Personal Robotics Lab: papers, people and projects

This repository is the lab's single source for:

• every paper: siddpubs-journal.bib, siddpubs-conf.bib, siddpubs-misc.bib
• everyone in the lab, current and past: people.yaml
• the lab's projects: projects.yaml

Three things are built from it, so a change here shows up in all of them:

• the lab website, https://personalrobotics.github.io/ (built by personalrobotics.github.io)
• goodrobot.ai, Sidd's website
• Sidd's CV

Paper PDFs are not stored here: they go in the lab's Google Drive folder, which syncs to the UW web server (see Add a paper's PDF).

How a change gets in

1. Open a pull request. The template lists what to check.
2. The validate check runs on it (see How mistakes are caught). Fix anything it reports; a pull request with a failing check can't be merged.
3. Once it is reviewed and merged:
   • The lab website, goodrobot.ai and the CV update on their own within minutes.

Add a paper

Add an entry to the .bib file for its kind: siddpubs-journal.bib, siddpubs-conf.bib or siddpubs-misc.bib (workshops, theses, reports, demos). Its citation key must be unique and is also the name of its PDF. For example (shortened, with a project tag added to show the field):

@inproceedings{baijal2025lrn,
    title = {Long Range Navigator (LRN) : Extending robot planning horizons beyond metric maps},
    author = {Schmittle$^{*}$, Matthew and Baijal$^{*}$, Rohan and Hatch, Nathan and Srinivasa, Siddhartha},
    booktitle = corl,
    year = {2025},
    url = {https://personalrobotics.github.io/lrn/},
    project = {interventions},
    award = {RSS-ROAR Workshop Best Paper Award Winner}
}

Beyond the usual title, author, venue and year, these fields change how the paper appears on the websites:

Field	Shows as	Notes
url	a Website button	the paper's project page. Use a link that will outlive your time in the lab
video	a Video button	e.g. a YouTube link
doi, eprint	DOI and arXiv buttons	eprint is the arXiv id, e.g. 2401.12345
award	a red award badge	the award's name only, e.g. Best Paper Award. For an award given in another year than the paper's: {2026: Test of Time Award}
project	a project tag, and the paper is listed on that project's page	an id from projects.yaml. For several: {robotfeeding, interventions}
note	bold text under the venue	short, e.g. Oral

Mark equal contributors with $^{*}$ after their family name, as above. The site shows a star and explains it.

Write each author's name the way the paper does. Lab members are recognised through the aliases in people.yaml. An author who matches no one is shown unlinked, which is fine for anyone outside the lab.

Add a paper's PDF

Upload it to the Publications folder of the lab's shared drive (link), named exactly <citation key>.pdf (e.g. baijal2025lrn.pdf). Within 15 minutes it is copied to https://personalrobotics.cs.washington.edu/publications/<citation key>.pdf, and a few minutes later the lab website shows a PDF button. Nothing in the .bib entry needs to change. To make it show sooner, see "To show a new PDF right away" in the website's README.

To replace a PDF, right-click the existing file and choose File information → Manage versions → Upload new version. Don't upload a second file with the same name: two files with one name can't be told apart, and lab members can't delete files from the drive.

People: people.yaml

Joining the lab: add an entry under the right heading.

- id: doe                   # unique; lower case, no spaces
  name: Jane Doe
  aliases: ["J. Doe"]       # every other way the .bib files write your name
  role: phd_student
  status: current
  start_year: 2026
  co_advisor: Dieter Fox    # optional
  website: https://janedoe.github.io/   # optional
  bio: >-                   # optional; plain text, shown on your page
    Jane works on robot learning for assistive manipulation.

role is one of professor, faculty, postdoc, phd_student, ms_student, research_staff, intern_grad or intern_undergrad.

Changing role inside the lab (intern to PhD student, MS to PhD, postdoc to faculty): keep your one entry. Move the old role into earlier_roles, oldest first, and give the entry its new role and start_year:

- id: faulkner
  name: Taylor Kessler Faulkner
  role: faculty
  status: current
  start_year: 2024
  earlier_roles:
    - {role: postdoc, start_year: 2022, end_year: 2024}

Each earlier role can also carry degree, thesis_title and co_advisor. Its years must not overlap the next role's: an earlier role ends by the year the next one starts.

Leaving: keep your entry. Change status to alumni and add:

  end_year: 2030
  current_position: Research Scientist @ Example Robotics
  thesis_title: "..."       # if you wrote one

Remove website and bio when you leave: the sites don't link or show them for alumni, and they go stale.

Projects: projects.yaml

- id: robotfeeding          # what a paper's `project` field names
  title: "Robot-Assisted Feeding"
  description: "One paragraph about the project."
  website: "https://robotfeeding.io"   # optional
  status: "active"          # or "completed" when it ends

A paper joins a project through its project field; nothing else links them.

How mistakes are caught

Every pull request runs validate, which checks the .bib files, people.yaml and projects.yaml together with sslabdata in strict mode. It fails on, among others:

• a duplicate citation key, person id or project id
• a project tag that projects.yaml doesn't define
• an author name that could be more than one lab member, such as an alias two people share
• a key sslabdata doesn't read, such as a misspelt webiste
• a value of the wrong type, such as a start_year in quotes

Each error names the file, the entry and the field.

Check your change yourself

With uv installed, from your checkout of this repository:

$ uvx sslabdata==6.0.0 --config lab.yaml --validate --strict

Validation passed. means validate will pass too. To list the authors that matched no one in people.yaml, for instance to check that your own papers link to you:

$ uvx sslabdata==6.0.0 --config lab.yaml --unresolved

To see how your change looks on the lab website before it is merged, follow "Checking a change yourself" in the website's README.

Using these entries in a LaTeX paper

Add this repository to your paper's repository as a git submodule:

$ git submodule add https://github.com/personalrobotics/pubs
$ git commit -m 'Add PRL pubs submodule'

A fresh clone of your paper then has an empty pubs directory. Fill it with:

$ git submodule update --init

Run git commands meant for the submodule from inside the pubs directory.