Devesh K. Jha

Devesh K. Jha
Devesh's Quick Links

  • Biography

    Devesh's PhD Thesis was on decision & control of autonomous systems. He also got a Master's degree in Mathematics from Penn State. His research interests are in the areas of Machine Learning, Time Series Analytics and Robotics. He was a recipient of the best student paper award at the 1st ACM SIGKDD workshop on Machine Learning for Prognostics and Health Management at KDD 2016, San Francisco.

  • Recent News & Events


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  • Awards

    •  AWARD    Honorable Mention Award at NeurIPS 23 Instruction Workshop
      Date: December 15, 2023
      Awarded to: Lingfeng Sun, Devesh K. Jha, Chiori Hori, Siddharth Jain, Radu Corcodel, Xinghao Zhu, Masayoshi Tomizuka and Diego Romeres
      MERL Contacts: Radu Corcodel; Chiori Hori; Siddarth Jain; Devesh K. Jha; Diego Romeres
      Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Robotics
      Brief
      • MERL Researchers received an "Honorable Mention award" at the Workshop on Instruction Tuning and Instruction Following at the NeurIPS 2023 conference in New Orleans. The workshop was on the topic of instruction tuning and Instruction following for Large Language Models (LLMs). MERL researchers presented their work on interactive planning using LLMs for partially observable robotic tasks during the oral presentation session at the workshop.
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    •  AWARD    MERL Researchers Win Best Workshop Poster Award at the 2023 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)
      Date: June 2, 2023
      Awarded to: Yuki Shirai, Devesh Jha, Arvind Raghunathan and Dennis Hong
      MERL Contacts: Devesh K. Jha; Arvind Raghunathan; Yuki Shirai
      Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Optimization, Robotics
      Brief
      • MERL's paper titled: "Closed-Loop Tactile Controller for Tool Manipulation" Won the Best Poster Award in the workshop on "Embracing contacts : Making robots physically interact with our world". First author and MERL intern, Yuki Shirai, was presented with the award at a ceremony held at ICRA in London. MERL researchers Devesh Jha, Principal Research Scientist, and Arvind Raghunathan, Senior Principal Research Scientist and Senior Team Leader as well as Prof. Dennis Hong of University of California, Los Angeles are also coauthors.

        The paper presents a technique to manipulate an object using a tool in a closed-loop fashion using vision-based tactile sensors. More information about the workshop and the various speakers can be found here https://sites.google.com/view/icra2023embracingcontacts/home.
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    •  AWARD    MERL Researcher Devesh Jha Wins the Rudolf Kalman Best Paper Award 2019
      Date: October 10, 2019
      Awarded to: Devesh Jha, Nurali Virani, Zhenyuan Yuan, Ishana Shekhawat and Asok Ray
      MERL Contact: Devesh K. Jha
      Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Control, Data Analytics, Machine Learning, Robotics
      Brief
      • MERL researcher Devesh Jha has won the Rudolf Kalman Best Paper Award 2019 for the paper entitled "Imitation of Demonstrations Using Bayesian Filtering With Nonparametric Data-Driven Models". This paper, published in a Special Commemorative Issue for Rudolf E. Kalman in the ASME JDSMC in March 2018, uses Bayesian filtering for imitation learning in Hidden Mode Hybrid Systems. This award is given annually by the Dynamic Systems and Control Division of ASME to the authors of the best paper published in the ASME Journal of Dynamic Systems Measurement and Control during the preceding year.
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  • Internships with Devesh

    • OR0115: Internship - Whole-body dexterous manipulation

      MERL is looking for a highly motivated individual to work on whole-body dexterous manipulation. The research will develop robot motor skills for whole-body, dexterous manipulation using optimization and/or learning algorithms. The ideal candidate should have experience in either one or multiple of the following topics: Optimization Algorithms for contact systems, Reinforcement Learning, control through contacts, and Behavioral cloning. Senior PhD students in robotics and engineering with a focus on contact-rich manipulation are encouraged to apply. Prior experience working with physical robotic systems (and vision and tactile sensors) is required as results need to be implemented on a physical hardware. Good coding skills in Python ML libraries like PyTorch etc. and/or relevant Optimization packages is required. A successful internship will result in submission of results to a peer-reviewed robotics journal in collaboration with MERL researchers. The expected duration of internship is 4-5 months with start date in May/June 2025. This internship is preferred to be onsite at MERL.

      Required Specific Experience

      • Prior experience working with physical hardware system is required.
      • Prior publication experience in robotics venues like ICRA,RSS, CoRL.

    See All Internships at MERL

  • MERL Publications

    •  Shirai, Y., Jha, D.K., Raghunathan, A., Romeres, D., "Chance-Constrained Optimization for Contact-rich Systems using Mixed Integer Programming", Nonlinear Analysis: Hybrid Systems, DOI: 10.1016/​j.nahs.2024.101466, Vol. 52, December 2024.
      BibTeX TR2024-008 PDF
      • @article{Shirai2024dec,
      • author = {Shirai, Yuki and Jha, Devesh K. and Raghunathan, Arvind and Romeres, Diego},
      • title = {Chance-Constrained Optimization for Contact-rich Systems using Mixed Integer Programming},
      • journal = {Nonlinear Analysis: Hybrid Systems},
      • year = 2024,
      • volume = 52,
      • month = dec,
      • doi = {10.1016/j.nahs.2024.101466},
      • issn = {1751-570X},
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2024-008}
      • }
    •  Vats, S., Jha, D.K., Likhachev, M., Kroemer, O., Romeres, D., "RecoveryChaining: Learning Local Recovery Policies for Robust Manipulation", arXiv, October 2024.
      BibTeX arXiv
      • @article{Vats2024oct,
      • author = {Vats, Shivam and Jha, Devesh K. and Likhachev, Maxim and Kroemer, Oliver and Romeres, Diego}},
      • title = {RecoveryChaining: Learning Local Recovery Policies for Robust Manipulation},
      • journal = {arXiv},
      • year = 2024,
      • month = oct,
      • url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.13979}
      • }
    •  Ota, K., Jha, D.K., Jain, S., Yerazunis, W.S., Corcodel, R., Shukla, Y., Bronars, A., Romeres, D., "Autonomous Robotic Assembly: From Part Singulation to Precise Assembly", IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems., October 2024.
      BibTeX TR2024-133 PDF
      • @inproceedings{Ota2024oct,
      • author = {Ota, Kei and Jha, Devesh K. and Jain, Siddarth and Yerazunis, William S. and Corcodel, Radu and Shukla, Yash and Bronars, Antonia and Romeres, Diego}},
      • title = {Autonomous Robotic Assembly: From Part Singulation to Precise Assembly},
      • booktitle = {IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.},
      • year = 2024,
      • month = oct,
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2024-133}
      • }
    •  Zhang, M., Jha, D.K., Raghunathan, A., Hauser, K., "Simultaneous Trajectory Optimization and Contact Selection for Contact-rich Manipulation with High-Fidelity Geometry", arXiv, July 2024.
      BibTeX arXiv
      • @article{Zhang2024jul5,
      • author = {Zhang, Mengchao and Jha, Devesh K. and Raghunathan, Arvind and Hauser, Kris}},
      • title = {Simultaneous Trajectory Optimization and Contact Selection for Contact-rich Manipulation with High-Fidelity Geometry},
      • journal = {arXiv},
      • year = 2024,
      • month = jul,
      • url = {http://arxiv.org/abs/2407.16976}
      • }
    •  Zhang, M., Jha, D.K., Raghunathan, A., Hauser, K., "Simultaneous Trajectory Optimization and Contact Selection for Contact-rich Manipulation with High-Fidelity Geometry", RSS Workshop on Frontiers of Optimization for Robotics (RSS Workshop FOR), July 2024.
      BibTeX TR2024-100 PDF
      • @inproceedings{Zhang2024jul3,
      • author = {Zhang, Mengchao and Jha, Devesh K. and Raghunathan, Arvind and Hauser, Kris}},
      • title = {Simultaneous Trajectory Optimization and Contact Selection for Contact-rich Manipulation with High-Fidelity Geometry},
      • booktitle = {RSS Workshop on Frontiers of Optimization for Robotics (RSS Workshop FOR)},
      • year = 2024,
      • month = jul,
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2024-100}
      • }
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  • Software & Data Downloads

  • Videos

  • MERL Issued Patents

    • Title: "System and Method for Polytopic Policy Optimization for Robust Feedback Control During Learning"
      Inventors: Jha, Devesh; Chakrabarty, Ankush
      Patent No.: 12,124,230
      Issue Date: Oct 22, 2024
    • Title: "System and Method for Robust Robotic Manipulation using Chance Constrained Optimization"
      Inventors: Jha, Devesh; Raghunathan, Arvind U.; Romeres, Diego
      Patent No.: 12,049,007
      Issue Date: Jul 30, 2024
    • Title: "System for Performing a Task According to a Reference Trajectory"
      Inventors: Benosman, Mouhacine; Jha, Devesh
      Patent No.: 12,038,727
      Issue Date: Jul 16, 2024
    • Title: "OBJECT MANIPULATION WITH COLLISION AVOIDANCE USING COMPLEMENTARITY CONSTRAINTS"
      Inventors: Raghunathan, Arvind U.; Jha, Devesh; Romeres, Diego
      Patent No.: 11,883,962
      Issue Date: Jan 30, 2024
    • Title: "System and Method for Robotic Assembly Based on Adaptive Compliance"
      Inventors: Nikovski, Daniel N.; Romeres, Diego; Jha, Devesh; Yerazunis, William S.
      Patent No.: 11,673,264
      Issue Date: Jun 13, 2023
    • Title: "System and Method for Policy Optimization using Quasi-Newton Trust Region Method"
      Inventors: Jha, Devesh; Raghunathan, Arvind U; Romeres, Diego
      Patent No.: 11,650,551
      Issue Date: May 16, 2023
    • Title: "System and Design of Derivative-free Model Learning for Robotic Systems"
      Inventors: Romeres, Diego; Libera, Alberto Dalla; Jha, Devesh; Nikovski, Daniel Nikolaev
      Patent No.: 11,389,957
      Issue Date: Jul 19, 2022
    • Title: "System and Method for Automatic Error Recovery in Robotic Assembly"
      Inventors: Nikovski, Daniel Nikolaev; Jha, Devesh; Romeres, Diego
      Patent No.: 11,161,244
      Issue Date: Nov 2, 2021
    • Title: "Predictive Classification of Future Operations"
      Inventors: Jha, Devesh; Zhang, Wenyu; Laftchiev, Emil; Nikovski, Daniel N.
      Patent No.: 10,996,664
      Issue Date: May 4, 2021
    • Title: "System and Method for Control Constrained Operation of Machine with Partially Unmodeled Dynamics Using Lipschitz Constant"
      Inventors: Chakrabarty, Ankush; Jha, Devesh; Wang, Yebin
      Patent No.: 10,895,854
      Issue Date: Jan 19, 2021
    • Title: "Vehicle Automated Parking System and Method"
      Inventors: Wang, Yebin; Jha, Devesh
      Patent No.: 9,969,386
      Issue Date: May 15, 2018
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