Lorenzo Shaikewitz

Graduate Student, MIT AeroAstro

I am a graduate student at MIT AeroAstro advised by Prof. Luca Carlone. I'm broadly interested in bridging the gap between navigation and interaction, enabling robots to work in human spaces.

Previously, I was a Caltech undergrad (MechE & Controls, '23) advised by Prof. Aaron Ames and Prof. Günter Niemeyer. My undergraduate projects included a compliant ankle exoskeleton (with Maegan Tucker & Prof. Ames), an in-mouth feeding robot (with Prof. Dorsa Sadigh at Stanford), and a piano playing robot for ME 134 (with Prof. Niemeyer).

email // scholar // github // youtube

Research

I'm currently focused on finding global solutions to shape and pose estimation problems.

Master's Thesis: Optimization Techniques for Trustworthy 3D Object Understanding (May 2025)
 Lorenzo Shaikewitz
 D-Space / bibTeX
A Certifiable Algorithm for Simultaneous Shape Estimation and Object Tracking (Oct 2024)
 Lorenzo Shaikewitz, Samuel Ubellacker, and Luca Carlone
 RA-L / arXiv / code / video / bibTeX

During my undergrad I worked on assistive devices, including robotic feeding.

In-Mouth Robotic Bite Transfer with Visual and Haptic Sensing (May 2023)
 Lorenzo Shaikewitz*, Yilin Wu*, Suneel Belkhale*, Jennifer Grannen, Priya Sundaresan, and Dorsa Sadigh
 ICRA / arXiv / video / bibTeX

Blog

I occasionally write about problems I find interesting.
Revisiting CAST: World-Frame Motion Model (Feb 24, 2025)
Undergraduate Projects: Ankle Exoskeleton, Piano-Playing Robot, Line-Based Mapping (Jun 17, 2023)