Bio

I’m Alphonsus Adu-Bredu. I tame wild robots and make them do useful things

I am a Robotics Engineer at Boston Dynamics. I work on humanoid controls on the Atlas Team.

I attained my PhD in Robotics at the Robotics Department – University of Michigan in August 2023. With Professor Chad Jenkins as my adviser, my research focused on reactive humanoid robot planning and control under uncertainty and in dynamic environments.

Before that, I graduated from Tufts University with a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science in May 2020. With Professor William Messner as my adviser, I built assistive robots to aid paraplegic individuals with activities for daily living.

Contact

Awards

Teaching Assistantships

News

  • September 11, 2023: I started my first permanent job as a Robotics Engineer on the Atlas Team at Boston Dynamics.
  • July 31, 2023: I successfully defended my PhD thesis!
  • June 21, 2023: Our paper on “Exploring Kinodynamic Fabrics for Reactive Whole-Body Control for Underactuated Humanoid Robots” was accepted at the IROS 2023 conference!
  • May 2023: I interned at Boston Dynamics this summer to work on whole-body controls for the Atlas Humanoid Robot
  • June 30, 2022: My paper on “Optimal Constrained Task Planning as Mixed Integer Programming” was accepted at the IROS 2022 conference!
  • September 26, 2021: My paper on “Probabilistic Inference in Planning for Partially Observable Long Horizon Problems” was awarded the Best Paper Award on Mobile Manipulation at IROS 2021!
  • September 1, 2021: My paper on “Elephants don’t Pack Groceries: Robot Task Planning for Low Entropy Belief States” was accepted in the Robotics and Automation Letters (RAL) Journal!
  • June 30, 2021: My paper on “Probabilistic Inference in Planning for Partially Observable Long Horizon Problems” was accepted at the IROS 2021 conference!
  • September 3, 2020: I started my PhD in Robotics at the Robotics Institute of University of Michigan.
  • May 17, 2020: I graduated with honors from Tufts University with majors in Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science.
  • April 29, 2020: I’m glad to announce that I will be starting my PhD in Robotics at the Michigan Robotics Institute this Fall.
  • February 17, 2020: Our paper on Cartbot has been accepted at the IEEE ICHMS 2020 conference in Rome!
  • October 2019: I’m currently applying to PhD programs. For my PhD, I’ll focus on developing algorithms and techniques to enable robots to plan, reason over and perform long-horizon tasks in large state spaces.
  • May 2019: I interned at Near Earth Autonomy in Pittsburgh over the summer of 2019 under the supervision of Ji Zhang. I developed  algorithms for safe navigation and planning for an autonomous ground vehicle in an office environment. I also developed an interactive interface for people in the office to summon the ground vehicle and get it to deliver snacks to their desks

                                                          in sterquiliniis invenitur