Eric Chang

Eric Chang (he/him)

I'm a phd student in the ROAM Lab at Columbia, advised by Matei Ciocarlie, where I work on building tactile sensors for dexterous manipulation. I am also a NASA NSTGRO fellow, and I work with Trey Smith and Brian Coltin at NASA Ames. Before Columbia, I majored in mechanical engineering and computer science at Duke, where I worked in the Mitzi Research Group on the development of new, sustainable materials for thin-film photovoltaics.

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email: eric (dot) chang (at) columbia (dot) edu

Recent Updates

[9-2024] Had an awesome time at the first Touch Sensing and Processing Summer School!
[1-2024] Paper accepted to ICRA 2024!
[11-2023] Our work on in-hand manipulation (led by Gagan Khandate) was in TIME's best inventions of 2023!
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Research

I work on building touch sensors to (hopefully) help robots be more dexterous! I'm most interested in developing compact, multimodal tactile fingers, studying new methods of tactile sensing, and exploring how to process rich, multimodal touch data in the context of manipulation.

	VibeCheck: Using Active Acoustic Tactile Sensing for Contact-Rich Manipulation Kaidi Zhang, Do-Gon Kim, Eric T. Chang, Hua-Hsuan Liang, Zhanpeng He, Kathryn Lampo, Philippe Wu, Ioannis Kymissis, Matei Ciocarlie equal contribution under review
	R×R: Rapid eXploration for Reinforcement Learning via Sampling-based Reset Distributions and Imitation Pre-training Gagan Khandate, Tristan Luca Saidi, Siqi Shang, Eric T. Chang, Yang Liu, Seth Dennis, Johnson Adams, Matei Ciocarlie equal contribution Autonomous Robots, 2024 (RSS 2023 Special Issue) arXiv / Springer Link
	An Investigation of Multi-feature Extraction and Super-resolution with Fast Microphone Arrays Eric T. Chang, Runsheng Wang, Peter Ballentine, Jingxi Xu, Trey Smith, Brian Coltin, Ioannis Kymissis, Matei Ciocarlie equal contribution ICRA*, 2024 arXiv / IEEE Xplore
	Spike-a-Tac: Development Towards a PVDF-based Tactile Finger with Distributed Vibration Sensing Eric T. Chang, Peter Ballentine, Ioannis Kymissis, Matei Ciocarlie equal contribution ICRA 2024 ViTac Workshop: Robot Embodiment through Visuo-Tactile Perception* workshop paper / workshop poster
	Sampling Based Exploration for Reinforcement Learning of Dexterous Manipulation Gagan Khandate, Siqi Shang, Eric T. Chang, Tristan Luca Saidi, Johnson Adams, Matei Ciocarlie equal contribution Robotics: Science and Systems*, 2023 arXiv / Project Website / Video1 / Video2 Press: Tech Xplore, Popular Science, Time
	Building underactuated hands for NASA's Astrobee During my internship at NASA Ames (as part of the NSTGRO program), I worked on improving the design of a 3-fingered, underactuated hand for Astrobee, a free-flyer robot on the ISS. This work built off of previous work from our lab on underactuated hands. My goal (ongoing) is to integrate our tactile sensors into this hand for use on Astrobee! See below for photos of our current design of the hand in action on Astrobee at NASA Ames. This hand has 3 fingers controlled by a single motor, and exhibits both flexion/extension and abduction/adduction. Tendons control flexion and abduction, while springs control extension and abduction. Because the fingers are underactuated and one tendon runs through the distal and proximal links, the hand naturally conforms to the shape of the object it's grasping, enabling both pinch and power grasps (see photos). I have spent some time getting the hardware to a working state and making some hardware improvements (particularly to make assembly easier). Now, we plan to integrate our multimodal tactile fingers onto the distal links. (+) Photos ▼
	Towards Development of a Signal-Dense Multimodal Tactile Finger Eric T. Chang, Peter Ballentine, Ioannis Kymissis, Matei Ciocarlie ICRA 2023 ViTac Workshop: Blending Virtual and Real Visuo-Tactile Perception workshop paper
	Phase Stability, Bandgap Tuning and Rashba Splitting in Selenium-Alloyed Bournonite Eric T. Chang, Gabrielle Koknat, Garrett Mckeown Wessler, Yi Yao, Volker Blum, David B. Mitzi equal contribution Chemistry of Materials*, 2023, 35, 2, 595–608 paper
	Development of an Optically Transparent Kidney Model for Laser Lithotripsy Research Sabrina Tran, Junqin Chen, Gunnar Kozel, Eric Chang, Trina Phung, Yanxi Peng, Zachary Dionise, Yuan Wu, W. Neal Simmons, Michael E. Lipkin, Glenn M. Preminger, Pei Zhong BJU International, 2023, 132, 1, 36-39 paper
	Synthesis and Characterization of Selenium-Alloyed Bournonite CuPbSb(S1-xSex)3: a Prospective Semiconductor for Optoelectronic Applications Eric T. Chang, Gabrielle Koknat, Volker Blum, David B. Mitzi MRS Spring Meeting, 2021 Symposium award (2nd place), Best Poster Award
	CTHULHU: The Design and Implementation of Duke Robotics Club's 2019/2020/2021 AUVSI Competition Entry Duke Robotics Club RoboSub Competition Technical Design Report, 2019/2020/2021 2019 paper / 2020 paper / 2021 paper Placed 4th/1st (2020/2021) in technical design report at competition

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