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Contact Information: Siebel 3233, 1-217-244-0821 Email kkhauser (at) illinois.edu

Professor

Department of Computer Science

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering

Director, Coordinated Sciences Lab Robotics Group

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Bio

Kris Hauser is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Affiliate of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering. He received his PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University in 2008, bachelor's degrees in Computer Science and Mathematics from UC Berkeley in 2003, and worked as a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley. He then joined the faculty at Indiana University from 2009-2014, where he started the Intelligent Motion Lab, and then joined the faculty of Duke University from 2014-2019. He also has consulted for Google's autonomous driving company, Waymo, from 2019-2023. Prof. Hauser is a recipient of a Stanford Graduate Fellowship, Siebel Scholar Fellowship, Best Paper Award at IEEE International Conference on Humanoid Robots 2015, the NSF CAREER award, and three Amazon Research Awards.

CV...

Research

Research interests include open-world robotics, robot motion planning and control, and semi-autonomous systems, with applications to intelligent vehicles, robotic manipulation, robot-assisted medicine, and legged locomotion.

More information can be found on the Intelligent Motion Lab website...

Selected Publications

Full list...

Information for Prospective Students

  • PhD candidates. I generally accept applications for highly qualified PhD students on a yearly basis through the UIUC CS or ECE departments. If you email me your CV and I encourage you to apply, then I consider you a qualified candidate. If you do not receive a response, this means that your background probably isn't a good fit for my lab, and your chances of getting accepted are small.

  • Master's students. I do not admit Master's students into UIUC, so please do not bother contacting me about admissions. If you are already a Master's student at UIUC, my policy for accepting students into my lab is as follows:

    • I do not take on Master's students in their first semester, except under rare circumstances where the student is exceptionally qualified (e.g., worked in state-of-the-art R&D at a robotics company or research lab).
    • In your first semester, you should receive A's or A+'s in relevant coursework (robotics, AI, optimization, and machine learning classes). Your GPA should be 3.8 or above, overall.
    • The first semester you work in the lab is an evaluation semester. To become a full-fledged member of the lab, you must demonstrate your ability to comprehend state-of-the-art research and contribute to a research project that is likely to lead to a high-quality publication.

  • Undergraduate students. I frequently involve undergraduates in my research, both as independent study students and summer interns. My lab also participates in competitions, so I also take on students who are interested in contributing to a team effort. My minimum guidelines are that you have a 3.7 GPA, relevant coursework, and can contribute at least 10 hours per week to research.

    Note: because a large fraction of my funding comes from NSF, US citizens are much more likely to receive paid summer internships.

Information for Reviewers

Reviewers are the unsung heroes of the academic enterprise. Although I would prefer that reviewers be fairly compensated by journals and conferences, that doesn't seem like it will happen any time soon. As a small consolation, my standing policy is that if you perform a review for me, I will happily treat you to to a drink or lunch as a token of thanks for your service. Meet me in person (e.g., at a conference) to redeem this offer!

Blog posts and other musings

Prof. Hauser is an avowed atheist, humanist, and socialist. He is a member of the Freedom From Religion Foundation and The Satanic Temple. In his free time he enjoys rock climbing, skiing, diving, and spending quality time with his family and their two Great Danes.

Teaching

Notes

Robotic Systems Book, working draft
HTML format Source and interactive Jupyter notebook
Klamp't overview slides
Introduction Motion Planning Simulation and Control
These have been mostly superseded by the official documentation (C++, Python).
Why does the Metropolis-Hastings procedure satisfy the detailed balance criterion? pdf