Capprin Bass

I’m a robotics researcher based in Boston, MA. My current focus is dynamic manipulation, which I approach with both theoretical and empirical approaches to control. In particular, I am interested in the relationship between model-based and learning-based control, and how we can use hybrids of the two to allow robots to quickly learn nuanced or energetic manipulation tasks with limited local information. The controllers I design are informed by the underlying capabilities of the robot, and I almost exclusively test on physical hardware to produce the most meaningful results.

I graduated with a M.S. in robotics from Oregon State University, working with Prof. Ross L. Hatton. I wrote a thesis on Geometric Optimization Methods for Mobile Systems. Before then, I received a B.S. in Computational and Applied Mathematics from Colorado School of Mines.

I am currently a PhD student at The Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University. Before this, I helped build and control custom robots at the The Robotics and AI Institute. If you’re interested in my previous roles, download either my curriculum vitae or my résumé.

I’m originally from Boulder, Colorado, USA.