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November 12: Yun Chang: Robot Scene Understanding for Extreme Environments: from subterranean to heavy equipment

November 12: Yun Chang: Robot Scene Understanding for Extreme Environments: from subterranean to heavy equipment

November 12, 2026

Yun spent a decade at MIT earning a Bachelor's, Master's, and PhD, working in the SPARK Lab under Professor Luca Carlone. The research centered on robot perception — compressing the world into representations a machine can act on. Yun is now co-founding a stealth startup bringing autonomy to the large machines that run society's infrastructure.

Meeting Announcement

  • When: Thursday, November 12, 2026, 7:00 to 9:00pm
  • Where: Artisans Asylum (96 Holton Street, Boston, MA 02135))
  • Register: Register

Agenda

  • 7:00 Mingle, network, show and tell
  • 7:30 Lightning Talks
    • TBD
    • TBD
  • 7:45 Featured Speaker: Yun Chang
  • 8:30 Q&A and Open Discussion
  • 9:00 End of formal meeting

Robot Scene Understanding for Extreme Environments: from subterranean to heavy equipment

Autonomous Bobcat heavy equipment loader

Yun will share experience from the DARPA Subterranean Challenge — where robots had to build and act on scene understanding in dark, GPS-denied, unpredictable underground environments — and from current startup work bringing autonomy to heavy equipment: the large machines that run society's infrastructure.

Watch highlights from both efforts:

Speaker: Yun Chang

Yun spent a decade at MIT earning a Bachelor's, Master's, and PhD, working in the SPARK Lab under Professor Luca Carlone. The research centered on robot perception — compressing the world into representations a machine can act on. Yun is now co-founding a stealth startup bringing autonomy to the large machines that run society's infrastructure.