I am an Associate Professor of robot learning at KU Leuven in Belgium. I hold a dual appointment within the departments of electrical and mechanical engineering (groups PSI and RAM respectively). I am a member of the KU Leuven Institute for Artificial Intelligence (Leuven.AI) and sit on its steering committee, and I am a technical advisor for OpalAI.
Formerly I was group lead for the Perception Systems group, Mobility and Robotics section at 
NASA JPL, Pasadena, CA, and an Assistant Professor within the ICTEAM institute of UCLouvain, Belgium. I am a visiting researcher in the Systems and Modeling Group (University of Liège, Belgium) and in the Computer Vision and Active Perception lab (KTH Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan, Stockholm, Sweden).
My research interests include robot learning/manipulation/mobility, computer vision, machine learning, and applications related to manufacturing, agriculture, and planetary exploration including Mars, Europa and Enceladus. At JPL, I was machine-vision lead for the surface mission of the NASA/ESA Mars Sample Return campaign (summarized in this invited lecture), and I worked on fun climbing robots such as the one shown in this video.
I regularly serve as associate editor for IROS, ICRA, and as reviewer for TRO, RAS, RSS and AURO.
Contact
- Office:
- 01.07 (at ESAT)
- Post:
-
Kasteelpark Arenberg 10 – box 2441
B–3001 Leuven
Belgium - e-mail:
-
Students: - Office+cell:
- +32 16 37 70 36
- Web:
- Google Scholar, LinkedIn,
Twitter, KU Leuven, Leuven.AI - ORCID:
- 0000-0003-0597-1167
News
2022-04-13
Newly-funded EU project in autonomous shotcrete for construction robotics! We are opening two PhD positions to address the computer vision and adaptive manipulation challenges that underpin autonomous shotcrete. Apply here.2022-04-13
Co-edited this Frontiers in Robotics and AI special issue on Robotic In-Situ Servicing, Assembly and Manufacturing.2022-01-23
Happily served on the Ph.D. committee of Ali Varamesh at KU Leuven.2021-11-18
Happily served on the Ph.D. committee of Frederik Haarslev at the University of Southern Denmark.2021-01-03
I am giving a talk today at the Future In-Space Operations (FISO) Telecon Seminar Presentations, 3pm EST = 2100 CET. See this page for dial-in details. A copy of the slides is available here. Live screen-share of the slides during the talk at this link.
2020-10-29
I will give a virtual talk at the NeurIPS 2020 workshop on AI for Earth Sciences on Dec 12. Title: Autonomous Robot Manipulation for Planetary Science: Mars Sample Return, Climbing Lava Tubes.
2020-08-30
Our ICRA 2020 in-space assembly workshop has moved to IROS, due to the pandemic. Virtual contributions are now welcome: RIMSAS 2020 – Robotic In-Situ Manufacturing, Structural Assembly And Servicing
2020-01-07
Our ICRA 2020 workshop RIMSAS 2020 – Robotic In-Situ Manufacturing, Structural Assembly And Servicing has been accepted!
2019-08-06
The InVADER website is live:
InVADER will study underwater hydrothermal systems at Axial Seamount, the largest and most active volcano on western boundary of the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate off the coast of Oregon. The vents at the Axial Seamount generate chemical energy which can sustain life, and are high-fidelity analogues to putative vent systems on Ocean Worlds.
2018-06-29
Beautiful video of a field test we ran in Death Valley last December:
- https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-hardware/video-friday-nasa-lemur-robot
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2SKa9IEG4M
2018-06-22
Giving a talk at RSS Workshop on Scalable Learning for Integrated Perception and Planning.
2019-04-08
Giving a talk at Samsung AI NYC.
2018-09-22
NASA PSTAR proposal selected and fully funded!
Our robot will study hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, with instruments that reveal vent structure and chemical/biological composition.
This technique will ultimately enable the search for alien life inside the subsurface oceans of Europa and Enceladus – Jupiter and Saturn's icy moons.
"In-situ Vent Analysis Divebot for Exobiology Research!"
2018-06-29
Presenting our work on task-oriented grasping and semantic scene understanding for planetary exploration at the Deep Learning Summit San Francisco!
2018-06-01
A pleasure to visit ATR again!
2018-05-29
Presenting our paper Turbid-water Subsea Infrastructure 3D Reconstruction with Assisted Stereo at IEEE Oceans 2018 in Kobe!
2017-09-28
Our paper Task-oriented Grasping with Semantic and Geometric Scene Understanding received the Best Paper Award on Cognitive Robotics at IROS 2017!
2016-02-29
Moved to NASA/JPL.
2015-10-01
New demo: clearing up a table autonomously, using a grasp model that the robot has learn via demonstration.
Clearing up a table autonomously, using a grasp model that the robot has learn via demonstration (More details). Download this video in MP4/H.264 or WebM/VP8, or view it on Youtube.
2015-09-10
Upcoming TRS tutorial: Hamburg, Germany, September 2015, at IROS.
2015-05-30
Best Reviewer Award at ICRA
