Ruta Desai
|
Ruta Desai I am a Staff Research Scientist in Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) at Meta. At FAIR, I am exploring reasoning and long-horizon planning problems towards agents that can partner with humans. Prior to that, I was a Tech Lead Manager at Meta Reality Labs Research. At Reality Labs, I led an embodied AI team focused on solving perception and planning problems for Augmented Reality (AR) systems that can extend their users' capabilities. I am broadly interested in perception, planning, and reasoning problems for Human-AI interaction.
I obtained my PhD at the Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University in 2018 working with Stelian Coros and Jim McCann. For my thesis, I devised human-AI systems that enabled casual users to build and program robots — towards increasing accessibility of robotics. In the past, I have also had not-so-brief stints in the area of human motor control and biomechanical simulations with Hartmut Geyer and Jessica K. Hodgins. |
 Email: ruta.p.desai[at]gmail.com |
Publications
Digital and Physical Agents
|
Ask-to-Act: Grounding Multimodal LLMs to Embodied Agents that Ask for Help with Reinforcement Learning
[Under Review] International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), Brazil (2026). |
|
Collaborative Reasoner: Self-improving Social Agents with Synthetic Conversations
Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (Neurips), San Diego, USA (2025). PDF | Code | Meta AI Blog |
|
COOPERA: Continual Open-Ended Human-Robot Assistance
Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (Neurips), San Diego, USA (2025). Spotlight: Top 3% paper PDF Coming soon! |
|
ADAPT: Actively Discovering and Adapting to Preferences for any Task
Conference on Language Modeling (COLM), Montreal, Canada (2025). |
|
PARTNR: A Benchmark for Planning and Reasoning in Embodied Multi-agent Tasks
International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), Singapore (2025). PDF | Code | Webpage | Meta AI Blog |
|
Habitat 3.0: A Co-Habitat for Humans, Avatars and Robots
International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), Vienna, Austria (2024).
|
|
|
|
Vision and Language
|
Enhancing Visual Planning with Auxiliary Tasks and Multi-token Prediction
[Under Review] IEEE/CVF Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision (WACV), Arizona, USA. (2026).
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Human-AI Interaction
|
Interactive Program Synthesis for Modeling Collaborative Physical Activities from Narrated Demonstrations
[Under Review] ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), Spain (2026). |
|
|
|
|
|
Geppetto: Enabling Semantic Design of Expressive Robot Behaviors
ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), Glasgow, UK (2019). |
|
Assembly-aware Design of Printable Electromechanical Devices
ACM User Interface Software and Technology Symposium (UIST), Berlin, Germany (2018).
|
|
|
|
Interactive Co-Design of Form and Function for Legged Robots using the Adjoint Method
International Conference on Climbing and Walking Robots (CLAWAR), Panama city, Panama (2018).
Best technical paper (second place) |
|
|
3D Printing Pneumatic Device Controls with Variable Activation Force Capabilities
Marynel Vazquez, Eric Brockmeyer, Ruta Desai, Chris Harrison and Scott E. Hudson ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), Seoul, Korea, (2015). |
Human Motion Modeling, Human Motor Control, Biomechanics
|
A Simple Model of Skill Acquisition in a Dynamic Balance Task
Ruta Desai and Jessica K. Hodgins Dynamic Walking, Columbus, USA (2015). |
|
Virtual Model Control for Dynamic Lateral Balance
Ruta Desai, Hartmut Geyer, and Jessica K. Hodgins IEEE International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids), Madrid, Spain (2014). |
|
Integration of an Adaptive Swing Control into a Neuromuscular Human Walking Model
Seungmoon Song, Ruta Desai, and Hartmut Geyer IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), Osaka, Japan (2013). |
|
Muscle-Reflex Control of Robust Swing Leg Placement
Ruta Desai and Hartmut Geyer IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Karlsruhe, Germany (2013). |
|
Robust Swing Leg Placement under Large Disturbances
Ruta Desai and Hartmut Geyer IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics (ROBIO), Guangzhou, China (2012). |
Selected Patents and Preprints
|
Human Action Anticipation: A Survey
arXiv Preprint (2024). |
|
Human-Centered Planning
arXiv Preprint (2023). |
|
Optimal Assistance for Object-Rearrangement Tasks in Augmented Reality
Benjamin A. Newman, Kevin T. Carlberg, Ruta Desai, James Hillis US Patent US20220114366 A1 (2022). |
|
Generative design techniques for robot behavior
Fraser Anderson, Stelian Coros, Ruta Desai, Tovi Grossman, Justin Matejka, George Fitzmaurice US Patent 20200030988 A1 (2020). |
Academic ServiceConference Program Committee Chair and Reviewer
|
Talks and Teaching
|
Outreach
Women in Technology
I am always looking to support and contribute towards encouraging women in science and technology. In the past:
- I have led roadshows and volunteered in teaching middle school girls at Technights at CMU. We have smashed computers, fought combats in code, and have even gazed stars through apps!
- I helped organize OurCS 2015, a conference to encourage undergraduate women in research. I was also a part of Google Anita Borg Scholars Alumni Planning committee.
Selected Press
- Silicon Angle, Meta's Habitat 3.0 simulates real-world environments for intelligent AI robot training, 2023.
- Techcrunch, Embodied AI spins a pen and helps clean the living room in new research, 2023.
- Techcrunch, New toolkit makes it easy to drag and drop your own robot, 2017.
- ACM Communications, Robot Design For Dummies, 2017.
- EurekAlert, CMU's interactive tool helps novices and experts make custom robots, 2017.
- NSF, Graduate Student Earns Prestigious Scholarships for Women - Ruta Desai, 2012.
- CMU SCS, Five SCS Students Named Siebel Scholars, 2012.
Last updated: October 2025
Webpage adapted from Jon Barron.