Ashkan Jasour

Robotics Technologist
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91101

Research Interests: Risk-Aware Control, Planning, AI, and Optimization Under Uncertainty for Robotic Systems

Links: MITCourse, Google Scholar, GitHub, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin

Email: jasour@jpl.nasa.gov
jasour@jpl.caltech.edu
jasour@csail.mit.edu

• ​Robotics Technologist 
  NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
   

• ​Research Scientist
  Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
  Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL)

• Postdoctoral Associate
  Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
  Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL)

  
  Toyota Research Institute (TRI)

• PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
  PhD-Minor in Mathematics
  The Pennsylvania State University

• Risk-Aware Autonomy Under Uncertainty:
  Nonlinear Probabilistic Planning, Control, Optimization, Estimation, and Learning Under Uncertainty for Autonomous Systems

• NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
• My Contribution to the Mars Exploration Program

Ingenuity Mars Helicopter,  Location on Mars,  Images

News:

• Apr 2024: JPL Voyager Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Flight Campaign.

• March 2024: Science Robotics paper on "Autonomous snake-like robot with task and motion planning capabilities for ice world exploration"

• Feb 2024:  We are organizing a special track on "Safe, Robust and Responsible AI" at AAAI-24

• July 2023:  RSS 2023: Our paper is a finalist for the Best Paper Award at Robotics:Sciecne and Systems 2023

• Jun 2023:  RSS 2023 Paper: "Convex Geometric Motion Planning on Lie Groups via Moment Relaxation"

• Jun 2023:  IJRR Paper: "Convex Risk Bounded Continuous-Time Trajectory Planning and Tube Design in Uncertain Nonconvex Environments"

• May 2023:  ICRA 2023 paper: "Moment-based Kalman Filter: Nonlinear Kalman Filtering with Exact Moment Propagation"

• July 2022:  We are organizing a special track on "Safe and Robust AI" at AAAI-23

• May 2022:  ICRA 2022: Our paper on risk-bounded nonlinear planning under uncertainty won the Outstanding Planning Paper Award

• May 2022:  MIT News has featured our recent work on risk-bounded nonlinear planning under uncertainty

• July 2021: Talk @ SIAM Conference On Optimization 2021: "Efficient Algorithms for Large-Scale Chance Constrained Problem"

• May 2021:  We are organizing a special issue on "Risk-Aware Autonomous Systems: Theory and Practice" in the Artificial Intelligence Journal (AIJ)  

• May 2021:  RSS 2021 Paper: "Convex Risk Bounded Continuous-Time Trajectory Planning in Uncertain Nonconvex Environments"

• Oct 2020:  Talk @ INFORMS 2020: Talk1: Risk Aware Nonlinear Planning And Control  Talk2: Large-scale Semidefinite Programming For Certifiably Correct Machine Perception

• May 2020:  RSS 2020 Paper: "Fast Risk Assessment for Autonomous Vehicles Using Learned Models of Agent Futures"

• Apr 2020:  Talk @ MIT-LIDS: "Moment-Sum-Of-Squares based Semidefinite Programming for Chance Constrained Optimization"

• July 2019:  Teaching:  New Graduate-Level Course "MIT 16.S498: Risk Aware and Robust Nonlinear Planning (rarnop)", Fall 2019.
  More Info  MIT OpenCourseWare   MIT Course Management System  rarnop.mit.edu

• July 2019:  Talk @ 3rd Summer School on Cognitive Robotics, USC: "Risk bounded Nonlinear Planning"

• Jun 2019:  RSS 2019 Paper: "Risk Contours Map for Risk Bounded Motion Planning under Perception Uncertainties"

• July 2018:  Talk @ 2nd Summer School on Cognitive Robotics, MIT: "Risk bounded Motion Planning"