Who is Pieter Abbeel?

Pieter Abbeel is a prominent identity in artificial intelligence and robotics. Born in Antwerp, Belgium, but now residing in the United States, Abbeel is a computer scientist and professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

Abbeel specializes in machine learning and robotics and has made significant contributions to the development of autonomous systems. He is also an entrepreneur and founder of Covariant.ai and the university grading system Gradescope.

Below, let’s take a more detailed look at Abbeel and what he has been involved in so far.

Table of Contents

Education

Abbeel earned a Bachelor and Master of Science in Electrical Engineering at KU Leuven University in Belgium before moving to the United States at some point around 2000.

Once on American soil, he studied for a Master of Science in Computer Science at Stanford and worked under renowned researcher Daphne Koller.

Abbeel had not intended to complete a Ph.D., but took numerous AI classes under Koller and was inspired to pursue the field further after realizing that artificial intelligence could be used to solve problems in numerous other disciplines.

Under Andrew Ng, Abbeel’s dissertation focused on programming robots to learn in a similar way to human apprentices. The approach enabled autonomous systems to learn advanced helicopter aerobatics and a four-legged robot to traverse rugged terrain.

Academic work at Berkeley

Fresh out of Stanford, Abbeel joined the University of California, Berkeley, as an assistant professor in August 2008

Upon his arrival, Abbeel established the Berkeley Robot Learning Lab, and, in 2014, started Gradescope (acquired by Turnitin in 2018) with other Berkeley-affiliated engineers Ibrahim Awwal, Sergey Karayev, and Arjun Singh.

Two years later, he started the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR) laboratory with a mixture of undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral students working on robotics and machine learning.

He continues to teach at Berkeley today in the fields of self-supervised and unsupervised learning, meta-learning, deep learning, and reinforcement learning. Some of the courses Abbeel instructs include Deep Unsupervised Learning, Intro to AI, and The Business of AI.

OpenAI

Whilst still at Stanford, Abbeel joined OpenAI as a research scientist in June 2016.

In a post that announced the move, OpenAI noted that Abbeel had been providing the company with advice since before it was founded and that, together, “we will explore ways to combine unsupervised learning with RL, which we believe could address fundamental limitations in today’s RL algorithms.”

Just 16 months later, Abbeel left OpenAI to pursue other ventures. He followed former colleague Andrej Karpathy who had also left to involve himself in commercial applications of artificial intelligence.

Covariant.ai

For Abbeel, this venture turned out to be Covariant.ai, a developer of AI software he co-founded with Rocky Duan, Peter Chen, and Tianhao Zhang.

All four co-founders were members of UC Berkeley’s BAIR lab and wanted to develop robots that could be trained in (and interact with) uncontrolled, real-world environments. After talking with various industry leaders from eCommerce to agriculture, Abbeel and his counterparts decided that logistics would be the ideal first use case.

Today, Covariant.ai bills itself as “one AI robotics platform for all your automation needs.” The company offers robotics for various warehouse operations such as depalletization, goods-to-person picking, automated induction onto unit sorters, and high-speed sortation for batch-picking, returns, and processing.

Key takeaways:

Pieter Abbeel is a prominent identity in artificial intelligence and robotics. Born in Antwerp, Belgium, but now residing in the United States, Abbeel is also a computer scientist and professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
Abbeel joined the University of California, Berkeley, as an assistant professor in 2008. There, he established the Berkeley Robot Learning Lab, and, in 2014, started Gradescope (acquired by Turnitin in 2018). In 2016, he started the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR) laboratory.
Whilst still at Stanford, Abbeel joined OpenAI as a research scientist in June 2016 but left soon after to pursue commercialization opportunities. Later, he founded Covariant.ai with some of his Berkeley colleagues – a provider of robotic systems for logistics and other warehousing operations.

Key Highlights

Pieter Abbeel: Pieter Abbeel is a significant figure in the fields of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics. He is known for his work as a computer scientist, professor, and entrepreneur, contributing to the development of autonomous systems and advancing AI research.
Early Education and Inspiration: Abbeel earned a Bachelor and Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from KU Leuven University in Belgium. He continued his education in the United States, where he pursued a Master of Science in Computer Science at Stanford University. Under the mentorship of Daphne Koller, his interest in AI was ignited, leading him to pursue further studies and research in the field.
Ph.D. at Stanford: Under the guidance of Andrew Ng, Abbeel completed his Ph.D. at Stanford. His research focused on enabling robots to learn similarly to human apprentices. He developed algorithms that allowed robots to master tasks such as advanced helicopter aerobatics and navigating challenging terrains.
Berkeley and Academic Work: Abbeel joined the University of California, Berkeley, as an assistant professor in 2008. He founded the Berkeley Robot Learning Lab, where he explored cutting-edge AI and robotics research. He was also involved in creating Gradescope, a university grading system that was later acquired by Turnitin. Abbeel continued to contribute to academia through his role as a professor and researcher.
OpenAI and Departure: Abbeel briefly joined OpenAI as a research scientist in 2016, aiming to explore the integration of unsupervised learning with reinforcement learning (RL) to address limitations in RL algorithms. After a relatively short period, he left OpenAI to explore other opportunities in AI commercialization.
Covariant.ai: Abbeel co-founded Covariant.ai, a company that develops AI software for robotics and automation, in collaboration with colleagues from UC Berkeley’s BAIR lab. Covariant.ai aims to create robots capable of learning and interacting in real-world environments. The company focuses on providing robotic solutions for various warehouse operations, showcasing its expertise in automation.
Contributions and Legacy: Abbeel’s contributions have significantly impacted the fields of AI and robotics. His work spans academic research, teaching, entrepreneurship, and commercialization. Through his endeavors, he has played a key role in advancing the capabilities of AI-driven autonomous systems, fostering innovation, and shaping the future of robotics technology.