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Hello

My name is Siddhartha Banerjee, a Roboticist @ Diligent Robotics

Austin, TX, USA

Education

Ph.D. Robotics

Georgia Institute of Technology

2015 - 2021

B.S. Electrical Engineering/Computer Science

Yale University

2009 - 2013

  • Graduated with Distinction in Major
  • Member of Timothy Dwight College

Research Overview

I researched robot failures and methods to allow humans to fix them. My thesis developed modules to increase the reliability of autonomous robots while reducing the demand on human stakeholders in the process: robot developers, remote operators, and collocated operators.

Thesis

Publications

Journal Articles

  1. [1]S. Banerjee, A. Silva, and S. Chernova, “Robot Classification of Human Interruptibility and a Study of Its Effects,” ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction (THRI), vol. 7, no. 2, p. 14, 2018. download  link  media  bib
    @article{banerjee2018robot,
  title = {Robot Classification of Human Interruptibility and a Study of Its Effects},
  author = {Banerjee, Siddhartha and Silva, Andrew and Chernova, Sonia},
  journal = {ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction (THRI)},
  volume = {7},
  number = {2},
  pages = {14},
  year = {2018},
  publisher = {ACM},
  privateurl = {website:///pdf/banerjs_thri2018.pdf
  https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3277902
  media://https://www.ic.gatech.edu/news/604972/pardon-interruption-ics-siddhartha-banerjee-explores-convenience-efficiency-robotic}
}

Conference Proceedings

  1. [1]D. Das, S. Banerjee, and S. Chernova, “Explainable AI for Robot Failures: Generating Explanations That Improve User Assistance in Fault Recovery,” in Proceedings of the 2021 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, New York, NY, USA, 2021, pp. 351–360. link  download  bib
    @inproceedings{das2021explainable,
  author = {Das, Devleena and Banerjee, Siddhartha and Chernova, Sonia},
  title = {Explainable AI for Robot Failures: Generating Explanations That Improve User Assistance in Fault Recovery},
  year = {2021},
  publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
  address = {New York, NY, USA},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2021 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction},
  pages = {351–360},
  numpages = {10},
  location = {Boulder, CO, USA},
  series = {HRI '21},
  privateurl = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3434073.3444657
  website://https://arxiv.org/pdf/2011.09407.pdf}
}
  2. [2]S. Banerjee, M. Gombolay, and S. Chernova, “A Tale of Two Suggestions: Action and Diagnosis Recommendations for Responding to Robot Failure,” in 2020 29th IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN), Aug. 2020, pp. 398–405. download  media  link  bib
    @inproceedings{banerjeeROMAN2020,
  title = {A Tale of Two Suggestions: Action and Diagnosis Recommendations for Responding to Robot Failure},
  author = {Banerjee, Siddhartha and Gombolay, Matthew and Chernova, Sonia},
  privateurl = {website:///pdf/banerjs_roman2020.pdf
  media://https://youtu.be/drCHgwkpaqA
  https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9223545},
  year = {2020},
  date = {2020-08-31},
  pages = {398--405},
  organization = {IEEE},
  booktitle = {2020 29th IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN)}
}
  3. [3]D. Kent, S. Banerjee, and S. Chernova, “Learning Sequential Decision Tasks for Robot Manipulation with Abstract Markov Decision Processes and Demonstration-Guided Exploration,” Nov. 2018. download  link  bib
    @inproceedings{Kent2018,
  title = {Learning Sequential Decision Tasks for Robot Manipulation with Abstract Markov Decision Processes and Demonstration-Guided Exploration},
  author = {Kent, David and Banerjee, Siddhartha and Chernova, Sonia},
  privateurl = {website:///pdf/banerjs_humanoids2018.pdf
  http://www.rail.gatech.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/humanoids2018_kent_banerjee_chernova.pdf},
  year = {2018},
  date = {2018-11-08},
  booktitle = {2018 IEEE-RAS 18th International Conference on Humanoid Robotics (Humanoids)},
  journal = {2018 IEEE-RAS 18th International Conference on Humanoid Robotics (Humanoids)}
}
  4. [4]S. Banerjee and S. Chernova, “Temporal Models for Robot Classification of Human Interruptibility,” in Int. Conf. on Autonomous Agents & Multiagent Systems, 2017, no. 16, pp. 1350–1359. download  link  bib
    @inproceedings{aamas-2017,
  title = {Temporal Models for Robot Classification of Human Interruptibility},
  author = {Banerjee, Siddhartha and Chernova, Sonia},
  booktitle = {Int. Conf. on Autonomous Agents \& Multiagent Systems},
  number = {16},
  pages = {1350--1359},
  year = {2017},
  organization = {IFAAMAS},
  privateurl = {website:///pdf/banerjs_aamas2017.pdf
  http://www.aamas2017.org/proceedings/pdfs/p1350.pdf}
}

Workshops / Symposia / Other

  1. [1]S. Banerjee and S. Chernova, “Fault Diagnosis in Robot Task Execution,” AAAI Spring Symposium Series. 2019. download  bib
    @misc{banerjee2019sss,
  author = {Banerjee, Siddhartha and Chernova, Sonia},
  booktitle = {AAAI Spring Symposium Series},
  title = {{Fault Diagnosis in Robot Task Execution}},
  year = {2019},
  privateurl = {website:///pdf/banerjs_aaai2019sss.pdf}
}
  2. [2]S. Banerjee et al., “Taking Recoveries to Task: Recovery-Driven Development for Recipe-based Robot Tasks,” International Symposium on Robotics Research (ISRR). Oct. 07, 2019. download  link  bib
    @misc{banerjeeISRR2019,
  title = {Taking Recoveries to Task: Recovery-Driven Development for Recipe-based Robot Tasks},
  author = {Banerjee, Siddhartha and Daruna, Angel and Kent, David and Liu, Weiyu and Balloch, Jonathan and Jain, Abhinav and Krishnan, Akshay and Rana, Muhammad Asif and Ravichandar, Harish and Shah, Binit and Shrivatsav, Nithin and Chernova, Sonia},
  privateurl = {website:///pdf/banerjs_isrr2019.pdf
  http://www.rail.gatech.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/ISRR19_0060_FI-1.pdf},
  year = {2019},
  date = {2019-10-07},
  booktitle = {International Symposium on Robotics Research (ISRR)}
}
  3. [3]A. Silva, S. Banerjee, and S. Chernova, “Excuse Me, Could You Please Assemble These Blocks For Me?,” What Could Go Wrong? Workshop at Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). 2018. download  bib
    @misc{silva2018whatgoeswrong,
  author = {Silva, Andrew and Banerjee, Siddhartha and Chernova, Sonia},
  journal = {What Could Go Wrong? Workshop at Human-Robot Interaction (HRI)},
  title = {{Excuse Me, Could You Please Assemble These Blocks For Me?}},
  year = {2018},
  privateurl = {website:///pdf/banerjs_hri2018whatcouldgowrong.pdf}
}
  4. [4]S. Banerjee and S. Chernova, “Efficient Human-Robot Interaction for Robust Autonomy in Task Execution,” Companion of the 2018 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction. ACM, pp. 291–292, 2018. download  link  bib
    @misc{banerjee2018efficient,
  author = {Banerjee, Siddhartha and Chernova, Sonia},
  booktitle = {Companion of the 2018 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction},
  organization = {ACM},
  pages = {291--292},
  title = {{Efficient Human-Robot Interaction for Robust Autonomy in Task Execution}},
  year = {2018},
  privateurl = {website:///pdf/banerjs_hri2018pioneers.pdf
  https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3176921}
}
  5. [5]B. Harrison, S. Banerjee, and M. O. Riedl, “Learning from Stories: Using Natural Communication to Train Believable Agents,” IJCAI 2016 - Workshop on Interactive Machine Learning. 2016. download  bib
    @misc{harrison-ijcai-iml-2016,
  author = {Harrison, Brent and Banerjee, Siddhartha and Riedl, Mark O},
  journal = {IJCAI 2016 - Workshop on Interactive Machine Learning},
  title = {{Learning from Stories: Using Natural Communication to Train Believable Agents}},
  year = {2016},
  privateurl = {website:///pdf/banerjs_ijcai2016iml.pdf}
}
  6. [6]S. Banerjee and S. Chernova, “Robots predicting the Interruptibility of Humans,” RSS Workshop on Planning for HRI. 2016. download  link  bib
    @misc{rss-planning-hri-2016,
  author = {Banerjee, Siddhartha and Chernova, Sonia},
  journal = {RSS Workshop on Planning for HRI},
  title = {{Robots predicting the Interruptibility of Humans}},
  year = {2016},
  privateurl = {website:///pdf/banerjs_rss2016planninghri.pdf
  https://people.csail.mit.edu/cdarpino/RSS2016WorkshopHRcolla/abstracts/RSS16WS_10_PredictingInterruptibility.pdf}
}

Work Experience

Robotics Software Engineer

Diligent Robotics

2021 - current

  • Lead for remote operations
  • Developing ROS packages to improve robot autonomy
  • Developing interfaces to monitor and teleoperate robot

Robotics Intern

Diligent Robotics

Summer 2018

  • Worked on the navigation stack
  • Implemented a web interface to control the robot
  • Designed and implemented numerous ROS packages

Research Intern

Microsoft

Summer 2017

  • Worked with Situated Interaction Group
  • Setup a system for in-the-wild activity recognition, with a focus on interaction

Software Engineer II

Redfin

2013 - 2015

  • Employee of the Quarter (Q3 2014)
  • Designed and maintained ETL pipeline for house listing data
  • Integrated 3rd party GIS data
  • Calculated and displayed aggregate housing data for regions
  • Maintained internal tools for managing agents and locations

Hardware Verification Intern

Microsoft

Summer 2012

  • VLSI hardware verification and testing for the Xbox One
  • Used waveform analysis and Kernel Developer Specifications to test a System-on-Chip

Teaching Assistant

CS 7633, Georgia Tech

Fall 2018

  • TA for graduate course on Human-Robot Interaction

Teaching Assistant

CS 6601, Georgia Tech

Fall 2016

  • TA for graduate course on Artificial Intelligence

Peer Tutor

CPSC 202/223, Yale

2012 - 2013

  • Peer tutor for undergraduates needing further assistance
  • CPSC 202: Mathematical Tools for Computer Science
  • CPSC 223: Data Structures and Programming Techniques

Other