Darren Chiu

Robotics @ USC

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Los Angeles, CA, 90007

I am a second year PhD student at the University of Southern California (USC) advised by Professor Gaurav Sukhatme with the Robotic and Embedded Systems Lab (RESL). Previously, I completed my bachelors at Princeton University studying Electrical and Computer Engineering with two minors in Applications of Computing and Robotics & Intelligence Systems. At Princeton, I studied multi robot systems in the Self Organizing Robotics Lab with Professor Radhika Nagpal and was a visiting researcher at the University of Groningen with Professor Bahar Haghighat. In the past, I’ve spent Summers building hardware and writing software as an avionics intern at SpaceX and Blue Origin. I’m also an avid coffee enthusiast and shrimp owner.

research interests

I am interested and excited by robots that move and adapt to their environment in the real world. My research focus is in imagining the combination of hardware and algorithmic approaches for robotic systems deployed in space. I have experience in robotic simulation, hardware design, and implementation where I want to work towards bringing both sides closer - through novel hardware or better integrated algorithms. I currently work on applying event based vision for navigation of resource constrained robotic systems. Please reach out to me if you are interested in collaborating!

news

Jan 31, 2025 Happy to be a part of SAFE-GIL which was recently accepted at ICRA2025!
Jan 29, 2024 My paper on Optimization and Bayesian Decision Making was accepted at ICRA2024!
Aug 01, 2023 I began my PhD at USC with the Robotic Embedded Systems Lab

publications

  1. Collective Bayesian Decision-Making in a Swarm of Miniaturized Robots for Surface Inspection
    Thiemen Siemensma ,  Darren Chiu ,  Sneha Ramshanker ,  Radhika Nagpal ,  and  Bahar Haghighat
    In Swarm Intelligence , 2024
  2. Optimization and Evaluation of a Multi Robot Surface Inspection Task Through Particle Swarm Optimization
    Darren Chiu ,  Radhika Nagpal ,  and  Bahar Haghighat
    In 2024 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) , 2024
  3. SAFE-GIL: SAFEty Guided Imitation Learning for Robotic Systems
    Yusuf Umut Ciftci ,  Darren Chiu ,  Zeyuan Feng ,  Gaurav S. Sukhatme ,  and  Somil Bansal
    2024