Jessica Yin has successfully completed her doctoral dissertation on “Exploring Multimodal Sensing Across the Stack for Robot Manipulation” under the guidance of Mark Yim, Asa Whitney Professor of Mechanical Engineering and James Pikul, Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and Leon and Elizabeth Janssen Associate Professor at the University of Madison-Wisconsin.
Yin’s work investigated multimodal sensing technologies—an innovative approach to overcoming limitations in robotic manipulation. By exploring complementary sensory integration, the research expanded understanding of how diverse sensing modalities can transform robotic adaptability across complex real-world environments.
The dissertation focused on three key areas: designing selectively transmissive membranes for proximity depth sensing, developing sensor fusion techniques for enhanced perception, and bridging the reality gap in robotic policy learning through tactile skin modeling. These studies revealed complex sensory integration mechanisms, demonstrating how multimodal approaches can provide robust solutions to robotic manipulation challenges.
Acknowledgments
“I’m really grateful to have both the freedom and opportunities to collaborate with diverse teams in industry (Toyota Research Institute, Meta FAIR) and at Penn (Penn Nursing, Penn Medicine)” says Yin. “I’ve grown so much as a researcher with these cross-disciplinary collaborations and have learned to truly enjoy working on all kinds of research problems outside of my main expertise.
Yin will continue her research as a postdoctoral researcher at Meta FAIR, focusing on tactile sensing for dexterous manipulation.
Gratitude
“I am very thankful for my advisers, Mark Yim and James Pikul. I am really grateful for Mark’s patience, wisdom, and for teaching me how to plan and execute rigorous scientific experiments, from high level to the gritty details. I thank James for his contagious enthusiasm for science, for always finding a way to motivate me through rough patches, and for inspiring me to try to be as fearlessly ambitious as he is. I also thank my thesis committee chair, Michael Posa, who has always very generously made time to discuss my research with me.
I also owe a huge thanks to MEAM and GRASP staff like Peter Litt, Jonathan Singleton, Charity Payne, and Jillian Mallon for their hard work in building the student community and keeping everything running smoothly behind the scenes!”