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TITLE: Reactive and Reflexive Robot Control: The Foundations of Physical Intelligence

ABSTRACT: While vision and language models for high-level perception, reasoning, and task planning have advanced at an extraordinary pace through data-driven approaches, low-level movement planning and motor control -- the essence, and perhaps the final frontier, of true physical intelligence -- still have a long way to go. This talk will highlight two key elements that are essential for advancing physical intelligence: reactive motion planning and reflexive, tactile-reactive control. Reactive planning refers to real-time motion planning that responds robustly and safely to external disturbances affecting the robot, environment, or objects, while reflexive control refers to feedback control for contact-rich manipulation that leverages high-bandwidth tactile sensing, relies minimally on vision, and maintains robustness against visual perturbations. The talk will present approaches ranging from learning-based to hierarchical model-based control as initial steps toward true physical intelligence, and conclude with a discussion of challenges and future directions.