This is a list of participants at the VVV09 summer school - please add yourself (some photos stolen from last years).
Username: VVV09. Password: the first word in the name of the town in which the school will take place; all lower case; “s****i”. We have a password to avoid automatic spam, rather than for security - if we get abused, a new password will be issued by email. If you have trouble guessing the password, send email to vvv09-admin@robotcub.org.
Normally, this page gets created during the first few days of the school, by the students themselves. This year we decided to open this page early, so that people can start collaborating even before the summer school begins! If you would like to, include in your profile a list of possible ideas for collaboration.
Giorgio Metta
IIT and Univ. of Genoa, pasa@liralab.it, homepage, presentation (pdf)
Nicola Greggio
ARTS-Lab, Scuola Superiore S.anna, Pisa - Italy
&
VisLab, Institute for Systems and Robotics, Instituto Superior Tecnico, Lisbon - Portugal.
email: nicola.greggio<at>sssup@it
website
I developed a 3D stereo tracker that segments an object based first on the color and then fitting it as an ellipse;
here there's a video [1].
This returns the 3D spatial position of the object's centroid, based on the direct kinematics of the robot.
Currently I'm working on 2D multiple objects segmentation by means of EM applied to gaussian mixtures.
I recently developed an algorithm that varies the number of mixture components in runtime for best adapting to
the image while keeping the computational burden low.
Matteo Taiana
Institute for Systems and Robotics, Instituto Superior Tecnico, Lisbon, Portugal.
email: mtaiana <at> isr.ist.utl.pt
skype: matteo.taiana
presentation (pdf) home page research movies
collaboration: I developed a 3D ball tracker that might be useful for people working on grasping.
Nieves Pavón
University of Huelva. Huelva, Spain. Department of Information Technologies.
email: npavon <at> dti.uhu.es
home page
I am finishing my Ph.D and my interest focused on Cognitive Robotics.
I have developed an indoor mobile robot for my research, you can see it in
this website.
Now I am including cognitive skills in order to get a cognitive autonomous
navigation system by means of Soft Computing techniques.
I am using a range finder device to measure distances in a 2D framework for mapping and exploring the
environment. I would like to program artificial vision algorithms to focus the attention of the robot
according to the 2D map provided by the range finder device.
Tyler Streeter
Virtual Reality Applications Center Iowa State University, Ames, IA USA
(Soon IDSIA Lugano, Switzerland)
Website
Email: tylerstreeter <at> gmail.com
I am interested in Bayesian networks, reinforcement learning, brain inspired architectures,
unsupervised learning, artificial curiosity,
topographic map formation, neuroevolution,
physics simulation, virtual reality, and
brain modeling. I have written a tool for speech recognition and synthesis,
which could be useful for others working with the iCub.
Paul Fitzpatrick
Irish guy working in Italy while living in the US (I prefer not to do any two things in the same country).
Website
Email: paulfitz <at> liralab.it
Boris Durán
Cognition and Interaction Lab (COIN), University of Skövde. Skövde, Sweden.
I'm starting my postdoc 'era' within the ROSSI project. I see myself as a cognitive
roboticist; I'm particularly interested in nonlinear dynamical systems theory
and how to create real autonomy using its tools.
Website
Email: boris.duran <at> his.se
Francesco Nori
Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia
Robotics, Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department
my web page
Ugo Pattacini
Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia
Robotics, Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department
my web page
Fabrizio Smeraldi
I'm a lecturer in the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science of
Queen Mary, University of London. My main interests are pattern recognition and
the applications of learning theory. More information on
my web page
Katrin Solveig Lohan
Bielefeld University
Applied Informatics Group
Research Institute for Cognition and Robotics - CoR-Lab
ITALK project
Charles Clercq
Institut des Systèmes Intelligents et Robotique (ISIR)
Paris 6
I'm actually in work-placement where I work on Direct Kinematic Model Learning.
Lydia Majure
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Language Acquisition and Robotics Group
email: majure <at> illinois.edu
My web page
Sébastien Gay
PhD student at the Biologically Inspired Robotics Group,
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Lausanne, Swizerland.
email: sebastien <dot> gay <at> epfl <dot> ch
Web page : http://birg.epfl.ch/page70550.html
I'm working on coordination between vision and locomotion.
David Vernon
I'm working on the design of the iCub cognitive architecture
and implementing some of the vision and cognition modules.
Website
Email: david <at> vernon.eu
Logan Niehaus
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Language Acquisition and Robotics Group
email: niehaus4 <at> uiuc.edu
Kail Frank
IDSIA - Lugano, Switzerland
email: kail <at> idsia.ch
My academic background is in mechanical engineering, although I have significant programming experience as well.
I am interested in bringing these things together in the context of robotics, and pursuing next-generation control strategies for high DOF robots.
Giovanni Saponaro
VisLab, Institute for Systems and Robotics, Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon, Portugal
Email and website: http://users.isr.ist.utl.pt/~gsaponaro/
Skype and AIM: giobbo19
My recent master's thesis dealt with manipulation, 3D reconstruction and visual servoing on a humanoid.
I am interested in bringing together existing iCub programs/demos (ball tracking, face tracking, attention system, what-have-you)
under a decision mechanism that assigns priorities depending on "last-seen" memories of features and attaining a good
exploration-exploitation tradeoff. This is a preliminary idea which I will gladly discuss in VVV09.
Manfred Kroehnert
Humanoids and Intelligence Systems Lab (Prof. Dillmann), Institute for Anthropomatics, University of Karlsruhe
email: Manfred.Kroehnert <at> ira.uka.de
Currently starting to work on my diploma thesis.
Julian Schill
Humanoids and Intelligence Systems Lab (Prof. Dillmann), Institute for Anthropomatics, University of Karlsruhe
email: schill <at> ira.uka.de
I just finished my diploma in computer science and currently I'm working as assistant.
My diploma thesis was about control of a humanoid, pneumatic robot hand.
I'm interested in control, hardware development and hardware-near programming.
Yan Wu
BioART Lab (Dr. Yiannis Demiris), Electrical and Electronic Engineering Department, Imperial College London, UK
Email: yan.wu08 <at> imperial.ac.uk
URL: http://www.iis.ee.imperial.ac.uk/~yanwu
I am interested in computational learning models for humanoids especially in the domains of grasping and tool-use.
Davide Zambrano
ARTS-Lab, Scuola Superiore S.anna, Pisa - Italy
email: d.zambrano <at> sssup.it
I'm a Ph.D. student for the SSSA and I'm working on sensory motor coordination models for humanoid robots.
I'm a Biomedical Engineer and my master thesis was about prediction and learning in eye movements.
I'm very interested in neural models and artificial neural networks.
The page of our lab with our activities is:
URL: http://www-arts.sssup.it/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=humanoid+robotics
Fan Zhang
Department of Automatic Control & Systems Engineering, University of Sheffield, UK
Email: f.zhang <at> sheffield.ac.uk
I have just finished my PhD. I'm working on developing control algorithms for iCub walking.
Theo Jacobs
Department Robot Systems, group Domestic Service Robots, Fraunhofer IPA, Stuttgart, Germany
I'm a Mechanical Engineer and I am mainly working on the hardware design of our Care-O-bot.
Apart from that I am programming scenarios for Care-O-bot presentations, using Python.
http://www.ipa.fhg.de
http://www.care-o-bot.de
taj (at) ipa.fhg.de
ZHIBIN LI
I am doing my PhD in Advanced Robotics Lab, IIT.
Email: alexrobotics <at> gmail.com
I focus on trajectory generation (walking pattern generator) of bipedal robots with compliant actuation, especially for human-like stretched knee walking.
My Bio
Lars Schillingmann
Bielefeld University
Applied Informatics Group
Research Institute for Cognition and Robotics - CoR-Lab
Homepage
Alexis Maldonado
I love robots, and during my PhD I have worked together with different ones:
started with medium-sized league RoboCup robots, then a big B21 robot with two
industry 6-DOF arms (Powercubes from Amtec), and finally have the pleasure of
working with the iCub (Our lab will have one as a part of the Open Call) and
our self-made platform with Kuka LWR-4 arms and 4-Fingered hands from the DLR. Image
This is a video of our last demo: [link to youtube]
For the summer school, I am interested two-handed manipulation with the iCub.
One idea for the demo is to build stacks of Lego pieces. Please let me know if you
would like to do something in this direction (Manipulation, reaching, tool use).
We will need the help of vision people for detecting the Lego bricks also!
maldonad_(at)_cs.tum.edu Introduction (pdf file) work-homepage
Some (local) videos
Federico Ruiz Ugalde
We implemented a potencial field base end-effector arm movement system.
It can avoid obstacles and follow goal points and orientations, also
supports the concept of tools connected in the end-effector, and also one can
control the velocity null space. We want to extend this system to deal with
two arms and also the torso. Maybe with this we can do some two handed manipulation.
We need some vision people to help us! I'm pretty sure this will be a Summer
School as "Pura Vida!" as the last one.
email: ruizf<AT>in.tum.de pdf file
for instant messaging: memeruiz<at>gmail.com
homepage
Ewald Lutscher
PhD at Technische Universität München, Munich, Germany.
email: ewald.lutscher@tum.de
I have just finished my diploma thesis (master thesis) and started to work as a PhD at Munich. I will probably try to implement a simple walking
algorithm.
Alberto Bietti
(Italian) Student in classes préparatoires in Louis Le Grand, in Paris, France
I'm very interested in robotics and artificial intelligence, but study it mostly by myself for now. I'm the founder and president of the Louis Le Grand Robotics Club.
email: alberto.bietti <AT> gmail
Federico Tombari
CVLab, University of Bologna - Italy
email: federico.tombari<at>unibo.it
website
I got my Ph.D in April 2009 and now I've started a Post-Doc in Bologna.
My fields of expertise are stereo vision and visual correspondence.
I'm interested in applying these techniques to robots.
Lorenzo Natale
Robotics Brain and Cognitive Science,
Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, more info:
website
Stéphane Lallée
Lab's webpage
email: stephane.lallee<at>google.com
I'm doing a PHD in the field of human robot cooperation at the Stem Cells and Brain Ressearch Institute.
My main interest is implementation of biologically plausible algorithms and brain like computation systems.
I'm currently working on kind of neurals maps in order to produce various cognitive function.
I'd like to work on them and welcome new ideas about the algorithm I use during this summer school.
Harold Martinez
University of Zurich, Switzerland
email: martinez <at> ifi.uzh.ch
my web page
Jakob Suchan
Universaty of Bremen, Germany, CoSy-Lab
email: jsuchan@informatk.uni-bremen.de
I am just starting my diploma thesis.
Egidio Falotico
ARTS-Lab, Scuola Superiore S.anna, Pisa - Italy
email: e.falotico <at> sssup.it
I work for the SSSA on sensory motor coordination models for humanoid robots.
I'm a CS graduate and my master thesis was about prediction and learning in eye movements.
The page of our lab with our activities is:
URL: http://www-arts.sssup.it/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=humanoid+robotics
Vadim Tikhanoff
Italian Institure of Technology - Genova
email: vtikha@gmail.com
Website...still need to update it ;-)
