I'm Caleb Escobedo. I defended my PhD in Computer Science at the University of Colorado Boulder on May 18, 2026. I build sensing systems that give robots awareness of the space around their bodies, from pre-touch proximity through contact, and the control policies that let manipulators react safely in real time.
My work spans hardware to learned behavior: I design full-body 3D-printed sensor skins and develop multiple sensing modalities to cover the near-body region. I pair these with model-based and learning-based controllers for collision avoidance and reactive manipulation. I developed this research at the HIRO Lab at CU Boulder and hold two US patents from my time at Samsung AI Center–New York.