Mimo Shirasaka

PhD Student | AI & Robotics

I'm a DPhil student in Engineering Science at the University of Oxford, advised by Prof. Ingmar Posner at the Applied Artificial Intelligence Lab in the Oxford Robotics Institute.

I received my B.E. from the University of Tokyo (UTokyo) in March 2026, where I was advised by Prof. Jun Ota. I also work closely with Prof. Yoichi Sato in the Computer Vision Group at UTokyo, and have been fortunate to be mentored by Prof. Yonatan Bisk at Carnegie Mellon University.

Previously, I was a research engineer intern at AIRoA and a research assistant at TRAIL, UTokyo. I also interned at OMRON SINIC X as a researcher and at Mercari as an ML engineer.

Email / Google Scholar / LinkedIn

DPhil Oct'26-

Research Engineer Intern May'26-Sep'26

Research Intern (remote) Mar'25-May'26

Undergrad Apr'22-Mar'26

STEP '25

ML Engineer Intern '25

Research Intern '24-'25

News

2026

[Oct 2026] Started my DPhil at Oxford!
[Aug 2026] Paper "Contextual Observer Grounding" got accepted to EMNLP 2026 Findings!
[May 2026] Started a research engineer internship at AIRoA.
[Apr 2026] Joined Computer Vision Group at UTokyo.
[Mar 2026] Obtained BEng with Dean's Award (Faculty of Engineering) from UTokyo!
[Mar 2026] Received Hatakeyama Award from The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers!
[Feb 2026] Paper "INSIGHT" got accepted to Augmented Humans 2026.
[Jan 2026] Paper "Compliance-enabled Failure Recovery" got accepted to ICRA 2026!

2025

[Apr 2025] Joined Ota Lab at UTokyo.

2024

[Jul 2024] Received Best Poster Award at RSS 2024 Workshop!
[Jul 2024] Received Best Poster Award at RoboCup 2024!
[Jun 2024] Paper "SPARK" got accepted to RSS 2024 Workshop.
[May 2024] Received Outstanding Research Award from The Robotics Society of Japan!
[Jan 2024] Paper "Self-recovery prompting" got accepted to ICRA 2024.

2023

[Sep 2023] Presented "Self-recovery prompting" at CoRL 2023.
[Aug 2023] Started a research internship at TRAIL, UTokyo.

Publications

	RoboPace: Contact-Aware Time-Optimal Retiming for Action-Chunk Policies Mimo Shirasaka, Takehiko Ohkawa, Takuya Okubo, Nicola Scianca, Tatsuya Matsushima, and Kei Ota arXiv, 2026 Paper RoboPace automatically retimes a policy's action chunks online, speeding up in free space and slowing down at predicted contact to achieve both safety and efficiency.
	Contextual Observer Grounding: Evaluating Situated Spatial Reasoning in Vision-Language Models Mimo Shirasaka, Haochen Zhang, and Yonatan Bisk EMNLP Findings, 2026 Website / Code / Dataset POVBench tests whether VLMs can infer a speaker's viewpoint from contextual cues and localize the object they describe from that viewpoint.
	INSIGHT: A Feedback System for Learning Expert Reasoning-Action Sequences in Industrial Plant Inspection Mimo Shirasaka, Kohei Kaminishi, Shinji Kanda, Yasushi Umeda, Masayoshi Kinoshita, Risa Koda, Shota Shimizu, and Jun Ota Augmented Humans, 2026 Poster and Demo Paper INSIGHT combines VR-based industrial plant inspection with post-task action-reasoning feedback, helping novices learn expert reasoning-action sequences and improve anomaly detection performance.
	Robust and Resilient Soft Robotic Object Insertion with Compliance-Enabled Contact Formation and Failure Recovery Mimo Shirasaka, Cristian C. Beltran-Hernandez, Masashi Hamaya, and Yoshitaka Ushiku ICRA, 2026 Paper Combining compliance-enabled contact formation with automated failure recovery makes soft robotic object insertion robust to uncertainty and environmental variation.
	SPARK: Graph-Based Online Semantic Integration System for Robot Task Planning Mimo Shirasaka, Yuya Ikeda, Tatsuya Matsushima, Yutaka Matsuo, and Yusuke Iwasawa RSS Workshop, 2024 Poster — Best Poster Award Paper The SPARK system extracts semantic information from environment cues (verbal, written text, and gesture) and updates the scene graph online for robot task planning.
	Self-Recovery Prompting: Promptable General Purpose Service Robot System with Foundation Models and Self-Recovery Mimo Shirasaka, Tatsuya Matsushima, Soshi Tsunashima, Yuya Ikeda, Aoi Horo, So Ikoma, Chikaha Tsuji, Hikaru Wada, Tsunekazu Omija, Dai Komukai, Yutaka Matsuo, and Yusuke Iwasawa ICRA, 2024 Oral, Poster, Demo Paper / Website The self-recovery pipeline's automatic prompt updates enable failure recovery and task completion in general-purpose home robot tasks.

Projects

	Tracking the Seasonal Journey of Migratory Birds - Source Data Analyzed and visualized large-scale migration data from 2021 to 2024 to reveal how wild birds move south for wintering and return north in spring, as the final project for a data science class. Tech: Python, Matplotlib, Data Organization and Analysis
	What's in Your Fridge? - Healthy Recipe Generator - Code Designed a bilingual (EN/JP) mobile app that generates simple recipes from on-hand ingredients to encourage elderly people with little cooking experience to prepare healthy meals at home. Tech: React Native, Python, FastAPI, OpenAI API, Expo Go
	Simple Mercari - Code Developed a full-stack web app (frontend & backend) for Build@Mercari 2025 final project. Tech: Python, API, SQLite, Docker
	Small Satellite System Development Developed a small satellite drone system from scratch in a team of eleven. Contribution: Control systems Tech: Python, Raspberry Pi zero2W etc.
	NetBall: AI Robot System for Nature Preservation - Website Developed an original quadruped transformable robot from scratch in a team of four. Contribution: Team lead, design, and image recognition Tech: Python, YOLOv5, 3D printing, Raspberry Pi 4B etc.
	Designing a Humanoid Robot with 3D CAD Designed and rendered a humanoid robot from scratch as the final project for a CAD class. Tech: 3DCAD (Fusion)
	Designing a teleoperation robot system - Demo video Designed the gripper and master interface for a teleoperated robot. The project was done in this course. Tech: 3D CAD (tinkercad), Keyestudio (compatible with Arduino), servo motor, 3D Printer, potentiometers, soldering
	App Development for Enjoyable STEM Learning - Video (in Japanese) Developed an app designed to make learning STEM enjoyable, participating in an app contest hosted by The University of Electro-Communications during high school. Tech: Python, tkinter
	Website Development Designed and developed a website for a fictional research and education institute. (Note: All content on the webpage is purely fictional.) This was an individual project completed during high school. Tech: HTML, CSS

Service

Reviewer: ICRA (Main Conference), CoRL (Workshop)

Teaching

Teaching Assistant, Information (First-year Undergraduates), UTokyo
Teaching Assistant, Innovative Manufacturing and Programming (“Monozemi”), UTokyo
Teaching Practicum, Information (High School)

Certifications

High School Teaching License (Information Technology, Japan)

Misc

Outside of research, I enjoy composing and performing music on the piano and violin. Some of my pieces are available on YouTube and Spotify.

The best way to reach me is by email!