David Watkins - Robotics Ph.D. Candidate

I’m a research scientist and engineer working with robots for grasping and navigation using deep learning. I develop robotic systems across several domains including assistive care, real-world, simulation, and video games. I work with several different robotic technologies including robots from Fetch, Kinova, Staubli, Barrett, Seed, and Intel Realsense. I’ve worked on projects sponsored or afficilated with the Army Research Lab, Google Robotics, NSF, and NVIDIA. I’ve contributed to a number of open source frameworks, including GraspIt!.

I am a PhD from the Columbia Robotics Lab at Columbia University, under supervision of Prof. Peter Allen. My dissertation, Learning Mobile Manipulation, present a novel methodology for manipulating objects without the need for localization at runtime.

While at the Columbia Robotics Lab and as an undergrad at Columbia University, I have either published or helped publish multiple research papers, assisted in teaching multiple courses, and participated in multiple entrepreneurship endeavours.

More information about me is available in my curriculum vitae or my resume.