Odest Chadwicke Jenkins
Odest Chadwicke Jenkins studies how robots can learn from people, perceive objects, and act in common human environments. Jenkins’s work combines learning from demonstration, semantic perception, and mobile manipulation. His Laboratory for Progress develops computational perception and reasoning methods intended to make robots usable by people in real situations. Jenkins gave a collaborative TED presentation with Henry Evans in 2013. The presentation addressed web robotics and remote presence for people with disabilities, in collaboration with Evans.
- Now at
- Laboratory for Progress
- Works
- 193
- Citations
- 4,251
- h-index
- 34
Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 14 October 2026.
Timeline
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2013
Remote presence with Henry Evans
Jenkins gave a collaborative TED presentation with Henry Evans in 2013. The presentation addressed web robotics and remote presence for people with disabilities, in collaboration with Evans.
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2021
Research recognition
AAAI elected Odest Chadwicke Jenkins as a Fellow in 2021.
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2024
AI and programming education
Jenkins taught Michigan Robotics 102, Introduction to AI and Programming, in fall 2024. He taught robotics for multiple years and had a role in creating Michigan’s robotics major.
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As of October 2026
Learning and grounded reasoning
Jenkins’s work combines learning from demonstration, semantic perception, and mobile manipulation. His Laboratory for Progress develops computational perception and reasoning methods intended to make robots usable by people in real situations.
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As of October 2026
Open robot infrastructure
His past projects include the rosbridge protocol and libraries for web and cloud robotics. Other shared projects include gesture recognition, learning state machines from demonstrations, and humanoid imitation learning.
Sources and credits
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