Pieter Abbeel
Belgian-American robotics professor and co-founder of Covariant
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Pieter Abbeel is a Belgian-American computer scientist at UC Berkeley who pioneered teaching robots skills through deep reinforcement learning and imitation. He co-founded the robotics AI company Covariant and hosts The Robot Brains podcast.
Biography
Education
Abbeel studied electrical engineering at KU Leuven and earned his PhD at Stanford under Andrew Ng, using apprenticeship learning to teach autonomous helicopters aerobatic manoeuvres.
Berkeley
As a professor at UC Berkeley since 2008, he directs the Robot Learning Lab and co-directs BAIR. His lab taught a robot to fold laundry and developed deep reinforcement-learning methods.
OpenAI and Covariant
He worked at OpenAI in 2016–2017 and co-founded Covariant, which builds AI for warehouse robots. In 2024 Amazon licensed its models and hired its founders, including Abbeel.
Teaching
He co-founded Gradescope, a grading tool, and hosts The Robot Brains podcast.
Timeline
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2008
PhD from Stanford; joins Berkeley
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2010
Laundry-folding robot
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2016
Joins OpenAI
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2017
Co-founds Covariant
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2024
Joins Amazon with Covariant’s team
Awards and honours
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ACM Prize in Computing
2021
Did you know?
-
1
His towel-folding robot video went viral.
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2
Gradescope was bought by Turnitin.
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3
He was a student of Andrew Ng.
Connections
Frequently asked
Who is Pieter Abbeel?
Pieter Abbeel is a Belgian-American computer scientist at UC Berkeley who pioneered teaching robots skills through deep reinforcement learning and imitation. He co-founded the robotics AI company Covariant and hosts The Robot Brains podcast.
Where is Pieter Abbeel from?
Pieter Abbeel was born in Antwerp, Belgium.
What is Pieter Abbeel known for?
Pieter Abbeel is best known for Robot learning; Berkeley Robot Learning Lab; co-founding Covariant; The Robot Brains podcast.
What awards has Pieter Abbeel received?
Notable honours include ACM Prize in Computing (2021).
References
- Pieter Abbeel — Wikipedia. Wikipedia. Retrieved 4 November 2026.
- Official website. people.eecs.berkeley.edu. Retrieved 4 November 2026.
- Pieter Abbeel (Q33374357) — structured data. Wikidata. Retrieved 4 November 2026.
Includes material from the Wikipedia article “Pieter Abbeel”, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. That text is available under the same licence. Learn more
External links
About this profile
- Researched by the TrackFame editorial team; reviewed by Sanjay Sokal under our editorial policy
- First published 4 November 2026
- Last updated
Cite this page
“Pieter Abbeel.” TrackFame, last updated 5 November 2026. https://trackfame.com/person/pieter-abbeel
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