Carson Kohlbrenner

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Bio

Carson Kohlbrenner

I am a PhD student with the Human Interaction & Robotics Group at the University of Colorado Boulder, advised by Alessandro Roncone. I am a robotics researcher, with a focus on whole-body perception and embodied learning. My contributions include procedurally generated artificial skins, a variety of whole-body tactile and proximity sensors, and information theoretic discoveries on contact anticipation for collision avoidance.

I am the primary maintainer of the GenTact Toolbox, a whole-body artificial skin generation software that makes fully 3D printable sensors. Before starting my PhD, I was an assistant researcher at Technology Applications Inc. developing thermal straps for aerospace applications.

See my Google Scholar page for the most up-to-date list of all my publications.

Key Publications: Whole-Body Sensors

[ICRA 2026] Design, Mapping, and Contact Anticipation with 3D-printed Whole-Body Tactile and Proximity Sensors, C. Kohlbrenner, A. Soukhovei, C. Escobedo, N. Nechyporenko and A. Roncone (Paper) [ICRA 2025] Gentact Toolbox: A Computational Design Pipeline to Procedurally Generate Context-Driven 3D-Printed Whole-Body Artificial Skins, C. Kohlbrenner, C. Escobedo, S. Bae, A. Dickhans, and A. Roncone (Paper) [Humanoids 2026] Toward Geometry-Scalable Whole-Body Touch for Humanoids: A 3D-Printed Conformal EIT Skin, H. Chen, C. Kohlbrenner, J. Kubik, L. Rustler, A. Dickhans, K. Bartunek, A. Roncone, H. Lee, and M. Hoffmann [MSc Thesis] Procedurally Generated Whole-Body Artificial Skins for Robot Applications, C. Kohlbrenner (Paper)

Key Publications: Embodied Information Theory

[ICLR 2027] Move, Don't Think: Sample-Efficient Collision Avoidance with Lossy Proximity Sensors, C. Kohlbrenner, N. Pudasaini, W. Xie, N. Sivagnanadasan, N. Correll, and A. Roncone, (In Review)

Awards