Research Projects

Collaborative Research Center 1320 funded by DFG: Everyday Activity Science and Engineering (EASE) is the study of the design, realization, and analysis of information processing models that enable robotic agents (and humans) to master complex human-scale manipulation tasks that are mundane and routine.In the subproject NEEM (Narrative-Enabled Episodic Memory) we investigate representation, management, reasoning, and usage. For this, we will develop an embodied knowledge acquisition, representation, and management framework. Furthermore, we will investigate a physically embodied query answering service for knowledge completion. This will boost information processing for robots by exploiting episodic memory systems. Then, this will allow the acquisition of commonsense and naive physics knowledge as a big data analytic problem. The project started in July 2017.

The project EU-funded project Factory-in-a-day aims at improving the competitiveness of European manufacturing SMEs by removing the primary obstacle for robot automation: installation time and installation cost. This project started in October 2013. My main task in Factory-in-a-day is in the development of techniques for natural demonstrations using human-robot-co-manipulation. In this regard, our semantic-based reasoning approach is able to integrate different input sensors, such as the joint encoders of a robot, skin sensors (tactile and proximity) and visual information from the cameras of the robot (first view perspective).

RoboCub@Home is the largest international annual competition for autonomous service robots and is part of the RoboCup initiative. Team leader of the first TUM team to compete. October 2016 - July 2017.

Laura Bassi Price with this award Technische Universität München (TUM) promotes women in science. The title of my research project is "Exploiting semantic representations to infer human activities from different input sources". Funded by the government of Bavaria and TUM, Germany from January 2016 - January 2017.

 German-Korean Partnership Programme (GEnKO-DAAD): The name of the project was "Machine Learning for the Generation of Flexible Motion Trajectories for Robot Manipulators". Within the project, we studied the generation of motions for robot arms and manipulators that are most likely to be appropriate given a particular situation and real-world task constraints, and we consequently apply these motions to control humanoid robots. This project was performed during July 2011-April 2013.

DFG Cluster of Excellence Cognition for Technical Systems (CoTeSys):This project was financed under the German Excellence Initiative from 2006 until October 2014. CoTeSys investigated cognition for technical systems such as vehicles, robots, and factories. Technical systems that are cognitive will be much easier to interact and cooperate with, and will be more robust, flexible, and efficient. I was involved in the sub-project of "Cognitive Models of Everyday Manipulation Tasks". My work was meanly focused on obtaining models of human everyday activities like setting the table. These models describe the arm movement in common task such as the reaching movement.

IPN - SIP "Computational Modeling and Simulation of physical and biological systems". This project was founded from January to December 2008 by the Instituto Politécnico Nacional (IPN), Mexico. The main goal of this project was to model and simulate thermodynamics systems, mechanical systems and biological systems using non-linear techniques. My contribution in this project was to analyze of the thermodynamics, mechanical and biological system through non-linear techniques such as: Lyapunov exponent, fractal dimension, Poincare maps, among others.

Awards

• Best Scientific Poster Award for RoboCup@Home 2017. The team Alle@Home participated for the first time in the RoboCup@Home competition, at the RoboCup@Home Open Platform league. The team won the "Best Scientific Poster" of the whole RoboCup@Home leagues (with more than 30 teams across all leagues). For more information visit here.
• Laura Bassi Award for one year research project as postdoctoral fellow, 2016 . With this award, Technische Universität München (TUM) promotes women in science. The title of my research project is "Exploiting semantic representations to infer human activities from different input sources". Laura Bassi was the first female scientist who was awarded with a professorship at an European university in 1776. The funding is provided by the government of Bavaria. For more information visit here.
• Excellent Doctoral degree for female engineering students, 2015: This prize is given as a recognition to the outstanding final or doctoral thesis from Bavarian universities to female graduates in engineering. This prize is granted by the Bavarian Ministry for Science, Education, Arts and Cultural Affairs, Germany on September 2015. For more information visit http://www.km.bayern.de/pressemitteilung/9730/nr-349-vom-15-09-2015.html, also visit http://www.km.bayern.de/studenten/meldung/3758.html.
• Dr. Kanako Miura Travel Grant: In recognition of Dr. Kanako Miura's contributions to Humanoid Robotics, the IEEE RAS Technical Committee on Humanoid Robotics initiated the Miura Memorial award. The goal is to assist female PhD and MS students entering the field with travel to Humanoids 2013 in Atlanta. This year (2013), 6 people received the award (http://www.humanoids2013.com/support.html).
• DFG Student Travel Support: Thanks for the generous support from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), PhD and master students who are studying at German universities and research institutions are invited to apply for travel support to participate ICRA 2013. Only 20 students obtained this support out of 89 applications (http://www.icra2013.org/?page_id=771).
• Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship: Europe, the Middle East and Africa 2011. In Anita Borg honor, Google support women in technology with the Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship. Google hopes to encourage women to excel in computing and technology and become active role models and leaders in the field (http://www.google.com/anitaborg/emea/winners.html).