Back to Events

(Thesis Defense) Building Intelligence that can Interact with the Physical World

May 02 2025

9:30A - 10:30A

Location

32-G449
Virtual Event

Speaker: Johnson Tsun-Hsuan Wang

Affiliation: MIT EECS (CSAIL)

Title: [Thesis Defense] Building Intelligence that can Interact with the Physical World

Date: Friday, May 2nd 2025

Time: 9:30 am EDT

Location: 32-G449 (Patil/Kiva)

Zoom: https://mit.zoom.us/j/95448197150?pwd=W0uEtKXgUjoXawXp2cGWrIcsFGtGlO.1

Abstract: Recent advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) have demonstrated remarkable success in parsing, reasoning, and generating digital content across modalities such as natural language, speech, images, videos, and 3D data. However, these breakthroughs have yet to extend meaningfully beyond the digital realm into the physical world. Developing AI for physical interaction poses challenges such as limited grounding, scarce physical data, and high reliability demands in safety-critical settings.

This talk outlines a holistic approach to physical AI—through the lenses of data, brain, and body. We begin with data, the foundation of learning, and introduce data-driven and knowledge-driven robot simulation that generates data to improve policy learning and to systematically evaluate and probe existing models. Next, we turn to the brain, focusing on how to bridge the internet-scale knowledge of digital AI with the physical world to improve generalization and interpretability. Finally, we examine the body—the morphological component of intelligence—demonstrating how pre-trained generative models, when integrated with physics-based simulation, can automate the design of robot bodies. Together, this talk explores how digital AI can be extended into the physical world through a comprehensive investigation of data, brain, and body – laying the groundwork for building physical AI.

Committee:

Prof. Daniela Rus, MIT CSAIL (Advisor)

Prof. Sertac Karaman, MIT LIDS

Prof. Wojciech Matusik, MIT CSAIL

Add to Calendar 2025-05-02 9:30:00 2025-05-02 10:30:00 America/New_York (Thesis Defense) Building Intelligence that can Interact with the Physical World Speaker: Johnson Tsun-Hsuan WangAffiliation: MIT EECS (CSAIL)Title: [Thesis Defense] Building Intelligence that can Interact with the Physical WorldDate: Friday, May 2nd 2025Time: 9:30 am EDTLocation: 32-G449 (Patil/Kiva)Zoom: https://mit.zoom.us/j/95448197150?pwd=W0uEtKXgUjoXawXp2cGWrIcsFGtGlO.1Abstract: Recent advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) have demonstrated remarkable success in parsing, reasoning, and generating digital content across modalities such as natural language, speech, images, videos, and 3D data. However, these breakthroughs have yet to extend meaningfully beyond the digital realm into the physical world. Developing AI for physical interaction poses challenges such as limited grounding, scarce physical data, and high reliability demands in safety-critical settings.This talk outlines a holistic approach to physical AI—through the lenses of data, brain, and body. We begin with data, the foundation of learning, and introduce data-driven and knowledge-driven robot simulation that generates data to improve policy learning and to systematically evaluate and probe existing models. Next, we turn to the brain, focusing on how to bridge the internet-scale knowledge of digital AI with the physical world to improve generalization and interpretability. Finally, we examine the body—the morphological component of intelligence—demonstrating how pre-trained generative models, when integrated with physics-based simulation, can automate the design of robot bodies. Together, this talk explores how digital AI can be extended into the physical world through a comprehensive investigation of data, brain, and body – laying the groundwork for building physical AI.Committee:Prof. Daniela Rus, MIT CSAIL (Advisor)Prof. Sertac Karaman, MIT LIDSProf. Wojciech Matusik, MIT CSAIL TBD

Part of

Related Events