Nadia Figueroa

I am a Postdoctoral Associate in the Interactive Robotics Group at MIT CSAIL advised by Prof. Julie Shah. I obtained a PhD in Robotics from EPFL, under the supervision of Prof. Aude Billard at the LASA lab. Prior to PhD studies, I spent time exploring different robotics and computer-vision related research topics at the DLR's (German Aerospace Center) Robotics and Mechatronics Institute and at the Engineering Department of NYU Abu Dhabi. I hold a BSc in Mechatronics from Monterrey Tech and Msc in Automation and Robotics from TU Dortmund.

Research Focus: I am interested in endowing robots with the capabilities of learning, aiding and physically interacting with humans while performing complicated tasks in dynamic environments. To achieve this, I develop methods that leverage machine learning techniques with concepts from dynamical systems and control theory to solve salient problems in the areas of robot learning from demonstration, incremental and interactive learning and human-robot collaboration.

CV  /  Short Bio  /  Google Scholar  /  LinkedIn  /  PhD Thesis

Contact: 32 Vassar St. Cambridge, MA 02139 -- Office 32-271 (Stata)
Email: nadiafig [at] mit [dot] edu

• [Feb. 2020] I have been selected as a finalist for the euRobotics George Giralt PhD award 2020 edition (Best European PhD Thesis in Robotics). Will be flying to Malaga in March to present my thesis at ERF alongside the other 4 finalists!
• [Jan. 2020] I joined the Interactive Robotics Group at MIT CSAIL as a Postdoctoral Associate.
• [June 2019] I successfully defended by PhD thesis entitled: "From High-Level to Low-Level Robot Learning of Complex Tasks: Leveraging Priors, Metrics and Dynamical Systems" under the supervision of Prof. Aude Billard.
-> The president of the jury was Prof. Jamie Paik (EPFL), the internal examinar was Prof. Melanie Zeilinger (ETH) and external examiners were Prof. Katherine J. Kuchenbecker (MPI) and Prof. Julie A. Shah (MIT).
• [May 2019] At ICRA 2019 I gave a tutorial on "Dynamical System-based Learning from Demonstration". Together with my PhD advisor and colleagues we will present the DS-learning methods developed in the lab and how to use them for different applications.

• [Feb. 2020] Finalist for the euRobotics George Giralt PhD award 2020 edition (Best European PhD Thesis in Robotics).
• [Dec. 2019] Finalist for the EPFL Doctoral Program distinction . This distinction is granted to a selection of very high quality theses, in order to highlight the doctoral candidates’ research work and their scientific merit.
• [Sept. 2019] Nominated for the Asea Brown Boveri (ABB) Ltd. Award . The prize is awarded for particularly excellent master’s and/or doctoral work in the fields of energy/information/automation technology. Award decision still pending.
• [April 2017] Top 5 finalists in the KUKA Innovation Award
• [RSS 2016] Winner of Best Student Paper award and finalist for Best Conference Paper and Best Systems Paper.
• [HRI 2016] Selected as a Human-Robot Interaction Pioneer for the HRI Pioneers workshop which identifies and empowers the world’s top student researchers early in their careers.

Throughout my PhD I've been a teaching assistant for the following graduate courses:
MICRO-401 Machine Learning Programming (Fall 2016/Fall 2017)
Head Teaching Assistant and Main Syllabus Architect and Developer.
MICRO-570 Advanced Machine Learning (Spring 2016/2017)
Head Teaching Assistant and Tutorial Developer.
MICRO-455 Applied Machine Learning (Fall 2015)
Teaching Assistant.
Co-developer of ML_toolbox .

• [Aug. 2019] 45min Research Seminar at University of Washington, Seattle.
• [July 2019] 45min Research Seminar at MIT.
• [ICRA 2019] Lectures and exercises sessions at the Tutorial on Dynamical System-based Learning from Demonstration, that I co-organized.
• [Dec. 2018] 30min talk at the SwissAI Machine Learning meetup at EPFL
• [Nov. 2018] 12min talk at the Swiss Machine Learning Day (SMLD) at EPFL
• [CORL 2018] 4min spotlight presentation for accepted paper.
• [Aug. 2018] 45min Research Seminar at UT Austin, Texas
• [July. 2018] Two lectures (lecture 1, lecture 2) + exercise session at the Tutorial on Dynamical system-based Learning from Demonstration at EPFL, that I co-organized.
• [ICRA 2018] 12min talk at the Workshop on Machine Learning in the Planning and Control of Robot Motion.
• [ICRA 2018] 12min talk at the Workshop on Cognitive Whole-Body Control for Compliant Robot Manipulation.
• [IROS 2017] 12min talk at the Workshop on Synergies between Learning and Interaction.
• [IROS 2017] 15min talk at the Workshop on Micro-Data: The New Frontier of Robot Learning?.
• [RSS 2016] 5min presentation for accepted paper.

The following research projects were funded by the European Union via : the FP7 project Robohow and/or the H2020 projects Cogimon and SecondHands . For a list of publications, checkout my Google Scholar profile or my epfl-lasa website.

Learning Complex Sequential Tasks from Demonstration: Uni-Manual and Bi-Manual Case Studies

• Learning and Execution of Complex Sequential Tasks: https://nbfigueroa.github.io/complex-seq-task-learning/





Learning Stable Dynamical System (DS) Representations of Complex Motions from Demonstrations:
Task and Joint Space Approaches

• Task-Space DS: https://nbfigueroa.github.io/pc-gmm-ds-learning/
• Joint-Space DS: https://nbfigueroa.github.io/jtds-learning/












Locally Active Globally Stable Dynamical Systems for Manipulation, Navigation and Co-Manipulation

• Code for Learning and Execution of LAGS-DS: https://nbfigueroa.github.io/lags-ds-learning/









Development and Learning of Multi-Arm Coordination Strategies

• Multi-arm coordination strategies: https://nbfigueroa.github.io/multi-arm-coordination/









Dynamical System based Adaptive Grasping, Navigation and Co-Manipulation with Humanoid Robots

• DS-based iCub motion planing: https://epfl-lasa.github.io/iCub-Assistant/

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