SBPL — Search-Based Planning Lab Website

Static website for the Search-Based Planning Lab at Carnegie Mellon University. Built with Hugo and Pico.css.

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Quick Start

Prerequisites

• Hugo (extended edition, v0.120+)

Run Locally

hugo serve

Open http://localhost:1313 in your browser. Changes are live-reloaded automatically.

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How To: Common Tasks

Add Yourself as a Lab Member

1. Open data/members/current.yaml
2. Copy an existing entry and fill in your details:

   - name: "Your Full Name"          # MUST match your name in publications exactly
     slug: "your-full-name"           # lowercase, hyphens (auto-generated from name)
     category: "phd"                  # phd | masters | undergraduate | postdoc
     year: "1st year"                 # optional
     enrollment: "RI PhD, Fall 2025"  # optional, shown next to your name on /people/
     co_advisor:                      # optional, shown as "(co-advised with <name>)"
       name: "Co-Advisor Name"
       website: "https://their-site.com"
     photo: "/images/members/your-full-name.jpg"
     bio: >
       A short paragraph about your research interests
       and background.
     links:
       website: "https://yoursite.com"      # optional; your name and photo link here

   Only website is shown on /people/ (Google Scholar is shown for the advisor only).
3. Add your headshot photo to static/images/members/your-full-name.jpg
   • Portrait 2:3 aspect ratio (400×600px recommended); it is shown uncropped
   • JPEG format, reasonable file size (<500KB)
4. Commit and push. The site deploys automatically.

Add a Publication

/publications/ lists papers from 2024 on (from_year in content/publications/_index.md), with links to Maxim's Google Scholar profile for the full list. Older papers keep their files but aren't listed.

1. Create a new file content/publications/short-descriptive-name.md:

   ---
   title: "Your Paper Title"
   date: 2025-06-15                # Publication date (the year sets its section)
   scholar_rank: 12                # optional: its position on Maxim's Google Scholar
                                   # profile (sorted by year). Within a year, papers with
                                   # a thumbnail come first, then all are ordered by
                                   # venue (`venue_order` in
                                   # content/publications/_index.md), then by this;
                                   # papers without one come first in their venue.
   authors:                        # MUST match names in data/members/*.yaml
     - "Your Name"
     - "Coauthor Name"
     - "Maxim Likhachev"
   first_authors: 2                # optional: number of co-first authors
   venue: "ICRA 2025"
   description: "A one-sentence summary of the paper for the card view."
   thumbnail: "/images/publications/short-descriptive-name.gif"  # image, GIF or short .mp4
   arxiv: "https://arxiv.org/abs/XXXX.XXXXX"          # [Paper] link (else pdf, then doi)
   doi: "https://doi.org/10.XXXX/XXXXX"                # optional
   project_page: "https://yourproject.github.io/"      # optional [Project Page] link
   code: "https://github.com/your/repo"                # optional
   draft: false
   ---
   
   Optional extended abstract or description (rendered on the publication's page).

2. Add a thumbnail to static/images/publications/ and point thumbnail at it
   • An image, GIF, or short silent .mp4 clip showing the key result (shown 220px wide, at most 200px tall; keep files small, ideally <2MB). Clips loop while on screen.
3. Co-first authors: To mark multiple authors as equal contributors, add first_authors: N where N is the number of co-first authors (counted from the top of the authors list). They will be displayed with a * superscript and an "Equal contribution" note.
4. Commit and push.

Move a Student to Alumni

1. Open data/members/current.yaml, find the student's entry
2. Cut (remove) their entire YAML block
3. Paste it into data/members/alumni.yaml
4. Add the now_at field and optionally a graduated year:

   - name: "Student Name"
     slug: "student-name"
     category: "phd"
     graduated: "2025"
     now_at: "Research Scientist at Google DeepMind"
     # ... rest of their existing fields ...

5. Add a line for them to the right group (PhD, Master’s, …) in the alumni list at the top of content/people/_index.md; that list is what /people/ shows.
6. Commit and push. Their publications remain linked automatically.

Edit the Archive (Software, Videos, Tutorials) or Contact Pages

The Archive menu item opens a tabbed section under content/archive/ (the tabs are listed in layouts/partials/archive-tabs.html):

• Software (content/archive/software.md): each card is an item under groups in the front matter (name, description, links of {label, url}).
• Videos (content/archive/videos.md): add { id, title } under a group, where id is the YouTube video ID (youtube.com/watch?v=<id>).
• Tutorials (content/archive/tutorials/): one page per tutorial; weight sets the order. The existing ones are the archived sbpl.net pages, kept as HTML.
• Contact (content/contact.md): plain HTML cards.

Change the Homepage Photos

The homepage carousel shows every image in static/images/lab-photos/, in filename order. Crop new photos to 4:3 (e.g. 1600×1200) before adding them.

Change the Research Demos

The Research Demos under the lab description are the papers listed under demos in content/_index.md, in that order. Each entry is a publication file name from content/publications/ without .md; its tile plays the paper's thumbnail clip or GIF (no text) and links to its project page. To show a different clip here than on /publications/, add demo: "/images/…mp4" to the paper's front matter (DISCO uses this for its real-world runs).

Update the PI Information

Edit data/members/pi.yaml. Fields:

• name, title, photo, email, bio, links

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How Pages Link Together

There are no per-person pages. On /people/, each member's name and photo link straight to their links.website; on /publications/, author names are plain text and each title links to the paper's project page or PDF.

Deployment

The site auto-deploys to GitHub Pages via GitHub Actions on every push to main.

First-Time Setup

1. Go to your GitHub repo → Settings → Pages
2. Under "Source", select "GitHub Actions"
3. Push to main — the workflow in .github/workflows/deploy.yml handles the rest

Custom Domain

To use a custom domain (e.g., sbpl.cs.cmu.edu):

1. Add a CNAME file to static/ containing your domain
2. Configure DNS to point to GitHub Pages
3. Update baseURL in hugo.toml