Sensor Systems Laboratory

Recent Publications [2020 to 2025]

TetraGrip: Sensor-Driven Multi-Suction Reactive Object Manipulation in Cluttered Scenes, Paolo Torrado, Joshua Levin, Markus Grotz, Joshua R. Smith, 2025 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), DOI: 10.1109/IROS60139.2025.11247150, November 2025

Optigrasp: Optimized grasp pose detection using rgb images for warehouse picking robots, Soofiyan Atar, Yi Li, Markus Grotz, Michael Wolf, Dieter Fox, Joshua R. Smith, 2025 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 16634-16641, October 2025.  [pdf]

Radiolunadiff: Estimation of wireless network signal strength in lunar terrain, Paolo Torrado, Anders Pearson, Jason Klein, Alexander Moscibroda, Joshua R. Smith, arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.14559, September 2025.  [pdf]

Electrostatic Clutches Enable Simultaneous Mechanical Multiplexing, Timothy E. Amish, Jeffrey T. Auletta, Chad C. Kessens, Joshua R. Smith, Jeffrey I. Lipton, arXiv preprint arXiv:2501.08469, January 2025.  [pdf]

Electrostatic brakes enable individual joint control of underactuated, highly articulated robots, Patrick Lancaster, Christoforos Mavrogiannis, Siddhartha Srinivasa, Joshua R. Smith, The International Journal of Robotics Research 43 (14), 2204-2220, December 2024.  [pdf]

Wirelessly Powered Visible Light-Emitting Implant for Surgical Guidance during Lumpectomy, Sunghoon Rho, Roy A Stillwell, Kedi Yan, Ana Flavia Borges de Almeida Barreto, Joshua R Smith, Patrick Fay, Alice M Police, Thomas D O’Sullivan, Sensors 24 (17), 5639, August 2024

Johnsen-Rahbek Capstan Clutch: A High Torque Electrostatic Clutch, Timothy E. Amish, Jeffrey T. Auletta, Chad C. Kessens, Joshua R. Smith, Jeffrey I. Lipton, 2024 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 148-154, May 2024.  [pdf]

Carrier-free RFID: Using modulated noise communication to read UHF RFID tags, Shanti M. Garman, Ali Saffari, Daisuke Kobuchi, Dara Stotland, Joshua R. Smith, Zerina Kapetanovic, IEEE Journal of Radio Frequency Identification 8, 196-205, March 2024.  [pdf]

Dynamo-grasp: Dynamics-aware optimization for grasp point detection in suction grippers, Boling Yang, Soofiyan Atar, Markus Grotz, Byron Boots, Joshua R. Smith, Conference on Robot Learning, 2096-2112, December 2023.  [pdf]

Cosmic backscatter: New ways to communicate via modulated noise, Zerina Kapetanovic, Shanti M. Garman, Dara Stotland, Joshua R. Smith, Proceedings of the 22nd ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks, 165-171, November 2023.  [pdf]

Neuricam: Key-frame video super-resolution and colorization for IoT cameras, Bandhav Veluri, Collin Pernu, Ali Saffari, Joshua R. Smith, Michael Taylor, Shyamnath Gollakota, Proceedings of the 29th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking, October 2023.  [pdf]

Roaming DTN: Integrating Unscheduled Nodes into Contact Plan Based DTN Networks, Dominick Ta, Rohan Menon, John Taggart, Andrew Tettamanti, Seth Feaser, Paolo Torrado, Joshua R. Smith, 2023 IEEE Cognitive Communications for Aerospace Applications Workshop (CCAAW), June 2023

Magnetic field coupling with lunar soil simulants, Shanti M. Garman, Melissa C. Roth, Vincent G. Roux, Joshua R. Smith, Nature Scientific Reports 13 (9713), June 15, 2023, doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-36527-0.  [pdf]

Modulated Noise Communication: Reading UHF RFID tags without a carrier, Shanti M. Garman, Ali Saffari, Daisuke Kobuchi, Joshua R. Smith, Zerina Kapetanovic, 2023 IEEE International Conference on RFID (RFID), 19-24, June 2023.  [pdf]

Harvesting Watts at Ultra-High Frequencies, Shanti M. Garman, Vanessa Affandy, Joshua R. Smith, 2023 IEEE Wireless Power Technology Conference and Expo (WPTCE), 1-6, June 2023

Suppression of Receiver Harmonic Currents in Wireless Power Transfer Systems, Daisuke Kobuchi, Gregory E. Moore, Yoshiaki Narusue, Joshua R. Smith, 2023 IEEE Wireless Power Technology Conference and Expo (WPTCE), 1-5, June 2023

Stackelberg games for learning emergent behaviors during competitive autocurricula, Boling Yang, Liyuan Zheng, Lillian J. Ratliff, Byron Boots, Joshua R. Smith, arXiv preprint arXiv:2305.03735, May 2023.  [pdf]

Towards robustly picking unseen objects from densely packed shelves, Markus Grotz, Soofiyan Atar, Yi Li, Paolo Torrado, Boling Yang, Nick Walker, Michael Murray, Maya Cakmak, Joshua R. Smith, RSS Workshop on Perception and Manipulation Challenges for Warehouse Automation, 2023.  [pdf]

Smart breast clip: A wireless implant for continuous molecular sensing of breast masses, Alicia Y. Wei, Gregory Moore, Kedi Yan, Brody Mahoney, Joahua R. Smith, Thomas D. O'Sullivan, Label-free Biomedical Imaging and Sensing (LBIS) 2022, PC1197215, 2022

Communication by means of modulated Johnson noise, Zerina Kapetanvic, Miguel Morales, Joshua R. Smith, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Vol. 119, No. 49, e2201337119, November 1, 2022. [Arxiv]

Hierarchical Control Strategy for Moving A Robot Manipulator Between Small Containers, Paolo Torrado, Boling Yang, Joshua R. Smith, arXiv preprint arXiv:2211.15752, November 2022.  [pdf]

A ±0.5-mV-Minimum-Input DC-DC Converter With Stepwise Adiabatic Gate-Drive and Efficient Timing Control for Thermoelectric Energy Harvesting, Eric J. Carlson and Joshua R, Smith, in IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers, 2022, doi: 10.1109/TCSI.2022.3219402 [Techrxiv]

Wireless Identification and Sensing Platform Version 6.0, Rohan Menon, Rohit Gujarathi, Ali Saffari, Joshua R. Smith, SenSys '22: Proceedings of the 20th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems, November 2022

An analytical model for stepwise adiabatic driver energy consumption, Eric J. Carlson and Joshua R. Smith, arXiv preprint arXiv:2210.16680, October 2022.  [pdf]

Optical Proximity Sensing for Pose Estimation During In-Hand Manipulation, Patrick Lancaster, Pratik Gyawali, Christoforos Mavrogiannis, Siddhartha S Srinivasa, Joshua R. Smith, 2022 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), October 2022.  [pdf]

Acoustic Balance: Weighing in Ultrasonic Non-Contact Manipulators, Jared Nakahara, Joshua R. Smith, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters 7 (4), 9145-9150, 2022.  [pdf]

Analysis and Design of a Multi-hop Resonant Wireless Power Transfer System: Optimal Intermediate Coil Size and Location, Kedi Yan, Gregory E. Moore, Joshua R. Smith, Wireless Power Week (WPW), 454-459, 2022

Motivating Physical Activity via Competitive Human-Robot Interaction, Boling Yang, Golnaz Habibi, Patrick Lancaster, Byron Boots, Joshua R. Smith, Conference on Robot Learning, 839-849, 2022.  [pdf]

Stackelberg MADDPG: Learning Emergent Behaviors via Information Asymmetry in Competitive Games, Boling Yang, Liyuan Zheng, Lillian J. Ratliff, Byron Boots, Joshua R. Smith, AAAI Reinforcement Learning in Games Workshop, 2022

Lessons for robotics from the control architecture of the octopus, Dominic M. Sivitilli, Joshua R. Smith, David H. Gire, Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 131, 2022

Adaptive Wireless Power Transfer and Backscatter Communication for Perpetual Operation of Wireless Brain-Computer Interfaces, Gregory E. Moore, James D. Rosenthal, Joshua R. Smith, Matthew S. Reynolds, Proceedings of the IEEE, December 10, 2021 

Proximity Perception in Human-centered Robotics: A Survey on Sensing Systems and Applications, Stefan Escaida Navarro, Stephan Mühlbacher-Karrer, Hosam Alagi, Hubert Zangl, Keisuke Koyama, Björn Hein, Christian Duriez, Joshua R. Smith, IEEE Transactions on Robotics, November 1, 2021

Brain-Computer-Spinal Interface Restores Upper Limb Function After Spinal Cord Injury, Soshi Samejima, Abed Khorasani, Vaishnavi Ranganathan, Jared Nakahara, Nicholas M. Tolley, Adrien Boissenin, Vahid Shalchyan, Mohammad Reza Daliri, Joshua R. Smith, Chet T. Moritz, IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering, Vol 29, pp 1233-1242, June 17, 2021

WHISPER: Wireless Home Identification and Sensing Platform for Energy Reduction, Margarite Jacoby, Sin Yong Tan, Mohamad Katanbaf, Ali Saffari, Homagni Saha, Zerina Kapetanovic, Jasmine Garland, Anthony Florita, Gregor Henze, Soumik Sarkar, Joshua R. Smith, Journal of Sensor and Actuator Networks, 2021. [pdf]

MultiScatter: Multistatic Backscatter Networking for Battery-Free Sensors, Mohamad Katanbaf, Ali Saffari, Joshua R. Smith, SenSys 2021. [pdf]

Battery-Free Camera Occupancy Detection System, Ali Saffari, Sin Yong Tan, Mohamad Katanbaf, Homagni Saha, Joshua R. Smith, Soumik Sarkar, EMDL 2021

Simplifying Backscatter Deployment: Full-Duplex LoRa Backscatter,  Mohamad Katanbaf, Anthoney Weinanad, Vamsi Talla, NSDI 2021

Receiver Selectivity Limits on Bistatic Backscatter Range, Mohamad Katanbaf, Ali saffari, Joshua R. Smith, 2020 IEEE International Conference on RFID, 2020

Contact-less Manipulation of Millimeter-scale Objects via Ultrasonic Levitation, Jared Nakahara, Boling Yang, Joshua R. Smith, 8th IEEE RAS/EMBS International Conference for Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics (BioRob), 2020

Classifying WLAN Packets from the RF Envelope: Towards More Efficient Wireless Netowrk Performance, Zerina Kapetanovic*, Gregory Moore*, Shanti M. Garman, Joshua R. Smith, ACM EMDL 2020  (*Primary Co-authors)

Relacks: Reliable Backscatter Communication in indoor environments, Mohamad Katanbaf, Vivek Jain, Joshua R. Smith, Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable, and Ubiquitous Technologies, 2020 [pdf]

Glaze: Overalying Occupied Spectrum with Downlink IoT Transmissions, Zerina Kapetanovic, Ali Saffari, Ranveer Chandra, Joshua R. Smith, Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable, and Ubiquitous Technologies, 2020 [Video]

Advances and Open Problems in Backscatter Networking, Vamsi Talla, Joshua R. Smith, Shyamnath Gollakota, GetMobile: Mobile Computing and Communications Vol 24 Issue 4, pp 32-38, December 2020

Previous Publications [through 2019]

Improved Proximity, Contact, and Force Sensing via Optimization of Elastomer-Air Interface Geometry, Patrick E. Lancaster, Joshua R. Smith, Siddhartha S. Srinivasa, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, May 2019.

Battery_Free Video Streaming Camera System, Ali Saffari, Mehrdad Hessar, Saman Naderiparizi, Joshua R. Smith, IEEE International Conference on RFID (RFID), April, 2019.

NeuralCLIP: A Modular FPGA-Based Neural Interface for Closed-Loop Operation, Vaishnavi Ranganathan, Jared Nakahara, Soshi Samejima, Nicholas Tolley, Abed Khorasani, Chet T. Moritz, Joshua R. Smith, 9th International IEEE EMBS Conference on Neural Engineering, March 20, 2019.

RF Bandaid: A Fully-Analog and Passive Wireless Interface for Wearable Sensors, Vaishnavi Ranganathan, Sidhant Gupta, Jonathan Lester, Joshua R. Smith, Desney Tan, Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies, June 2018. ***Distinguished Paper award winner*** 

Wireless Quantization Index Modulation: Enabling Communication Through Existing Signals, Zerina Kapetanovic, Vamsi Talla, Aaron Parks , Jing Qian, Joshua Smith, IEEE RFID, 2018/4/10. Best Paper Nominee

RF-powered, Backscatter-based Cameras, Saman Naderiparizi, Zerina Kapetanovic, Joshua R. Smith, IEEE 11th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EUCAP), pp. 346-349, 2017.

LoRa Backscatter: Enabling the Vision of Ubiquitous Connectivity, Vamsi Talla,2 Mehrdad Hessar, Bryce Kellogg, Ali Najafi, Joshua R. Smith, Shyamnath Gollakota, Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT), September 15, 2017. ***Distinguished Paper award winner*** 

Battery-Free Cellphone, Vamsi Talla,2 Bryce Kellogg, Shyamnath Gollakota, Joshua R. Smith, Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT), September 15, 2017.

Fast Downstream to Many (Computational) RFIDs, Henko Aantjes, Amjad Y Majid, Przemyslaw Pawelczak, Jethro Tan, Aaron Parks, Joshua R Smith, Proc. IEEE INFOCOM 2017, June 14, 2017.

Pre-touch Sensing for Sequential Manipulation, Boling Yang, Patrick Lancaster, Joshua R. Smith, Proceedings of ICRA 2017, May 2017.

Finding Common Ground: A Survey of Capacitive Sensing in Human-Computer Interaction, Tobias Grosse-Puppendahl, Christian Holz, Gabe Cohn, Raphael Wimmer, Oskar Bechtold, Steve Hodges, Matthew S Reynolds, Joshua R Smith, Proceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGCHI Conference (CHI 2017), May 6, 2017.

FM Backscatter: Enabling Connected Cities and Smart Fabrics, Anran Wang, Vikram Iyer, Vamsi Talla, Joshua R. Smith, Shyamnath Gollakota, 14th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI 17), March 27, 2017.

Passive Wi-Fi: Bringing Low Power to Wi-Fi Transmissions, Bryce Kellogg, Vamsi Talla, Shyamnath Gollakota, Joshua R. Smith, Usenix Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI), 2016. ***Best Paper***

2D and 3D Millimeter-Wave Synthetic Aperture Radar Imaging on a PR2 Platform, Claire M Watts, Patrick Lancaster, Andreas Pedross-Engel, Joshua R Smith, Matthew S Reynolds, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2016), October, 2016.

Inter-Technology Backscatter: Towards Internet Connectivity for Implanted Devices, Vikram Iyer, Vamsi Talla, Bryce Kellogg, Shyamnath Gollakota, Joshua R Smith, Proceedings of the 2016 ACM SIGCOMM Conference (SIGCOMM 2016), August 2016. ***Best Paper***

Battery-Free Connected Machine Vision with WISPCam, Saman Naderiparizi, Zerina Kapetanovic, Joshua R. Smith, GetMobile Magazine, 2016.

WISPCam: An RF-Powered Smart Camera for Machine Vision Applications, Saman Naderiparizi, Zerina Kapetanovic, Joshua R. Smith, ASPLOS HLPC Workshop, April 2016.

Design and Analysis of Rectifying and Regulating Rectifier with PWM and PFM Modes, Vamsi Talla, Joshua R. Smith, , May 2016.

A High-Voltage Compliant Neural Stimulator With HF Wireless Power and UHF Backscatter Communication, Vaishnavi Ranganathan, Brody Mahoney, Eric Pepin, Michael Sunshine, Chet T. Moritz, Jacques C. Rudell, Joshua R. Smith, IEEE WPTC, 2016.

Analysis of a Near Field Communication Wireless Power System, Yi Zhao, Brody Mahoney, Joshua R. Smith, IEEE WPTC, 2016.

Dual Band Wireless Power and Bi-Directional Data Link for Implanted Devices in 65 nm CMOS, Vamsi Talla, Vaishnavi Ranganathan, Brody Mahoney, Joshua R. Smith, , May 2016.

A high-voltage compliant neural stimulator with HF wireless power and UHF backscatter communication, Vaishnavi Ranganathan, Brody Mahoney, Eric Pepin, Michael D Sunshine, Chet T Moritz, Jacques C Rudell, Joshua R Smith, 2016 IEEE Wireless Power Transfer Conference (WPTC 2016), May 2016.

BLISP: Enhancing backscatter radio with active radio for computational RFIDs, Ivar in't Veen, Qingzhi Liu, Przemyslaw Pawelczak, Aaron Parks, Joshua R Smith, 2016 IEEE International Conference on RFID (IEEE RFID 2016), May 2016.

uMonitor: In-situ Energy Monitoring with Microwatt power consumption, Saman Naderiparizi, Aaron N. Parks, Farshid Salemi, Joshua R. Smith, IEEE RFID, May 2016.

Wisent: Robust downstream communication and storage for computational RFIDs, Jethro Tan, Przemysław Pawełczak, Aaron Parks, Joshua R Smith, IEEE INFOCOMM, The 35th Annual IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications, April 2016.

Large Area Wireless Power via a Planar Array of Coupled Resonators, Xingyi Shi, Joshua R. Smith, IEEE IWAT, Feb 2016.

Transmissive Optical Pretouch Sensing for Robotic Grasping, Di Guo, Patrick Lancaster, Liang-Ting Jiang, Fuchun Sun, Joshua R. Smith, Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2015 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on, Hamburg, pp. 5891-5897, 2015.

Powering the Next Billion Devices with Wi-Fi, V Talla,1 B Kellogg, B Ransford,2 S Naderiparizi,1 S Gollakota, JR Smith, ACM CoNext, Heidelberg, Germany, December 1-4, 2015. Nominated for Best Paper Award

Self-Localizing Battery-Free Cameras, Saman Naderiparizi, Yi Zhao, James Youngquist, Alanson P. Sample, Joshua R. Smith, Proceedings of the 2015 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing. ACM, September 2015.

NFC-WISP: an open source software defined near field RFID sensing platform, Yi Zhao, Joshua R. Smith, Alanson Sample, Ubicomp, 2015.

WISPCam: A Battery-Free RFID Camera, Saman Naderiparizi, Aaron N. Parks, Zerina Kapetanovic, Benjamin Ransford, Joshua R. Smith, IEEE RFID, April 15-17 2015.

Physical human interactive guidance: Identifying grasping principles from human-planned grasps, R Balasubramanian, L Xu, PD Brook, JR Smith, Y Matsuoka, The Human Hand as an Inspiration for Robot Hand Development, pp 477-500, Springer, 2014.

The Emergence of RF-Powered Computing, S. Gollakota, M. Reynolds, J.R. Smith, D. Wetherall, IEEE Computer, Vol. 47, No. 1, pp. 32-39, Jan 2014.

Enabling Seamless Wireless Power Delivery in Dynamic Environments, Alanson P. Sample, Benjamin H. Waters, Scott Wisdom, Joshua R. Smith, (Invited) Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol 101, Issue 6, pp. 1343-1358, June 2013.

Evaluation of Wireless Resonant Power Transfer Systems with Human Electromagnetic Exposure Limits, Andreas Christ, Mark G. Douglas, John Roman, Emily B. Cooper, Alanson P. Sample, Benjamin H. Waters, Joshua R. Smith, Niels Kuster, IEEE Transactions on Electromagnetic Compatibility, Vol. 55, Issue 2, pp.  265-275. April 2013.

Physical Human Interactive Guidance: Identifying Grasping Principles From Human-Planned Grasps, Ravi Balasubramanian, Ling Xu, Peter Brook, Joshua R. Smith, Yoky Matsuoka, IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO), Vol. 28 No. 4, pp. 899-910, Aug. 2012.

Powering a Ventricular Assist Device (VAD) with the Free-range Resonant Electrical Energy Delivery (FREE-D) System, B. H. Waters, A. P. Sample, P. Bonde, J.R. Smith. (Invited) Proceedings of the IEEE, vol. 100, No. 1, pp. 138-149, January 2012.

Analysis, Experimental Results, and Range Adaptation of Magnetically Coupled Resonators for Wireless Power Transfer, Alanson P. Sample, David T. Meyer, Joshua R. Smith, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, Vol. 58, No. 2, pp 544-554, Feb 2011.

RFID: From Supply Chains to Sensor Nets, S. Roy, V. Jandhyala, J.R. Smith, D.J. Wetherall, B.P. Otis, R. Chakraborty, M. Buettner, D.J. Yeager, Y.-C. Ko, A.P. Sample1, Proceedings of the IEEE, vol.98, no.9, pp.1583-1592, Sept. 2010. 

NeuralWISP: A Wirelessly Powered Neural Interface with 1-m Range, Daniel J. Yeager, Jeremy Holleman, Richa Prasad, Joshua R. Smith, and Brian Otis, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems, Volume 3, Issue 6, pp. 379-387, Oct 2009.

Design of an RFID-Based Battery-Free Programmable Sensing Platform.  A.P. Sample, D.J. Yeager, P.S. Powledge, A.V. Mamishev, J.R. Smith.  IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, Vol. 57, No. 11, pp. 2608-2615, Nov. 2008

Energy scavenging for inductively coupled passive RFID systems.  B. Jiang4, J. R. Smith, M. Philipose, S. Roy, K. Sundara-Rajan4, and A. Mamishev.  IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, Vol. 56, No. 1, pp. 118-125, February 2007

RFID-Based Techniques for Human Activity Detection.  Joshua R. Smith, Kenneth P. Fishkin, Bing Jiang4,  Alexander Mamishev, Matthai Philipose, Adam Rea, Sumit Roy, Kishore Sundara-Rajan4. Communications of the ACM, v48, no. 9, pp. 39-44, Sep 2005.

Battery-Free Wireless Identification and Sensing.  Matthai Philipose, Joshua R. Smith, Bing Jiang4, Kishore Sundara-Rajan4, Alexander Mamishev, Sumit Roy. IEEE Pervasive Computing, Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 37-45, January-March 2005.

Electric Field Sensing for Graphical Interfaces. Joshua R. Smith, Tom White, Christopher Dodge, David Allport, Joseph Paradiso, and Neil Gershenfeld.  Computer Graphics and Applications, Vol. 18, No. 3, pp 54-61, 1998.

Field Mice: Extracting Hand Geometry From Electric Field Measurements. Joshua R. Smith. IBM Systems Journal, Vol. 35, No. 3&4, pp 587-608, 1996.