Karthik Desingh

Brief Bio:

I am a postdoctoral scholar in Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, working with Prof. Dieter Fox in the Robotics and State Estimation Lab.

My research focuses on Perception for Goal-directed Mobile Manipulation. Specifically, I am developing algorithms that can enable a personal robot to perceive objects in cluttered scenes in order to perform goal-directed household tasks. My research interests lie primarily in robot perception under uncertainty (my Michigan AI blog post). Broadly towards solving problems in robotics, computer vision and machine learning.

Previously, I completed my Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. During my Ph.D. I was working in The Laboratory for PROGRESS headed by Prof. Chad Jenkins.

Prior to my Ph.D. I completed my Masters in Computer Science from the International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad, India, and Brown University. During my time at IIIT-Hyderabad, I was working in the Robotics Research Center headed by Dr K Madhava Krishna and was co-advised by Dr C V Jawahar from Center of Visual Information Technology (CVIT).

CV (updated Sept 2019'):Download pdf


Publications (Google Scholar):

 Jana Pavlasek, Stanley Lewis, Karthik Desingh, Odest Chadwicke Jenkins,
"Parts-Based Articulated Object Localization in Clutter Using Belief Propagation,"
IROS 2020 (in press) (Acceptance 47.0%).
[Bibtex]   [Arxiv]   [Video]   [Project page]  
Thomas Cohn, Odest Chadwicke Jenkins, Karthik Desingh, Zhen Zeng,
"TSBP: Tangent Space Belief Propagation for Manifold Learning,"
IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L) 2020
[Bibtex]   [Paper]   [Video]  
Karthik Desingh, Shiyang Lu, Anthony Opipari, Odest Chadwicke Jenkins,
"Efficient Nonparametric Belief Propagation for Pose Estimation and Manipulation of Articulated Objects,"
Science Robotics Journal May 2019
[Bibtex]   [Article]   [Media coverage]   [FB livecast]  
Karthik Desingh, Shiyang Lu, Anthony Opipari, Odest Chadwicke Jenkins,
"Factored Pose Estimation of Articulated Objects using Efficient Nonparametric Belief Propagation,"
ICRA 2019 (Acceptance 44.0%).
[Bibtex]   [Paper]   [Arxiv]   [Video]  
Karthik Desingh, Anthony Opipari, Odest Chadwicke Jenkins,
"Pull Message Passing for Nonparametric Belief Propagation,"
arXiv 2018.
[Bibtex]   [Arxiv]  
Zhen Zeng, Yunwen Zhou, Odest Chadwicke Jenkins, Karthik Desingh,
"Semantic Mapping with Simultaneous Object Detection and Localization,"
IROS 2018 (Acceptance 46.7%).
[Bibtex]   [Arxiv]   [Paper]   [Video]  
Sai R. Gouravajhala, Jinyeong Yim, Karthik Desingh, Yanda Huang, Odest Chadwicke Jenkins, Walter S. Lasecki,
"EURECA: Enhanced Understanding of Real Environments via Crowd Assistance,"
In Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Human Computation (HCOMP 2018).
[Bibtex]   [Paper]  
Mehran Maghoumi, Joseph LaViola, Karthik Desingh, Odest Chadwicke Jenkins,
"GemSketch: Interactive Image-Guided Geometry Extraction from Point Clouds,"
ICRA 2018 (Acceptance 40.6%).
[Bibtex]   [Paper]   [Video]   [Poster]  
Nediyana Daskalova, Karthik Desingh, Alexandra Papoutsaki, Diane Schulze, Heather Sha, Jeff Huang,
"Lessons Learned from Two Cohorts of Personal Informatics Self-Experiments,"
UbiComp 2017.
[Bibtex]   [Paper]  
Zhiqiang Sui, Lingzhu Xiang, Odest Chadwicke Jenkins, Karthik Desingh,
"Goal-directed Robot Manipulation through Axiomatic Scene Estimation,"
IJRR 2017.
[Bibtex]   [Paper]   [Video]  
Karthik Desingh, Odest Chadwicke Jenkins, Lionel Reveret, Zhiqiang Sui,
"Physically Plausible Scene Estimation for Manipulation in Clutter,"
Humanoids 2016.
[Bibtex]   [Paper]   [Video]  
Zhiqiang Sui, Odest Chadwicke Jenkins, Karthik Desingh,
"Axiomatic Particle Filtering for Goal-Directed Robotic Manipulation,"
IROS 2015 (Acceptance 46%).
[Bibtex]   [Paper]   [Video]  
Karthik Desingh, K Madhava Krishna, Deepu Rajan, C V Jawahar,
"Depth really Matters: Improving Visual Salient Region Detection with Depth,"
BMVC 2013 (Acceptance 30%).
[Bibtex]   [Paper]  
Karthik Desingh, Akhil Nagariya, K Madhava Krishna,
"Viewpoint based Mobile Robotic Exploration aiding Object Search in Indoor Environment,"
ICVGIP 2012 (Acceptance 30.5%).
[Bibtex]   [Paper]   [Video]  

Workshops

  1. Karthik Desingh, Jana Pavlasek, Cigdem Kokenoz, Odest Chadwicke Jenkins,
    "Tracking Large Scale Articulated Models with Belief Propagation for Task Informed Grasping and Manipulation,"
    RSS 2019 Workshop: Task-Informed Grasping (TIG-II): From Perception to Physical Interaction.
    [Extended Abstract]   [Poster]   [Best Workshop Paper Award]
  2. Jana Pavlasek , Karthik Desingh, Odest Chadwicke Jenkins,
    "Scene Understanding using Part-Based Object Affordances,"
    RSS 2019 Workshop: Women in Robotics.
    [Abstract]   [Poster]
  3. Sina Masnadi, Joseph J. LaViola Jr., Jana Pavlasek, Xiaofan Zhu, Karthik Desingh, Odest Chadwicke Jenkins,
    "Sketching Affordances for Human-in-the-loop Robotic Manipulation Tasks,"
    ICRA 2019 Workshop: 2nd Robot Teammates Operating in Dynamic, Unstructured Environments (RT-DUNE).
    [Paper]
  4. Karthik Desingh, Anthony Opipari, Odest Chadwicke Jenkins,
    "Analysis of Goal-directed Manipulation in Clutter using Scene Graph Belief Propagation,"
    ICRA 2018 Workshop: Multimodal Robot Perception - Perception, Inference and Learning for Joint Semantic, Geometric and Physical Understanding.
    [Paper]
  5. Karthik Desingh, Mehran Maghoumi, Odest Chadwicke Jenkins, Joseph J. LaViola and Lionel Reveret,
    "Object Manipulation in Cluttered Scenes Informed by Physics and Sketching,"
    RSS 2016 Workshop: Geometry and Beyond - Representations, Physics and Scene Understanding for Robotics.
     [Paper]
  6. Zhiqiang Sui, Odest Chadwicke Jenkins, Karthik Desingh,
    "Axiomatic Scene Estimation for Robotic Manipulation,"
    ICRA 2015 Workshop: Robotic Hands, Grasping and Manipulation.

Contact

Karthik Desingh
Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering,
University of Washington,
Seattle, WA 98195-2350, USA

Mail: kdesingh(At)cs(dot)washington(dot)edu