Carson Kohlbrenner

I am a PhD student with the Human Interaction & Robotics Group at the University of Colorado Boulder advised by Alessandro Roncone. My research interests lie in whole-body perception and learning for collaborative robotics. Specifically, my research is focused on establishing a body schema in robots through tactile sensing and artificial peri-personal space.

I am currently the primary maintainer of the GenTact Toolbox, a computational design pipeline for generating whole-body tactile skins that are fully 3D printable.

When I'm not immersed in research, you can find me enjoying a round of golf, producing music, or enjoying the outdoors. I am always interested in new opportunities and collaborations!

Email / CV / Google Scholar / Github / Medium / LinkedIn

Impacts

2026

Outstanding Paper Award by the University of Colorado Boulder for my latest ICRA paper — Outstanding Paper AwardCU Boulder Graduate Awards, Boulder, Colorado

2025

Live Demo at Dr. Roncone's Tenure Talk — Live DemoDr. Roncone's Tenure Talk, University of Colorado Boulder

2025

Community Recognition: Brett Adcock, X — Community Recognition (X)Brett Adcock, Founder and CEO of Figure AI

2025

Publications

Conference Papers

2026		Design, Mapping, and Contact Anticipation with 3D-printed Whole-Body Tactile and Proximity Sensors IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2026 Carson Kohlbrenner, Anna Soukhovei, Caleb Escobedo, Nataliya Nechyporenko, Alessandro Roncone project page / code / arXiv
2025		GenTact Toolbox: A Computational Design Pipeline to Procedurally Generate Context-Driven 3D Printed Whole-Body Tactile Skins IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2025 Carson Kohlbrenner, Caleb Escobedo, S. Sandra Bae, Alexander Dickhans, Alessandro Roncone project page / code / arXiv

Workshop Papers

2025		Form-Fitting, Large-Area Sensor Mounting for Obstacle Detection Humanoids Workshop on Advances in Contact-Rich Robotics: Rich Tactile-Based Physical Interaction [ConRich], 2025 Anna Soukhovei, Carson Kohlbrenner, Caleb Escobedo, Alexander Gholmieh, Alexander Dickhans, Alessandro Roncone project page arXiv
2024		A Machine Learning Approach to Contact Localization in Variable Density Three-Dimensional Tactile Artificial Skin NeurIPS - Workshop on Touch Processing, 2024 Carson Kohlbrenner, Mitchell Murray, Yutong Zhang, Caleb Escobedo, Thomas Dunnington, Nolan Stevenson, Nikolaus Correll, Alessandro Roncone code / arXiv

Preprints

2024

A Sensor Position Localization Method for Flexible, Non-uniform Capacitive Tactile Sensor Arrays
arXiv Preprint, 2024

Carson Kohlbrenner, Caleb Escobedo, Nataliya Nechyporenko, Alessandro Roncone

code / arXiv

Technical Reports

2025		Whole-Body Dynamic Obstacle Avoidance with Humanoid Skin Deep Reinforcement Learning Final Project, 2025 Niraj Pudasaini, Carson Kohlbrenner, William Xie paper
		Converting the EuRoC MAV Dataset to MCAP and visualizing SLAM using Foxglove Foxglove Tutorial, 2025 Carson Kohlbrenner code article
2024		Training CLIP to Recognize Objects with Tactile Sensors Transformer Based Robotic AI, 2024 Carson Kohlbrenner, Nikolaus Correll code article
		Self-Landing Rocket using Deep Reinforcement Learning Decision Making Under Uncertainty Final Project, 2024 Carson Kohlbrenner, Owen Craig, Thomas Dunnington code paper
		Autonomous Localization for GPS-denied Aerial Tracking and Reconnaissance (ALLIGATR) Senior Capstone Project, 2024 Carson Kohlbrenner, Thomas Dunnington, Nolan Stevenson, Nyah Baltazar, Andrew Kabos, Marcus Quintanilla, Yarden Kelmann, Blair Schulze, Nicholas Grant, Zane Vandivere, Lucia Witikko, Brendan Bradley code paper
2023		Linear Temporal Logic Planning for Quadcopter Reconnaissance in Densely Populated Environments Motion Planning Final Project, 2023 Carson Kohlbrenner, Nolan Stevenson code paper

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