Serena Ivaldi (Larsen) will defend her HDR (Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches) on Friday, 25th November at 1:30 pm in room A008.

The presentation is entitled “From humans to humanoids: learning and interaction for human-humanoid collaboration”.
Abstract: This manuscript summarizes my main research contributions so far in the domain of human-humanoid collaboration.  The contributions are presented in seven chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the research domain and some of its challenges. In Chapter 2, we design human-aware controllers that consider human dynamics to generate suitable interaction forces. In Chapter 3, we propose automated procedures to automatically tune the controller’s many parameters, with the objective of obtaining generic controllers that can handle a variety of interactions with humans. In Chapter 4, we develop activity recognition and whole-body motion prediction algorithms that leverage data from wearable motion tracking sensors, with the objective to inform the robot’s decision and control systems. In Chapter 5, we address the problem of how robots can learn from human teachers or demonstrators in collaborative scenarios with or without physical interaction. Chapter 6, describes significant progress in anticipatory human-humanoid collaboration, in the form of prescient teleoperation. Finally, Chapter 7 outlines the perspectives and the future research project.