From 2009 to 2014, I was a Team Leader at the Department of Advanced Robotics, Italian Institute of Technology (IIT). From 2007 to 2009, I was a Postdoc at the Learning Algorithms and Systems Laboratory, EPFL. I hold a PhD from EPFL (2007), awarded by the Robotdalen Scientific Award, ABB Award and EPFL-Press Distinction. I co-authored over 100 publications in the field of robot learning, with recognition including Best Paper Awards in the journal of Intelligent Service Robotics (ISR, 2017) and at IEEE Ro-Man'2007, Best Presentation Award at CoRL'2019, as well as Best Paper Award Finalist at IEEE-RAS Humanoids'2009, IEEE/RSJ IROS'2013, ICIRA'2015 and IEEE ICRA'2016. I currently serve as Associate Editor in IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO) and IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L).
The collaborative projects I am or have been involved in include SWITCH, CODIMAN, COB'HOOK, LEARN-REAL, HEAP, COLLABORATE, MEMMO, ROSALIS, DexROV, I-DRESS, TACT-HAND, PLATFORM-MMD, STIFF-FLOP, PANDORA, SMART-E, SAPHARI, AMARSI, ROBOT@CWE, FEELIX GROWING and COGNIRON, supported by the European Commission, by the Swiss National Science Foundation, and by the Swiss Innovation Agency.
The jury was impressed by the practical and economic importance of the problem, the systematic analysis and innovative layered approach of its implementation, the completeness of the solution, and the open release of source code, demonstrating confidence in the solution independence from specifics of any particular robot hardware or manipulation task.
For the thorough and exemplary work in his Ph.D. thesis and important scientific contributions resolving two major issues in robot programming by demonstration.
Calinon, S., Guenter, F. and Billard, A. (2007). On Learning, Representing and Generalizing a Task in a Humanoid Robot. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, Part B, 37:2. (article listed within Scopus Essential Science Indicators as highly cited paper in the top 1% of its academic field, 1000+ citations)*
Campus Party, Science and Arts City Museum, Valencia, Spain.
(Technology festival since 1997 with renowned invited speakers such as Stephen Hawking, Al Gore, Neil Amstrong, Steve Wozniak, Vint Cerf or Tim Berners-Lee)
Engineering Master program on Applied Artificial Intelligence, in partnership with Swiss Distance Learning University. Responsible for the course on Robotics.
2018-2020
Post-Master program AI Move (Artificial Intelligence and Movement in Industries and Creation) at Mines-ParisTech. In charge of the courses on Statistical, Geometrical and Dynamical Representations of Movement (Module 2: Motion Capture, Modelling and Gesture Recognition) and on Human-Robot Interaction and Collaborative Robotics (Module 4: Humans, Machines and Connected Objects).
Teguh Lembono, "Building Memory of Motion to Warm-start Trajectory Optimization". PhD Thesis proposal, Idiap/EPFL.
2017-now
Thibaut Kulak, "Robot skills acquisition through active learning and social interaction strategies". PhD Thesis proposal, Idiap/EPFL.
2016-2020
Emmanuel Pignat, "Product of Experts for Robot Learning from Demonstration". PhD Thesis, Idiap/EPFL.
2016-2020
Noémie Jaquier, "Robot skills learning with Riemannian manifolds: Leveraging geometry-awareness in robot learning, optimization and control". PhD Thesis, Idiap/EPFL.
2015-2018
Ajay Kumar Tanwani, "Probabilistic learning models for skill acquisition in teleoperated robots". PhD Thesis, Idiap/EPFL. (next: Postdoc at AUTOLAB and BAIR, UC Berkeley)
2014-2018
Martijn Zeestraten, "Programming by demonstration on Riemannian manifolds". PhD Thesis, IIT/UniGenova. (next: R&D Engineer in Madern Group)
2014-2017
João Silvério, "Human-robot collaborative manipulation and coordination in bimanual tasks". PhD Thesis, IIT/UniGenova. (next: Postdoc at IIT, Genova, Italy)
2012-2015
Milad Malekzadeh, "Machine Learning for a Soft Robotic Arm Assisting in Minimally Invasive Surgery". PhD Thesis, IIT/UniGenova. (next: Postdoc at CoR-Lab, University of Bielefeld)
2011-2014
Tohid Alizadeh, "Modulation and Statistical Modeling of Human Movements Through Demonstrations". PhD Thesis, IIT/UniGenova. (next: Lecturer at Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan)
2011-2014
Davide De Tommaso, "Active Vision and Projections as User Interface in Robot Learning from Demonstration". PhD Thesis, IIT/UniGenova. (next: Software Engineer at IIT, Genova, Italy)
2010-2013
Antonio Pistillo, "Approaches To Open And Closed-Loop Probabilistic Model Learning In Programming By Demonstration". PhD Thesis, IIT/UniGenova. (next: Data Scientist at Accenture)
Research and Development Engineers
2019-now
Guillaume Clivaz, Research and Development group at Idiap, supervised by Olivier Bornet.
2018-now
Philip Abbet, Research and Development group at Idiap, supervised by Olivier Bornet.
Visiting PhD Students
2019-2020
Xiao Gao, WuHan University, supervised by Prof. Miao Li.
2019
Jarosław Łokietko, Goldsmiths University of London, supervised by Prof. Frederic Fol Leymarie.
2018
Markku Suomalainen, Aalto University, supervised by Prof. Ville Kyrki.
2015
Daniel Berio, Goldsmiths University of London, supervised by Prof. Frederic Fol Leymarie.
2011
Leonel Rozo, Polytechnic University of Catalonia, supervised by Prof. Carme Torras.
Internships
2019-2020
Clément Vaes, MSc Student at Université Catholique de Louvain, supervised by Estelle Massart and Prof. Pierre-Antoine Absil, co-supervised by Noémie Jaquier at Idiap.
2018
Hakan Girgin, MSc Student at Bogazici University, supervised by Prof. Emre Ugur.
2017
Olivier Baseggio, "Case studies for the application of robot learning techniques in industrial applications".
Internship, Idiap.
MSc Theses
2021
Valentin Honorez.
Faculté Polytechnique de Mons (UMONS), Belgium.
2019-2020
Jérémy Maceiras, "Planning of robot manipulation tasks".
Master in Artificial Intelligence, Idiap/UniDistance.
2017
Yanick Bertrand, "Synthesis of exaggerated movements to facilitate robot skill acquisition".
MSc Thesis, Idiap/EPFL.
2016-2017
Fabien Crépon, "Robot-Assisted Learning for Object Recognition".
MSc Thesis, Idiap/EPFL.
2016
Noémie Jaquier, "Robot drawing skills acquisition with vision feedback".
MSc Thesis, Idiap/EPFL. (next: PhD Student at Idiap/EPFL, Switzerland)
2015-2016
Emmanuel Pignat, "Online learning of task-parameterized models".
MSc Thesis, Idiap/EPFL. (next: PhD Student at Idiap/EPFL, Switzerland)
2012-2013
Martijn Zeestraten, "Robot Learning using Tree-Based Policy Representation".
MSc Thesis magna cum laude, IIT/Delft University (Erasmus exchange program). (next: PhD Student at IIT, Genova, Italy)
2012
Sunniva van Ipenburg, "Learning of a table skittle game with reinforcement learning and parametric Gaussian mixture model".
MSc Thesis, IIT/Delft University (Erasmus exchange program).
2012
Affan Pervez, "Movement skill acquisition with imitation and reinforcement learning".
MSc Thesis, IIT/KTH (Erasmus exchange program). (next: PhD Student at TUM, Munich, Germany)
2008
Florent D'halluin, "Robust learning and reproduction of gestures from human demonstrations". MSc Thesis, EPFL.
2007
Murielle Richard, "Implementation of a learning-by-imitation algorithm on the Katana robot". MSc Thesis, EPFL. (next: PhD Student at EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland)
2005
Frederic Magnard, "Object tracking for a camera designed to be worn by children". MSc Thesis, EPFL.
2004
Adrien Brossard, "Control of the humanoid robot HOAP-2". MSc Thesis, EPFL.
2004
Andre Maurer, "Artificial Neural Network (ANN) - Hidden Markov Model (HMM) Comparison for a gesture recognition application". MSc Thesis, EPFL. (next: teacher in computer science, with a PhD from EPFL)
2003
Marc Kunze, "Person recognition for the humanoid robot Robota". MSc Thesis, EPFL. (next: Engineer at ETEL Motion Technology, with a PhD from EPFL)
MSc/BSc Projects
2020
Luis Carvalho, "Optimal control with keypoints learned from demonstration".
MSc Project, Idiap/EPFL.
2020
Philipp Schuler, "ROS interfacing on Kuka SunriseOS".
MSc Project, Idiap/EPFL.
2020
Thibault Niederhauser, "Visual perception for autonomous harvesting of root vegetables growing in aeroponics".
MSc Project, Idiap/EPFL.
2020
Victoria Letertre, "Pick-and-place for the Carousel System".
MSc Project, Idiap/EPFL.
2020
Jules Pochon, "Hand Detection and Tracking".
MSc Project, Idiap/EPFL.
2020
Lucas Surmely, "Robot movements interface using augmented reality".
BSc Project, Idiap/EPFL.
Hedi Fendri, "Dictionary learning of movement primitives".
BSc Project, Idiap/EPFL.
2019
Christine Whiteley, "Interactive visualization of trajectories on a smartphone for a robot learning from demonstration application".
BSc Project, Idiap/EPFL.
2017-2018
Dylan Bourgeois, "Pose sketching interface to control a humanoid robot".
MSc Project, Idiap/EPFL. (next: Machine Learning Engineer at Robust.AI in Palo Alto, CA, USA)
2017-2018
Laila El Hamamsy, "Streamline extraction from images for a robotic light painting application".
BSc Project, Idiap/EPFL.
2017-2018
Frederick Gusset, "Body-aware assistance for the execution of human-robot collaborative tasks".
BSc Project, Idiap/EPFL.
2017-2018
Florian Standaert, "Mobile interface for the generation of movements with variations in robots".
BSc Project, Idiap/EPFL.
2017
Robin Wütschert, "Smartphone interface for the Baxter robot".
BSc Project, Idiap/EPFL.
2017
Yuxiang Li, "Robot experiential learning of movement primitives".
BSc Project, Idiap/EPFL.
Adrian Bodenmann, "Hierarchical learning of a movement through Hidden Markov Model". BSc Project, EPFL. (next: Researcher at the University of Tokyo)
2008
Florent D'halluin, "Incremental learning of gestures through the support of a human teacher". BSc Project, EPFL. (next: Data scientist at Netheos, Montpellier, France)
2007
Caroline Nadeau, "Vocal analysis to teach a humanoid robot manipulation skills". BSc Project, EPFL. (next: Research Engineer at IRISA/INRIA Rennes, with a PhD from Universite de Rennes 1)
2007
Manon Pulvin, "Imitation of legs motion by a humanoid robot through the use of motion sensors". BSc Project, EPFL.
2006
Adrien Hitz, "Locomotion control module for the HOAP3 robot". BSc Project, EPFL.
2005
Julien Epiney, "A Humanoid Robot that can paint". BSc Project, EPFL. (next: Automation Engineer at Mikron)
2005
Patrick Schoeneich, "Gaze direction detection using inertial sensors". BSc Project, EPFL. (next: R&D Engineer at Imina Technologies, with a PhD from EPFL)
2004
Jean-Joel Borter, "Motion data representation using motion sensors". BSc Project, EPFL. (next: R&D Engineer at Thermo Fisher Scientific)
2004
Christophe Dubach, "Recognition of trajectories using a stereoscopic vision system". BSc Project, EPFL. (next: Assistant Professor at the University of Edinburgh, with a PhD from the University of Edinburgh)
2004
Vincent Hentsch, "Gestures analysis using gyroscopic sensors". BSc Project, EPFL.
2003
Andre Noth, "Development of an auditory systems running on a Pocket-PC". BSc Project, EPFL. (next: Systems Research Project Manager at Nestle, with a PhD from ETH Zurich)
2003
Yves Linder, "Robust visual arms and head tracking running on a Pocket-PC". BSc Project, EPFL. (next: Group Leader at Electro Medical Systems)
2003
Cecile Grivaz, "Interactive game of a pair of mini-humanoid robot Robota". BSc Project, EPFL. (next: PhD graduate from the University of Geneva)
Other skills
Languages
French (native), English (fluent), German (good command), Italian (basic communication skills).
I maintain PbDlib, a collection of source codes for robot programming by demonstration including various functionalities at the crossroad of statistical learning, dynamical systems, optimal control and Riemannian geometry.