Yahav Avigal

About

Yahav Avigal is a roboticist whose work spans the frontier of dexterous manipulation, from folding garments and untangling cables to grasping transparent objects and automating surgery. Her research centers on integrating perception, motion planning, and learning to enable robots to handle complex, deformable, and delicate objects with speed and reliability. She is best known for **SpeedFolding** (87 citations), which introduced an efficient bimanual system for folding garments by first smoothing them into a canonical configuration. Her **Dex-NeRF** (61 citations) pioneered the use of neural radiance fields to perceive and grasp transparent objects—a notoriously difficult challenge for depth cameras. Avigal also advanced high-speed pick-and-place with **GOMP-FIT** and **GOMP-ST**, optimizing motion planning for inertial and suction-based transport. Her work extends to agriculture with **AlphaGardenSim** (15 citations), a simulator for polyculture farming automation, and to medicine with automated vascular shunt insertion using the dVRK surgical robot. With over 280 total citations, Avigal’s contributions are shaping the next generation of robots that can operate in unstructured, dynamic environments—from warehouses and farms to hospitals and homes.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   SpeedFolding: Learning Efficient Bimanual Folding of Garments

   87 citations · 2022
2. 2
   Deep learning can accelerate grasp-optimized motion planning

   70 citations · 2020
3. 3
   Dex-NeRF: Using a Neural Radiance Field to Grasp Transparent Objects

   61 citations · 2021
4. 4
   GOMP-FIT: Grasp-Optimized Motion Planning for Fast Inertial Transport

   22 citations · 2022
5. 5
   Simulating Polyculture Farming to Learn Automation Policies for Plant Diversity and Precision Irrigation

   15 citations · 2022
6. 6
   SGTM 2.0: Autonomously Untangling Long Cables using Interactive Perception

   12 citations · 2023
7. 7
   Automating Vascular Shunt Insertion with the dVRK Surgical Robot

   7 citations · 2023
8. 8
   6-DoF Grasp Planning using Fast 3D Reconstruction and Grasp Quality CNN

   7 citations · 2020
9. 9
   GOMP-ST: Grasp Optimized Motion Planning for Suction Transport

   6 citations · 2022
10. 10
    Dex-Net AR: Distributed Deep Grasp Planning Using a Commodity Cellphone and Augmented Reality App

    5 citations · 2020

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links