

Dec. 15 - Former GRAB Lab Postoc Nicolas Rojas moved to a new job as a Lecturer (Assistant Professor equivalent) at Imperial College, London. Congrats, Nico!

Sept. 30 - Prof. Dollar has been named as Outstanding Junior Alumnus of the Univ. of Massachusetts at Amherst College of Engineering.

Aug. 27 - Ian Bullock and Raymond Ma successfully defended their dissertations today in a back-to-back marathon. Congratulations to both!

Aug. 1 - PhD student Joseph Belter was selected as a finalist for Best Student Paper at the 2016 IEEE BioRob Conference. Congrats, Joe!

Jan. 1 - GRAB Lab Postoc Nicolas Rojas starts his new job as a Lecturer (Assistant Professor equivalent) of Mechatronics at the University of Sussex (UK). Congrats, Nico!

2015

Nov. 15 - GRAB Lab Postdoc Thomas Feix starts his new job as a Research Engineer for the Adidas Future Team, focusing on manufacturing for customization. Exciting!

July 21 - GRAB Lab PhD Student Raymond Ma won Best Student Paper at the IEEE/IFToMM International Conference on Reconfigurable Mechanisms and Robotics (ReMAR). Congrats Ray!

July 1 - GRAB Lab Associate Research Scientist John Swensen begins his new job as Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Washington State University today. Congrats John!

June 30 - GRAB Lab Postdoc Adam Spiers won the Best Work in Progress Award at the World Haptics Conference for his work on haptic navigation. Congrats Ad!

June 13 - GRAB Lab members Ian Bullock and Thomas Feix won Best Poster at the Observing and Understanding Hands in Action Workshop (Hands 2015), at the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference (CVPR). Congrats Ian and Thomas!

May 27 - In a collaboration with Sidd Srinivasa (CMU) and Pieter Abbeel (Berkeley), we have released the Yale-CMU-Berkely (YCB) object and model set to assist with benchmarking and performance comparison in robotic manipulation research.

2014

Dec. 2 - The lab has released the Yale Human Grasping Dataset consisting of tagged video and image data of 28 hours of human grasping movements in unstructured environments.

Sept. 29 - GRAB Lab PhD Student Hari Vasudevan successfully defended his dissertation today - Congrats Hari, and good luck at Apple!

Aug. 20 - GRAB Lab PhD Student Joseph Belter won First Prize in the ASME Graduate Mechanism Design Competition - congratulations to Joe!

Aug. 4 - GRAB Lab PhD Student Kamran Shamaei successfully defended his dissertation today - Congrats Kamran, and good luck on your postdoc at Stanford!

July 15 - Prof. Dollar has received the NASA Early Career Faculty award - Congrats!

May 15 - RightHandRobotics - The lab has spun off a company along with folks from Rob Howe's lab at Harvard. Good luck to Lael, Leif, and Yaro!

2013

Dec. 10 - Prof. Dollar has been promoted to Associate Professor - great news!

Oct. 15 - Hari's paper entitled Energy-based limit cycle compensation for dynamically balancing wheeled inverted pendulum machines is a finalist for Best Student Paper at the 2013 ASME Dynamic Systems and Control Conference. Great work, Hari!

Sept. 28 - The teams from the DARPA Robotics Challenge have received their ATLAS Humanoid Robots, complete with iHY Hands developed jointly between our lab, iRobot, and Harvard. Check out one teams documentation of trying out the ATLAS robot for the first time, with a few shots of the hands (ours are on the right arm).

Aug. 8 - Prof. Dollar has been awarded the 2013 DARPA Young Faculty Award.

Aug. 6 - PhD Student Kamran Shamaei took First Place in the ASME Student Robot Design Competition, Graduate Division. Congrats Kamran!

June 6 - The final version of our hand produced for the DARPA ARM-H program, produced with iRobot and Harvard, was featured in CNN's Outfront with Erin Burnett.

May 1 - Our paper entitled Finding Small, Versatile Sets of Human Grasps to Span Common Objects is a finalist for Best Manipulation Paper at the 2013 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation. Congrats to Ian and the other authors!

Nov. 15 - One of our Hands, produced with iRobot and Harvard, is featured in the IEEE Spectrum Robotics Blog.

Oct. 4 - Prof. Dollar has been named to the John J. Lee endowed Junior Faculty Chair, the only endowed Junior chair in Engineering, and one of only a few in the whole University. Congrats!

July 31 - The patent for the work involving the SDM Hand that Prof. Dollar did as a PhD Student at Harvard has been issued.

June 19 - The GRAB Lab, teaming with Harvard University and iRobot Corp., have been selected as the top performer in the DARPA Autonomous Robotic Manipulation program, Harware Track, and will be supplying their hands to the winners of the ARM Software Track as well as the GFE Hardware for the DARPA Robotics Challenge. Huge success!

Feb 17 - Paul Pounds has begun his job as Lecturer (Aussie version of Assistant Professor) in Mechatronics at the School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, University of Queensland. Congrats Paul!

July 8 - Ravi Balasubramanian has accepted a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in Mechanical Engineering at Oregon State University. Congrats Ravi!

June 25 - All three GRAB Lab submissions for IROS 2011 were accepted. Congrats to the authors!

June 2 - Prof. Dollar has been selected to give one of the two yearly "Early Career Spotlight" invited talks at the 2011 Robotics: Science and Systems Conference.

May 23 - Gavrail Tatarliev, a senior MechE student who did his senior thesis in the GRAB Lab received both the Henry Prentiss Becton prize for the top graduating senior in all of Engineering, as well as the McCrosky Prize for the top Mechanical Engineering Senior. Congrats, Gabe!

March 3 - The GRAB Lab's four submissions to the 2011 International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics were all accepted. Congrats to all of the authors!

Jan. 7 - All seven GRAB Lab submissions to the 2011 International Conference on Robotics and Automation were accepted. With less than 50% acceptance rate, this is quite the accomplishment. Congrats to all of the authors!

Oct. 28 - Professor Dollar has been awarded the 2011 Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Award.

Oct. 27 - Our fabrication methods for building robotic hands has been featured on a 3-page 'Demo' article in the Nov/Dec issue of Technology Review Magazine

Aug. 30 - Our work towards grasping and manipulation from an aerial platform, dubbed the Yale Aerial Manipulator, has been covered by Technology Review, Popular Science, and Engadget, among others.

Aug. 25 - Prof. Dollar was named one of Technology Review's TR35, with work by GRAB Lab student Joseph Belter featured on the cover of the Sept/Oct Issue.

Aug. 6 - GRAB Lab PhD student Dan Bersak received a scholarship to attend the CT Space Grant Helicopter Workshop.

May 25 - GRAB Lab Undergraduate Greg Brown received the Donald Warren McCrosky Memorial Prize for "greatest distinction for scholarly achievement in fields related to mechanics and its applications", based partly on his research in the lab.

Aug. 6 - GRAB Lab PhD student Dan Bersak received a scholarship to attend the CT Space Grant Helicopter Workshop.

May 25 - GRAB Lab Undergraduate Greg Brown received the Donald Warren McCrosky Memorial Prize for "greatest distinction for scholarly achievement in fields related to mechanics and its applications", based partly on his research in the lab.

April 6 - GRAB Lab PhD student Joseph Belter has received an Honorable Mention for the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program. Congrats, Joe!

April 2 - Two GRAB Lab papers were accepted to the ASME IDETC Mechanisms and Robotics Conference - Ravi's paper entitled "External Disturbances and Coupling Mechanisms in Underactuated Hands" and Lael's paper "Fast, accurate models for predicting the compliance of elastic flexure-jointed robots."

March 27 - The GRAB Lab co-hosted 250 students and parents for a Robotics Workshop organized through the Center for Talented Youth.

Feb. 18 - Prof. Dollar has received the 2010 NSF CAREER Award, its "most prestigious award in support of junior faculty". Only a few percent of recipients receive the award in their first year of eligibility. Congrats!

Dec. 29 - Technology Review featured work from our lab in their Year in Robotics article.

Oct. 6 - DesignBoom featured the SDM Hand on their site.

Sept. 28 - Technology Review ran an in-depth article on the SDM hand.

The Harvard Crimson featured the SDM Hand in its Sept. 25 issue.

Sept. 2 - The SDM Hand has been officially licensed to Barrett Technology, who plans to have a product available sometime in 2011.

May 6 - The final project contest for Prof. Dollar's Mechanical Design Course is featured on the Yale Engineering Website.

April 6 - Discovery Channel News quotes Prof. Dollar in a story about Robotic Exoskeletons.