Laboratory Of Computational Invention Making New Things In New Ways

We develop methods that, from high-level specification, design, build, and deploy things that that are hard or expensive to develop manually. Our research spans virtual systems (e.g. game environments), physical (e.g. structures), and cyber-physical systems (e.g. robots and assistive devices).

physical simulation computational co-design algorithms digital fabrication real-to-sim-to-real human-driven workflows
people

Team

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Andrew Spielberg

Principal Investigator · Assistant Prof. · ECE (MechE + RI by courtesy)

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Angelica Bonilla Fominaya

PhD Student · RI · Co-Advised with James L. McCann

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Henry Wang Sing Chan

PhD Student · ECE · Co-Advised with Gary K. Fedder

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Amber Yinglei Chen

PhD Student · MechE

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Junpeng Gao

PhD Student · ECE

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Maria Parilli Alvarez

PhD Student · ECE (Portugal Program) · Co-Advised with Phil LeDuc

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Yixin Zeng

PhD Student · ECE

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Jonathan Külz

Alumnus: Visiting PhD Student, 2025

publications

Snapshot publications (showing 0)

IROS 2023 Workshop Report: Draft Guidelines on Manufacturing Procedures, Test Methods and Reporting for Soft Robotics

Show BibTeX
@article{baines2025iros,
  title={IROS 2023 Workshop Report: Draft Guidelines on Manufacturing Procedures, Test Methods and Reporting for Soft Robotics},
  author={Baines, Robert and Blumenschein, Laura and Case, Jennifer and MacCurdy, Robert and Olson, Gina and Spielberg, Andrew},
  year={2025}
}

Sim-to-real of soft robots with learned residual physics

IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (2024)

Show BibTeX
@article{gao2024sim,
  title={Sim-to-real of soft robots with learned residual physics},
  author={Gao, Junpeng and Michelis, Mike Y and Spielberg, Andrew and Katzschmann, Robert K},
  journal={IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters},
  year={2024},
  publisher={IEEE}
}

How Can Large Language Models Help Humans in Design And Manufacturing? Part 2: Synthesizing an End-To-End LLM-enabled Design and Manufacturing Workflow

Harvard Data Science Review (2024)

Show BibTeX
@article{makatura2024can,
  title={How can large language models help humans in design and manufacturing? Part 2: Synthesizing an end-to-end LLM-enabled design and manufacturing workflow},
  author={Makatura, Liane and Foshey, Michael and Wang, Bohan and H{\"a}hnlein, Felix and Ma, Pingchuan and Deng, Bolei and Tjandrasuwita, Megan and Spielberg, Andrew and Owens, Crystal and Chen, Peter Yichen and others},
  journal={Harvard Data Science Review},
  number={5},
  year={2024},
  publisher={The MIT Press}
}

How Can Large Language Models Help Humans in Design And Manufacturing? Part1: Elements of the LLM-enabled computational design and manufacturing pipeline

Harvard Data Science Review (2024)

Show BibTeX
@article{makatura2024can,
  title={How can large language models help humans in design and manufacturing? Part 1: Elements of the LLM-enabled computational design and manufacturing pipeline},
  author={Makatura, Liane and Foshey, Michael and Wang, Bohan and H{\"a}hnlein, Felix and Ma, Pingchuan and Deng, Bolei and Tjandrasuwita, Megan and Spielberg, Andrew and Owens, Crystal and Chen, Peter Yichen and others},
  journal={Harvard Data Science Review},
  number={5},
  year={2024},
  publisher={The MIT Press}
}

DiffuseBot: Breeding Soft Robots With Physics-Augmented Generative Diffusion Models

Advances in Neural Processing (NeurIPS, 2023)

Show BibTeX
@article{wang2023diffusebot,
  title={Diffusebot: Breeding soft robots with physics-augmented generative diffusion models},
  author={Wang, Tsun-Hsuan Johnson and Zheng, Juntian and Ma, Pingchuan and Du, Yilun and Kim, Byungchul and Spielberg, Andrew and Tenenbaum, Josh and Gan, Chuang and Rus, Daniela},
  journal={Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems},
  volume={36},
  pages={44398--44423},
  year={2023}
}

Efficient automatic design of robots

Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sceinces (PNAS, 2023)

Show BibTeX
@article{matthews2023efficient,
  title={Efficient automatic design of robots},
  author={Matthews, David and Spielberg, Andrew and Rus, Daniela and Kriegman, Sam and Bongard, Josh},
  journal={Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences},
  volume={120},
  number={41},
  pages={e2305180120},
  year={2023},
  publisher={National Academy of Sciences}
}

Sim-to-Real for Soft Robots Using Differentiable FEM: Recipes for Meshing, Damping, and Actuation

Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L, 2022)

Show BibTeX
@article{dubied2022sim,
  title={Sim-to-real for soft robots using differentiable fem: Recipes for meshing, damping, and actuation},
  author={Dubied, Mathieu and Michelis, Mike Yan and Spielberg, Andrew and Katzschmann, Robert Kevin},
  journal={IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters},
  volume={7},
  number={2},
  pages={5015--5022},
  year={2022},
  publisher={IEEE}
}

Co-Learning of Task and Sensor Placement for Soft Robotics

Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L, 2021)

Show BibTeX
@article{spielberg2021co,
  title={Co-learning of task and sensor placement for soft robotics},
  author={Spielberg, Andrew and Amini, Alexander and Chin, Lillian and Matusik, Wojciech and Rus, Daniela},
  journal={IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters},
  volume={6},
  number={2},
  pages={1208--1215},
  year={2021},
  publisher={IEEE}
}

A Simple, Inexpensive, Wearable Glove with Hybrid Resistive‐Pressure Sensors for Computational Sensing, Proprioception, and Task Identification

Advanced Intelligent Systems (2020)

Show BibTeX
@article{hughes2020simple,
  title={A simple, inexpensive, wearable glove with hybrid resistive-pressure sensors for computational sensing, proprioception, and task identification},
  author={Hughes, Josie and Spielberg, Andrew and Chounlakone, Mark and Chang, Gloria and Matusik, Wojciech and Rus, Daniela},
  journal={Advanced Intelligent Systems},
  volume={2},
  number={6},
  pages={2000002},
  year={2020},
  publisher={Wiley Online Library}
}

Multi-robot grasp planning for sequential assembly operations

Autonomous Robots (2019)

Show BibTeX
@article{hughes2020simple,
  title={A simple, inexpensive, wearable glove with hybrid resistive-pressure sensors for computational sensing, proprioception, and task identification},
  author={Hughes, Josie and Spielberg, Andrew and Chounlakone, Mark and Chang, Gloria and Matusik, Wojciech and Rus, Daniela},
  journal={Advanced Intelligent Systems},
  volume={2},
  number={6},
  pages={2000002},
  year={2020},
  publisher={Wiley Online Library}
}

RapID: A framework for fabricating low-latency interactive objects with RFID tags

CHI '16: Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Show BibTeX
@inproceedings{spielberg2016rapid,
  title={RapID: A framework for fabricating low-latency interactive objects with RFID tags},
  author={Spielberg, Andrew and Sample, Alanson and Hudson, Scott E and Mankoff, Jennifer and McCann, James},
  booktitle={Proceedings of the 2016 chi conference on human factors in computing systems},
  pages={5897--5908},
  year={2016}
}
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Contact

  • Address
    Carnegie Mellon University
    5000 Forbes Avenue
    Roberts Engineering Hall Rm 217
    Pittsburgh, PA 15213
  • PI Email (other active lab members listed above)
    andrewes@andrew.cmu.edu