Location:

address: EPFL – STI – I2S – ASL3, Station 9, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
tel: +41 21 693 5464
fax: +41 21 693 7806
web: http://asl.epfl.ch

Description of participant

The Autonomous Systems Lab (ASL) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) is the leading research centre in autonomous mobile robotics and intelligent control in Switzerland. ASL research focuses on integrated mechatronics design, probabilistic reasoning, machine learning, cognitive robotics and natural means of human-robot interactions. The ASL has a long expertise in the complete design (mechanics, electronic and control) of robotics platforms and several robotic prototypes developed at ASL have found their way in products developed by EPFL spin-offs. The Lab involves two professors, 5 senior researchers, 20 PhD students and 4 senior technicians. ASL is funded primarily by research grants from the EPFL, the Swiss National Science Foundation, the European Community and the European Space Agency. In addition, ASL has numerous collaborations with the industry and strong ties with various spin-off companies of the EPFL in the field of robotics. Research at ASL aims at developing robust and adaptive control architectures to realize intelligent robots. The research combines engineering, computer science and computational neuroscience methods for the development of learning control system to enable flexible human-robot interactions. The emphasis is given to research on learning of new motor skills, on the interpretation and recognition of gestures, and on the acquisition and interpretation of verbal communication. The lab has a particular interest in humanoid robots and develops various toy robots for use in educational and therapeutic applications with normal and disabled children.

Key researchers

Aude BILLARD (*) is Associate Professor at the Autonomous Systems Laboratory at the School of Engineering Sciences and Techniques at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. She received her B.Sc. (1994) and M.Sc. (1995) in Physics from EPFL, with specialization in Particle Physics at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN), a MSc. in Knowledge-based Systems (1996) and a Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence from the Department of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Edinburgh. She worked as a Post-doctoral Fellow at IDSIA and LAMI (EPFL, 1998-1999), then as Research associate (1999-2000), Research Assistant Professor (2000-2004) at the department of Computer Sciences at the University of Southern California, and Assistant Professor at EPFL (2002-2004). Prof. Billard is a member of the editorial board of the Interaction Studies journal (published by John Benjamins), a member of the organizing committee of the IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids’06) and the International Conference on Simulated and Adaptive Behavior (SAB’04). She also served on the program committees of the IEEE-RAS int. conferences Humanoids’03, Humanoids’04, Humanoids’05, ICRA’05, Bio-Rob’06, HRI’06 and the IEEE int. conferences ICEC’05 and ICDL’05, as well as the international Conferences in Machine Learning (ICML’00-02) and various other international and national conferences (Epirobotics' 02-03,ECAL'99-02, AISB'99-02). Prof. Billard’s research bridges traditional engineering and computer science in the development of new human-machine interfaces. It uses tools of Machine Learning, Machine Vision, Non-linear Systems Theory, Information Theory, Mechatronics and Computational Neuroscience to tackle topics such as gesture recognition, programming through demonstration, design of adaptive and learning systems, control of embedded and autonomous systems, with an emphasis on humanoids and educational robots.

Role of partner

The ASL group will be principally involved in the development of human-robot interfaces, as well as in research related to robot programming by demonstration and cooperative learning and adaptation. It will also participate importantly in the validation of these tools in humanoid prototypes as part of real-world applications.