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The newly established Dyson School of Design Engineering at Imperial College London is currently recruiting for a Senior Lecturer vacancy with expertise in Robotics and Physical Computing and is looking for highly skilled, enthusiastic and well-motivated applicants wishing to make a career in one of the world’s leading teaching and research institutions. The Dyson [continue reading…] There are outstanding opportunities for becoming a postdoctoral researcher (PDRA) at Imperial College London. Here I have listed five of the highly-competitive funding schemes. I am available to mentor potential Post-Doc applicants on research topics related to robotics and machine learning. Interested candidates should contact me by e-mail before submitting their application. Imperial College JRF [continue reading…] If you are a full time undergraduate student at Imperial College London you are invited to apply to the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Programme (UROP). The available UROP projects are advertised by the corresponding supervisors here: http://www.imperial.ac.uk/urop/how-to-get-involved/academic-entries-adverts/engineering/ Funding Students can apply to receive a bursary (funding) for the duration of their UROP project. The bursary will [continue reading…] I have an open PhD position available in my group at Imperial College London: Department: Dyson School of Design Engineering In close collaboration with Dyson Robotics Lab Location: South Kensington campus, London, UK Start date: 1st May 2016 (or soon after) Duration: 3.5 years Closing Date: 10 April 2016 Fully funded (all tuition fees [continue reading…] The Imperial College PhD Scholarship Scheme offers an outstanding opportunity for potential PhD students. If you are a high performing undergraduate or Master’s student, and have a strong desire to undertake a PhD programme at a world class research institution, you could be selected to receive full tuition fees and a generous stipend for a [continue reading…] The video presents experiments during which a humanoid robot is subjected to external pushes and recovers stability by changing the step placement and duration. It starts from showing effectiveness of the feedback controller during stepping in place. Then it continues to present how the developed algorithm regenerates the step placement and duration to regain [continue reading…] The video demonstrates a novel concept for kinematic-free control of a robot arm. It implements an encoderless robot controller that does not rely on any joint angle information or estimation and does not require any prior knowledge about the robot kinematics or dynamics. The approach works by generating actuation primitives and perceiving their effect on [continue reading…] 
I am glad to announce that I will be moving to Imperial College London starting from September 2015! My new position will be Lecturer in Robotics and Computing at the Dyson School of Design Engineering. This is my new page at Imperial. I will also continue supervising PhD students at the Robot Learning [continue reading…] At the DARPA Robotics Challenge in Los Angeles, preparing for the finals (in 2 days)! http://www.theroboticschallenge.org/ Our robot is called WALK-MAN, and is representing Italy: http://kormushev.com/topics/walk-man-robot/
#gallery-1 { margin: auto; } #gallery-1 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 50%; } #gallery-1 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-1 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; Team WALK-MAN at the DARPA Robotics Challenge in California, 2015 Petar with WALK-MAN team at DARPA Robotics Challenge, 2015 Petar with ATLAS and WALK-MAN robots in 2015 Petar with WALK-MAN robot at DARPA Robotics Challenge, 2015 Petar with WALK-MAN robot at DARPA Robotics Challenge, 2015 This is our new robot WALK-MAN, getting ready for the DARPA Robotics Challenge 2015 The robot was designed and built at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT). WALK-MAN is a humanoid robot developed by the Italian Institute of Technology and University of Pisa in Italy, within the European funded project WALK-MAN (www.walk-man.eu). The project is a four-year research programme which started in October 2013 and aims to developing a humanoid robot for disaster response operations. WALK-MAN is the acronym of “Whole [continue reading…] Call for PhD students for 2016 PhD Program in Bioengineering and Robotics University of Genoa, jointly with the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) PhD positions with scholarships are available at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) Location: Genoa, Italy Starting date: November 2015 Application deadline: June 10th, 2015, noon (Italian time: GMT+2) Please [continue reading…] WALK-MAN is a humanoid robot developed by the Italian Institute of Technology and University of Pisa in Italy, within the European funded project WALK-MAN (www.walk-man.eu). The project is a four-year research programme which started in October 2013 and aims to developing a humanoid robot for disaster response operations. The first prototype of the WALK-MAN robot [continue reading…] University of Genoa, jointly with the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) PhD Program in Bioengineering and Robotics Call for PhD students for 2015 PhD positions with scholarships are available at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) Location: Genoa, Italy Starting date: November 2014 Application deadline: August 22, 2014 at 12:00 noon (Italian time/CET) Please [continue reading…] The video shows a hopping robot that uses a bungee cord in the knee for energy-efficient continuous hopping. We investigate how the passive and active compliance of the leg can help to absorb the shock of landing impact and protect the harmonic drives which are the most fragile part of a robot. [continue reading…] OFFICIAL CLOSING – “Return to the future” May 11th, 2014 http://www.britishcouncil.bg/events/ssf-2014/future Dr. Petar Kormushev shows the capabilities of the state-of-the-art robots at the Italian Institute of Technology. The demonstrations include various methods for machine learning that allow the robots to learn useful new skills. Dr. Kormushev was awarded with the John Atanasoff award [continue reading…] This is the video accompanying our IROS 2014 paper – “Haptic Exploration of Unknown Surfaces with Discontinuities”. We used a KUKA LWR (Lightweight arm) robot, equipped with a 6-axis force/torque sensor and a rolling pin at the end-effector. The work will be presented in September at IROS 2014 conference, Chicago, USA. Video credit: Rodrigo Jamisola [continue reading…] Machine Learning PhD Summer Course in Genova, Italy 30 June – 4 July 2014 Topic: Regularization Methods for Machine Learning (RegML) Instructors: Francesca Odone, Lorenzo Rosasco A 20 hours advanced machine learning course including theory classes and practical laboratory session. The course covers foundations as well as recent advances in Machine Learning with emphasis [continue reading…] This is a demonstration of three robots built at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT), where I work: iCub – humanoid robot COMAN – compliant humanoid robot HyQ – hydraulic quadruped robot The video was shown on “The Gadget Show”, Series 19 Episode 1. An amazing robotic Kangaroo made by Festo! (excerpt from Ludmila Kuncheva’s page) “Reviewing will become obsolete. It has been needed in the past because there has been no way to tap on a larger readers’ audience for an opinion poll. Peer reviewing has been the only credible way to maintain standards of publication. The growing diversity of topics makes this process impractical, [continue reading…] The robot hardware is progressively becoming more complex, which leads to growing interest in applying machine learning and statistics approaches within the robotics community. At the same time, there has been a growth within the machine learning community in using robots as motivating applications for new algorithms and formalisms. Considerable evidence of this exists in [continue reading…] The “Advanced Robotics” journal is preparing a Special Issue on Humanoid Robotics. SUBMISSION DEADLINE for papers: March 31, 2014 April 14, 2014 This is the official Call-for-Papers. “Advanced Robotics” is the official international journal of the Robotics Society of Japan (RSJ). More information about the journal here: http://www.rsj.or.jp/advanced_e/ I am co-editing this [continue reading…] The so-called “visuospatial skills” allow people to visually perceive objects and the spatial relationships among them. This video demonstrates a novel machine learning approach that allows a robot to learn simple visuospatial skills for performing object reconfiguration tasks. The main advantage of this approach is that the robot can learn from a single demonstration, and [continue reading…] I was awarded by the President of Bulgaria with the prestigious John Atanasoff award in 2013. The award is named after Prof. John Vincent Atanasoff, an American physicist of Bulgarian descent who was the inventor of the first electronic digital computer ABC. The 33-year-old scientist in the area of information technology, Dr. Petar Kormushev, [continue reading…] University of Genoa, jointly with the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) PhD Program in Bioengineering and Robotics Call for PhD students for 2014 PhD positions with scholarships are available at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) Location: Genoa, Italy Starting date: January 2014 Application deadline: September 20, 2013 at 12:00 noon (Italian time) Please [continue reading…] I just participated in the Dagstuhl Seminar No.13321. The topic was Reinforcement Learning, and it was a very well-attended event with some high-profile experts in RL, such as Richard Sutton, Thomas Dietterich, Csaba Szepesvári, and Doina Precup among others. This Dagstuhl Seminar served also as the 11th European Workshop on Reinforcement Learning (EWRL 2013). I [continue reading…] The video shows the humanoid robot WABIAN-2R walking with dynamically generated gait. Two scenarios are demonstrated: (1) sudden stopping and reversing, and (2) sudden step change to avoid an obstacle. The walking gait is dynamically generated using a hybrid gait pattern generator capable of rapid and dynamically consistent pattern regeneration.
Abstract: [continue reading…] I have an open postdoctoral position in my team, in the field of Machine Learning for Robotics. The details are listed below. For further information please contact me by e-mail. The Department of Advanced Robotics at the Italian Institute of Technology (an English-language research institute) is seeking to appoint a well-motivated full-time postdoctoral researcher [continue reading…] The video shows a KUKA robot that learns how to grasp and turn a valve autonomously. The robot learns not only how to achieve the goal of the task, but also how to react to different disturbances during the task execution. For example, the robot learns a reactive behavior that allows it to pause and [continue reading…]
Doctoral Course on “Robotics, Cognition and Interaction Technologies” Call for PhD students for 2013 PhD positions with scholarships are available at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Genoa, Italy. Doctoral course starting in January 2013 Application deadline: September 21, 2012 Online application here Please note that IIT is an English-language research institute, [continue reading…] Global Future 2045 – A New Era for Humanity In February of 2012 the first Global Future 2045 Congress was held in Moscow. There, over 50 world leading scientists from multiple disciplines met to develop a strategy for the future development of humankind. One of the main goals of the Congress was to construct [continue reading…] The Department of Advanced Robotics at the Italian Institute of Technology (an English-language research institute), has a Post Doc opening in the research areas of Reinforcement learning and Imitation learning applied to robot control of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV). The successful candidate will participate in a 3-year research project funded by the European Commission under [continue reading…] The Cost of Knowledge is a movement started by mathematicians and other academics who are protesting against the business model of the big publishers like Elsevier, Springer, Wiley, and etc.
Currently, the academics are set to boycott the Elsevier’s business practices, as explained in this Statement of Purpose.
You can take a stand [continue reading…] I am co-organizing a workshop at AIMSA 2012 on behalf of the IEEE RAS Technical Committee on Robot Learning:
Workshop Topic: Advances in Robot Learning and Human-Robot Interaction Location: Varna, Bulgaria Date: September 12, 2012 Venue: AIMSA 2012 conference on Artificial Intelligence URL: http://kormushev.com/AIMSA-2012/
The invited speaker will be Prof. Alexander Stoytchev, [continue reading…] A nice interview with Peter Joseph: A very shocking and inspiring movie. I fully agree with the ideas in it: http://www.thezeitgeistmovement.com/ Something definitely worth watching: http://www.thezeitgeistmovement.com/ The ultimate test of character … Good papers are like good wine: they need time to mature. Of course, there are a few jerks out there, as Marc Raibert puts it, who can write perfect manuscripts on the first try, but if you’re reading this, I assume you are not one of these disgusting individuals. So, for the rest of us [continue reading…] Postdoctoral positions in Machine Learning for Robot Control of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) The Department of Advanced Robotics (http://www.iit.it/en/advanced-robotics) at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT, an English-language research institute, located in Genoa, Italy) has 2 Post-Doc openings (starting from January March 2012) in the research areas of Reinforcement learning and Imitation learning applied to [continue reading…] Be prapared: ‘luck’ is where preparation meets opportunity. ― Randy Pausch The quickest way to succeed is to accelerate the rate at which you fail. ― Reinforcement Learning folklore Stay hungry, stay foolish. ― Steve Jobs I hear, I forget; I see, I may remember; I do, I will never forget. ― Confucius The only [continue reading…] The compliant humanoid robot COMAN learns to minimize the energy consumption during walking. This is the video I presented together with my paper at IROS 2011 in San Francisco, in September 2011.
We present a learning-based approach for minimizing the electric energy consumption during walking of a passively-compliant bipedal robot. [continue reading…] One of my favorite comics is the PhD comics (“Piled Higher and Deeper”), which relates to many problems and funny moments of a PhD-student’s and a post-doc’s life.
The application deadline for the positions below has passed already! But IIT regularly announces other open positions in several fields of science and has permanent ongoing calls here: http://www.iit.it/en/resources/calls.html
Doctoral Course on Robotics, Cognition and Interaction Technologies Call for PhD students for 2012 30 open PhD positions with scholarship are [continue reading…] At the international conference AAAI 2011 in San Francisco, my colleague Sylvain and I presented our pizza-making robot. The event was the so-called “Robotic Challenge @ AAAI”, and this year the topic was “Food preparation”. Our robot is a modified Barrett WAM 7-dof robot arm manipulator, with a wooden rolling pin at the [continue reading…] A collection of highly-motivational and inspirational materials (at least for me): Steve Jobs’s Commencement Speech in 2005 at Stanford University Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams Jeff Hawkins’s TED Talk: Brain science is about to fundamentally change computing Andrew Ng (Director of Stanford [continue reading…] I give invited talks occasionally, to present my latest research in machine learning and its application for robot control. If you would like me to give a presentation at your institution, please invite me! You can download a tentative abstract of my invited talk here. Robot Learning of Motor Skills Abstract Endowing robots with human-like [continue reading…] I am trying to create a contemporary English-Bulgarian scientific dictionary which contains modern and state-of-the-art scientific terms and their corresponding translations from English to Bulgarian and vice-versa. Most of the included words are too new and do not yet have a well-established translation in Bulgarian, which is one of the main reasons for trying to [continue reading…] The iCub robot is a humanoid robot developed within the project RobotCub. The iCub was designed and built mainly by the Italian Institute of Technology in Genova. Reinforcement Learning is a type of Machine Learning approach in which the learning algorithm discovers by itself how to reach a given goal by a trial-and-error process. Reinforcement Learning is different than supervised learning and unsupervised learning. It is a separate class of learning approaches that rely on information given by a reward function. The [continue reading…] The COMAN robot is a compliant humanoid robot which is currently under development by the Advanced Robotics dept. of the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa, Italy. COMAN stands for “COmpliant huMANoid”, because this robot is designed with passive compliance (via springs) in his joints. This allows it to be more robust to environment [continue reading…] In recent years, there have been some amazing demonstrations of successful learning robots, which master some difficult motor skills. Here I have collected some of the most impressive ones, which I consider being major milestones at the time they were done: This is work done by my former colleague Stephen Hart: Dexter robot learning [continue reading…] One of my main research topics is robot learning. Normally, in machine learning, the algorithms are classified in three classes: supervised (aka. imitation learning in robotics), unsupervised (aka. exploration in robotics), and semi-supervised (aka. reinforcement learning in robotics). A Japanese humanoid robot (Fujitsu HOAP-2) learns to clean a whiteboard by upper-body kinesthetic teaching during full-body balance control. The research is from an Italian-Japanese collaboration between the Italian Institute of Technology and Tokyo City University.
We present an integrated approach allowing a free-standing humanoid robot to acquire [continue reading…] Humanoid robot iCub learns the skill of archery. After being instructed how to hold the bow and release the arrow, the robot learns by itself to aim and shoot arrows at the target. It learns to hit the center of the target in only 8 trials.
The learning algorithm, [continue reading…] I maintain a list of active Bulgarian researchers in robotics and machine learning. If you would like to be added to this list please contact me. I also maintain a mailing list called Bulgarian Robotics Group, for exchanging useful information related to ongoing robotics projects, job opportunities, and other news to help each other. You [continue reading…] Robot learns to flip pancakes! I am teaching a Barrett WAM robot to flip pancakes:
The video shows a Barrett WAM 7 DOFs manipulator learning to flip pancakes by reinforcement learning. The motion is encoded in a mixture of basis force fields through an extension of Dynamic Movement [continue reading…] |
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