Noam Buckman

I received my PhD from MIT in 2023 focusing on robotics and autonomous vehicles. I was co-advised by Professors Daniela Rus and Sertac Karaman.

My research was funded by the National Defense Science & Engineering Graduate Fellowship and the Toyota Research Institute.

Prior to my PhD, I received a B.S. (2016) and M.S. (2018) in Mechanical Engineering and Mathematics from MIT.

Email / GitHub / Google Scholar / LinkedIn

My research focuses on making autonomous vehicles that can safely interact with human drivers on the road by incorporating models of human devision making into the vehicle's autonomy.

I also led the MiniCity project, a 1/10th scale miniature city and autonomous vehicles, and organized the IROS 2022 Workshop on Miniature Robot Platforms for Full-Scale Autonomous Vehicle Research.

Recent News

Mar '23:	MIT CSAIL video on our upcoming ICRA '23 work, FailureNet, for detecting failures in AVs and reckless drivers.
Feb '23:	MiniCity gets featured on Mashable and MIT CSAIL's Instagram.
Jan '23:	I successfully defended my PhD thesis "Semi-Cooperative Planning for Mixed Human-Autonomous Environments"! A recording of the talk can be found here
Jan '23:	Our recent work on infrastructure-based failure detection was accepted at ICRA 2023!
Nov '22:	Presented our poster on FailureNet at NeurIPS Workshop on Robot Learning
Oct '22:	Co-organized the Workshop on Miniature Robot Platforms for Full Scale Autonomous Vehicle Research at IROS 2022
May '22:	Presented our work on shared intersection control in the MiniCity at ICRA SAPHRI 2022

Research

	Infrastructure-based End-to-End Learning and Prevention of Driver Failure Noam Buckman, Shiva Sreeram, Mathias Lechner, Yutong Ban, Ramin Hasani, Sertac Karaman, Daniela Rus IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)* (accepted)*, 2023 paper / video /
	Evaluating Autonomous Urban Perception and Planning in a 1/10th Scale MiniCity. Noam Buckman, Alex Hansen, Sertac Karaman, Daniela Rus Sensors, 2022 paper /
	Sharing Intersection Control with Human Drivers in a 1/10th Scale Miniature City Noam Buckman, Alex Hansen, Sertac Karaman, Daniela Rus IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) Workshop on 'Shared Autonomy in Physical Human-Robot Interaction: Adaptability and Trust', 2022
	Semi-Cooperative Control for Autonomous Emergency Vehicles Noam Buckman, Wilko Schwartiing, Sertac Karaman, Daniela Rus IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2021 paper / video / code /
	Generating Visibility-Aware Trajectories for Proactive and Cooperative Motion Planning Noam Buckman, Alyssa Pierson, Sertac Karaman, Daniela Rus IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2020 paper / video /
	Sharing is Caring: Socially-Compliant Autonomous Intersection Negotiation Noam Buckman, Alyssa Pierson, Wilko Schwarting, Sertac Karaman, Daniela Rus IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2019 paper / video / code /
	Partial replanning for decentralized dynamic task allocation Noam Buckman, Han-Lim Choi, Jonathan P. How AIAA Scitech: Guidance, Navigation, and Control, 2019 paper /
	Effects of Broadcasting Over Real Ad-Hoc Networks for Distributed Mobile Robots Noam Buckman, Jonathan P. How Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS) Workshop 'Robot Communication in the Wild: Meeting the Challenges of Real-world Systems', 2017 paper /

Thesis

Semi-cooperative Planning for Mixed Human-Autonomous Environments

Noam Buckman
PhD Thesis, 2023
thesis / video /

Decentralized task allocation for dynamic, time-sensitive tasks

Noam Buckman
Masters Thesis, 2018
thesis / link /

Teaching

AI & Automation for the Enterprise

2021-2022

Learning Facilitator / Subject Matter Expert for MIT’s Schwarzman College of Computing’s first online course offered through Emeritus. I ran live weekly office hour with students, discussing in-depth the technical aspects of autonomy and the impact on various industries.

Topics covered included: natural language processing, industrial robotics, self-driving cars, and work of the future.

2.001: Structural Mechanics

Spring 2016

We developed a new curriculum: mixing classic paper psets with online homework on the MITx platform, in addition to “discovery labs” where students could “discover” concepts such as strain & stress with hands-on examples.

2.01x: Elements of Structures

2014-2016

During my 4 years of undergrad MIT, I worked with Simona Socrate to develop 2.01x. My involvement has varied over time, beginning with editing content for bugs/errors to managing a team of editors to moderating discussion forms. I even began making my own videos that walk through common problems and methodologies used in the course.

Class Projects

	Review: Adversarial Attacks on Deep Reinforcement Learning 6.s979: Deployable Machine Learning Spring 2019
	Task Prediction from Human Trajectories using Deep Learning 6.867: Machine Learning Spring 2019
	Multiagent Active Noisy Sensing and Information-Theoretic Control 6.441: Information Theory Spring 2017
	Target Tracking & Estimation with Parrot UAV 16.31: Feedback Control Design Fall 2016 video /
	Final Projects: RRT, RMPL, Constraint Programming, MIPL 16.413: Introduction to Artificial Intelligence* Fall 2016
	Intersection Traffic Light Coordination 2.166: Duckietown (Self-Driving Cars) Spring 2016