Preston Culbertson

Assistant professor, @Cornell_CS. Learning, perception, and control for building more dynamic robots.

[Preston Culbertson @pdculbert]

I'm so excited to announce I will be joining @Cornell_CS as an assistant professor next fall!

I can't wait to launch my lab and start building robots with human-level dexterity and adaptability. 🤖🏃🤹

[Preston Culbertson @pdculbert]

@kevin_zakka @Googleorg Congrats, Kevin! Very well-deserved, and excited to see what's next

[Preston Culbertson @pdculbert]

If you haven't already, you should check out judo, the MPC package underlying a lot of the skills here (including the tire flip-up!!) - we're excited to see what other cool ideas people can cook up

https://t.co/P6JupEg3q9

[Preston Culbertson @pdculbert]

So cool to see the loco-manipulation stack we developed at RAI out in the wild! Congrats to @simonlc_ and the team for the awesome demo.

This ability to adapt RL policies using test-time reward spec + MPC/search is really cool / basically why we built judo.

[RAI Institute @rai_inst]

See Spot perform dynamic whole-body manipulation. Using a combination of reinforcement learning (RL) and sampling-based control, the robot is able to autonomously drag, roll, and stack tires weighing 15 kg (33 lb), well above its maximum arm lift capacity.

Learn more about coordinating locomotion and manipulation processes: https://t.co/qBDOWJtgft

[NERC 2026 @NERC_Robotics]

Thank you everyone for an amazing event! Looking forward to next year's NERC at Princeton! #NERC2025

[NERC 2026 @NERC_Robotics]

Just over one week until registration closes for NERC! Register by next Friday, Oct 3, to join us in Ithaca next month.
🎟️https://t.co/IVBUe4tJRS

[NERC 2026 @NERC_Robotics]

Just one month until NERC 2025!
Come to Cornell on Oct 11 for a full day of cutting-edge robotics research and community.
📍 Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
🗓️ Oct 11, 2025
🎟️ Register by Oct 11: https://t.co/J3rjBM85gs

[NERC 2026 @NERC_Robotics]

Update: Due to an OpenReview outage, the NERC submission deadline will be extended by one day, to tomorrow, Wed Sep 3 at 11:59pm ET.

Looking forward to reviewing your submissions!

[Preston Culbertson @pdculbert]

Join us in Ithaca this October for NERC!
Submissions are due this Tuesday, Sept 2 - excited to see everyone at Cornell in a few weeks.

[NERC 2026 @NERC_Robotics]

Reminder: Poster and Rising Star submissions for NERC 2025 are due next Tuesday, Sep 2!
Submit now for a great opportunity to share your research with robotics faculty and peers.
🔗 https://t.co/AxyUdcxLc9
📅 Deadline: Sep 2

[Preston Culbertson @pdculbert]

judo is still early days, but we hope it lowers the barrier to SMPC and sparks new directions in control and robot learning.

Try it here 👉 https://t.co/KlVmzU5nF2
or: pip install judo-rai

[Preston Culbertson @pdculbert]

🥋 We're excited to share judo: a hackable toolbox for sampling-based MPC (SMPC), data collection, and more, designed to make it easier to experiment with high-performance control.
Try it: pip install judo-rai

[Preston Culbertson @pdculbert]

@albert_h_li @simonlc_ @brenthyi There’s more to come:
⚡ GPU-accelerated sim (via mujoco_warp)
🦾 New tasks: locomotion, dexterous manipulation
🧠 Hooks for adding learning-based components

[Preston Culbertson @pdculbert]

@rkjenamani Congrats Rajat!! Really compelling work + very well-deserved 🎉🥳

[Preston Culbertson @pdculbert]

Congrats to @albert_h_li for winning Outstanding Paper today at the CoRL workshop for learning fine + dexterous manipulation!