Karen Liu

My research interests span computer animation, robotics, reinforcement learning, physics simulation, optimal control, and computational biomechanics. The goal of our lab is to create coordinated, balanced, and precise whole-body movements for digital agents and for real robots to interact with the world. We focus on holistic motor behaviors that involve fusing multiple modalities of perception to produce intelligent and natural movements. We are interested in the functionality of motor skills, as well as how they are learned or acquired. My colleagues and I developed computational approaches to modeling realistic human movements, learning complex control policies for humanoids and assistive robots, and advancing fundamental numerical simulation and optimal control algorithms.