Daniel N. Nikovski

Daniel N. Nikovski
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  • Biography

    Dan's research is focused on algorithms for reasoning, planning, and learning with probabilistic models. His current work is on the application of such algorithms to hard transportation problems such as group elevator control and traffic prediction. He also has varied interests in the field of data mining.

  • Recent News & Events


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  • Awards

    •  AWARD    Mitsubishi Electric and MERL work recognized with IEEJ Distinguished Paper Award
      Date: June 1, 2025
      Awarded to: Arvind Raghunathan, Daniel Nikovski
      MERL Contacts: Daniel N. Nikovski; Arvind Raghunathan
      Research Areas: Electric Systems, Optimization
      Brief
      • A publication jointly authored by Mitsubishi Electric Corporation's Advanced Technology Center (ATC) and MERL researchers has been recognized with the 2025 IEEJ Distinguished Paper Award by the Institute of Electrical Engineers Japan. The paper titled "Power Band Model Based on Flow Network and Weekly Unit Commitment Problem Considering Reserve Market" published in the IEEJ Transactions on Power and Energy presents a novel Unit Commitment formulation for scheduling the generator operations. Arvind Raghunathan and Daniel Nikovksi were co-authors on this publication.
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    •  AWARD    Mitsubishi Electric US Receives a 2022 CES Innovation Award for Touchless Elevator Control Jointly Developed with MERL
      Date: November 17, 2021
      Awarded to: Elevators and Escalators Division of Mitsubishi Electric US, Inc.
      MERL Contacts: Daniel N. Nikovski; William S. Yerazunis
      Research Areas: Data Analytics, Machine Learning, Signal Processing
      Brief
      • The Elevators and Escalators Division of Mitsubishi Electric US, Inc. has been recognized as a 2022 CES® Innovation Awards honoree for its new PureRide™ Touchless Control for elevators, jointly developed with MERL. Sponsored by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), the CES Innovation Awards is the largest and most influential technology event in the world. PureRide™ Touchless Control provides a simple, no-touch product that enables users to call an elevator and designate a destination floor by placing a hand or finger over a sensor. MERL initiated the development of PureRide™ in the first weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic by proposing the use of infra-red sensors for operating elevator call buttons, and participated actively in its rapid implementation and commercialization, resulting in a first customer installation in October of 2020.
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    •  AWARD    Daniel Nikovski receives Outstanding Reviewer Award at NeurIPS'21
      Date: October 18, 2021
      Awarded to: Daniel Nikovski
      MERL Contact: Daniel N. Nikovski
      Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning
      Brief
      • Daniel Nikovski, Group Manager of MERL's Data Analytics group, has received an Outstanding Reviewer Award from the 2021 conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS'21). NeurIPS is the world's premier conference on neural networks and related technologies.
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    •  AWARD    Best conference paper of IEEE PES-GM 2020
      Date: June 18, 2020
      Awarded to: Tong Huang, Hongbo Sun, K.J. Kim, Daniel Nikovski, Le Xie
      MERL Contacts: Daniel N. Nikovski; Hongbo Sun
      Research Areas: Data Analytics, Electric Systems, Optimization
      Brief
      • A paper on A Holistic Framework for Parameter Coordination of Interconnected Microgrids Against Natural Disasters, written by Tong Huang, a former MERL intern from Texas A&M University, has been selected as one of the Best Conference Papers at the 2020 Power and Energy Society General Meeting (PES-GM). IEEE PES-GM is the flagship conference for the IEEE Power and Energy Society. The work was done in collaboration with Hongbo Sun, K. J. Kim, and Daniel Nikovski from MERL, and Tong's advisor, Prof. Le Xie from Texas A&M University.
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    •  AWARD    Best Student Paper Award at the International Conference on Data Mining
      Date: November 30, 2017
      Awarded to: Yan Zhu, Makoto Imamura, Daniel Nikovski, Eamonn Keogh
      MERL Contact: Daniel N. Nikovski
      Research Area: Data Analytics
      Brief
      • Yan Zhu, a former MERL intern from the University of California at Riverside has won the Best Student Paper Award at the International Conference on Data Mining in 2017, for her work on time series chains, a novel primitive for time series analysis. The work was done in collaboration with Makoto Imamura, formerly at Information Technology Center/AI Department, and currently a professor at Tokai University in Tokyo, Japan, Daniel Nikovski from MERL, and Yan's advisor, Prof. Eamonn Keogh from UC Riverside, whose lab has had a long and fruitful collaboration with MERL and Mitsubishi Electric.
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    •  AWARD    SICE 2008 Best Paper Award
      Date: July 1, 2008
      Awarded to: Nishiuma, N.; Goto, Y.; Kumazawa, H.; Komaya K.; Nikovski, D. and Brand, M.
      Awarded for: "Travel Time Prediction using Singular Value Decomposition"
      Awarded by: Journal of the Society of Instrument and Control Engineers of Japan
      MERL Contact: Daniel N. Nikovski
      Research Area: Data Analytics
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  • Internships with Daniel

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  • MERL Publications

    •  Nikovski, D.N., "Observation-Based Inverse Kinematics for Visual Servo Control", 22nd International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics (ICINCO), October 2025.
      BibTeX TR2025-153 PDF
      • @inproceedings{Nikovski2025oct,
      • author = {Nikovski, Daniel N.},
      • title = {{Observation-Based Inverse Kinematics for Visual Servo Control}},
      • booktitle = {22nd International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics (ICINCO)},
      • year = 2025,
      • month = oct,
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2025-153}
      • }
    •  Nikovski, D.N., "Disentangled Object-Centric Configuration Representation Learning for Articulated Robot Arms", 11th International Conference on Control, Decision and Information Technologies CoDIT'25, July 2025.
      BibTeX TR2025-108 PDF
      • @inproceedings{Nikovski2025jul,
      • author = {Nikovski, Daniel N.},
      • title = {{Disentangled Object-Centric Configuration Representation Learning for Articulated Robot Arms}},
      • booktitle = {11th International Conference on Control, Decision and Information Technologies CoDIT'25},
      • year = 2025,
      • month = jul,
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2025-108}
      • }
    •  Wang, J.-W., Nikovski, D.N., "State Representation Learning for Visual Servo Control", European Control Conference (ECC), June 2025.
      BibTeX TR2025-094 PDF
      • @inproceedings{Wang2025jun,
      • author = {Wang, Jen-Wei and Nikovski, Daniel N.},
      • title = {{State Representation Learning for Visual Servo Control}},
      • booktitle = {European Control Conference (ECC)},
      • year = 2025,
      • month = jun,
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2025-094}
      • }
    •  Wang, J.-W., Nikovski, D.N., "Learning Visual Servoing for Nonholonomic Mobile Robots with Uncalibrated Cameras", The 40th ACM/SIGAPP Symposium On Applied Computing, March 2025.
      BibTeX TR2025-042 PDF
      • @inproceedings{Wang2025mar2,
      • author = {Wang, Jen-Wei and Nikovski, Daniel N.},
      • title = {{Learning Visual Servoing for Nonholonomic Mobile Robots with Uncalibrated Cameras}},
      • booktitle = {The 40th ACM/SIGAPP Symposium On Applied Computing},
      • year = 2025,
      • month = mar,
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2025-042}
      • }
    •  Zhong, J., Nikovski, D.N., Yerazunis, W.S., Ando, T., "Learning Time-Optimal Control of Gantry Cranes", International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications (ICMLA), DOI: 10.1109/​ICMLA61862.2024.00139, December 2024, pp. 945-950.
      BibTeX TR2024-181 PDF
      • @inproceedings{Zhong2024dec,
      • author = {Zhong, Junmin and Nikovski, Daniel N. and Yerazunis, William S. and Ando, Taishi},
      • title = {{Learning Time-Optimal Control of Gantry Cranes}},
      • booktitle = {International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications (ICMLA)},
      • year = 2024,
      • pages = {945--950},
      • month = dec,
      • doi = {10.1109/ICMLA61862.2024.00139},
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2024-181}
      • }
    See All MERL Publications for Daniel

  • Software & Data Downloads

  • Videos

  • MERL Issued Patents

    • Title: "Method and System for Modelling and Control Partially Measurable Systems"
      Inventors: Romeres, Diego; Amadio, Fabio; Libera, Alberto Dalla; Antonello, Riccardo; Carli, Ruggero; Nikovski, Daniel N.
      Patent No.: 12,346,115
      Issue Date: Jul 1, 2025
    • Title: "System and Method for Controlling a Robot using Constrained Dynamic Movement Primitives"
      Inventors: Jha, Devesh; Shaw, Seiji; Raghunathan, Arvind U.; Corcodel, Radu Ioan; Romeres, Diego; Nikovski, Daniel N.
      Patent No.: 12,343,876
      Issue Date: Jul 1, 2025
    • Title: "System and Method for Controlling Motion of a Bank of Elevators"
      Inventors: Zhang, Jing; Tsiligkaridis, Athanasios; Taguchi, Hiroshi; Nikovski, Daniel N.
      Patent No.: 12,210,987
      Issue Date: Jan 28, 2025
    • Title: "System and a Method for Training a Neural Network Having Autoencoder Architecture to Recover Missing Data"
      Inventors: Laftchiev, Emil; Yan, Qing; Nikovski, Daniel N.
      Patent No.: 11,698,946
      Issue Date: Jul 11, 2023
    • Title: "System and Method for Robotic Assembly Based on Adaptive Compliance"
      Inventors: Nikovski, Daniel N.; Romeres, Diego; Jha, Devesh; Yerazunis, William S.
      Patent No.: 11,673,264
      Issue Date: Jun 13, 2023
    • Title: "System Control Based on Time-Series Data Analysis"
      Inventors: Zhang, Jing; Nikovski, Daniel N.
      Patent No.: 11,599,104
      Issue Date: Mar 7, 2023
    • Title: "Method and system for touchless elevator control"
      Inventors: Nikovski, Daniel N.; Yerazunis, William S.
      Patent No.: 11,518,646
      Issue Date: Dec 6, 2022
    • Title: "System and Design of Derivative-free Model Learning for Robotic Systems"
      Inventors: Romeres, Diego; Libera, Alberto Dalla; Jha, Devesh; Nikovski, Daniel Nikolaev
      Patent No.: 11,389,957
      Issue Date: Jul 19, 2022
    • Title: "System and Method for Anomaly Detection in Time-Varying System Operations"
      Inventors: Zhang, Jing; Nikovski, Daniel N.
      Patent No.: 11,353,859
      Issue Date: Jun 7, 2022
    • Title: "System and Method for Thermal Control Based on Invertible Causation Relationship"
      Inventors: Laftchiev, Emil; Nikovski, Daniel N.; Romeres, Diego
      Patent No.: 11,280,514
      Issue Date: Mar 22, 2022
    • Title: "System and Method for Automatic Error Recovery in Robotic Assembly"
      Inventors: Nikovski, Daniel Nikolaev; Jha, Devesh; Romeres, Diego
      Patent No.: 11,161,244
      Issue Date: Nov 2, 2021
    • Title: "Predictive Classification of Future Operations"
      Inventors: Jha, Devesh; Zhang, Wenyu; Laftchiev, Emil; Nikovski, Daniel N.
      Patent No.: 10,996,664
      Issue Date: May 4, 2021
    • Title: "METHODS AND SYSTEMS TO PREDICT A STATE OF THE MACHINE USING TIME SERIES DATA OF THE MACHINE"
      Inventors: Farahmand, Amir-massoud; Nikovski, Daniel N.
      Patent No.: 10,729,382
      Issue Date: Aug 4, 2020
    • Title: "Methods and Systems for Discovery of Prognostic Subsequences in Time Series"
      Inventors: Nikovski, Daniel N.; Zhu, Yan; Farahmand, Amir-massoud
      Patent No.: 10,712,733
      Issue Date: Jul 14, 2020
    • Title: "Optimizing Operations of Multiple Air-Conditioning Units"
      Inventors: Raghunathan, Arvind U; Nikovski, Daniel N.
      Patent No.: 10,161,649
      Issue Date: Dec 25, 2018
    • Title: "System and Method for Group Elevator Scheduling Based on Submodular Optimization"
      Inventors: Nikovski, Daniel N.; Raghunathan, Arvind U; Ramalingam, Srikumar
      Patent No.: 10,118,796
      Issue Date: Nov 6, 2018
    • Title: "Method for Anomaly Detection in Time Series Data Based on Spectral Partitioning"
      Inventors: Nikovski, Daniel N.; Kniazev, Andrei; Jones, Michael J.
      Patent No.: 9,984,334
      Issue Date: May 29, 2018
    • Title: "Model Predictive Control with Uncertainties"
      Inventors: Nikovski, Daniel N.; Di Cairano, Stefano; Zhao, Yiming
      Patent No.: 9,946,241
      Issue Date: Apr 17, 2018
    • Title: "Method for Detecting Power Theft in a Power Distribution System"
      Inventors: Nikovski, Daniel N.; Wang, Zhenhua
      Patent No.: 9,945,889
      Issue Date: Apr 17, 2018
    • Title: "Method and System for Scheduling Elevator Cars in a Group Elevator System with Uncertain Information about Arrivals of Future Passengers"
      Inventors: Nikovski, Daniel N.
      Patent No.: 9,834,405
      Issue Date: Dec 5, 2017
    • Title: "Method for Learning Exemplars for Anomaly Detection"
      Inventors: Jones, Michael J.; Nikovski, Daniel N.
      Patent No.: 9,779,361
      Issue Date: Oct 3, 2017
    • Title: "Method and System for Selecting Power Sources in Hybrid Electric Vehicles"
      Inventors: Nikovski, Daniel N.; Farahmand, Amir-massoud
      Patent No.: 9,637,111
      Issue Date: May 2, 2017
    • Title: "Actions Prediction for Hypothetical Driving Conditions"
      Inventors: Harsham, Bret A.; Hershey, John R.; Le Roux, Jonathan; Nikovski, Daniel N.; Esenther, Alan W.
      Patent No.: 9,434,389
      Issue Date: Sep 6, 2016
    • Title: "Method and System for Autonomously Delivering Information to Drivers"
      Inventors: Nikovski, Daniel N.; Harsham, Bret A.; Hershey, John R.; Brinkman, Dirk
      Patent No.: 9,305,306
      Issue Date: Apr 5, 2016
    • Title: "System and Method for Optimal Power Flow Analysis"
      Inventors: Raghunathan, Arvind U; Nikovski, Daniel N.; Gopalakrishnan, Ajit
      Patent No.: 9,280,744
      Issue Date: Mar 8, 2016
    • Title: "Method for Optimizing Power Flows in Electric Power Networks"
      Inventors: Raghunathan, Arvind U; Gopalakrishnan, Ajit; Nikovski, Daniel N.
      Patent No.: 9,184,589
      Issue Date: Nov 10, 2015
    • Title: "Method and System for Dynamically Adapting user Interfaces in Vehicle Navigation Systems to Minimize Interaction Complexity"
      Inventors: Nikovski, Daniel N.; Hershey, John R.; Harsham, Bret A.; Le Roux, Jonathan
      Patent No.: 9,170,119
      Issue Date: Oct 27, 2015
    • Title: "Method for Predicting Future Travel Time Using Geospatial Inference"
      Inventors: Jones, Michael J.; Nikovski, Daniel N.; Geng, Yanfeng
      Patent No.: 9,122,987
      Issue Date: Sep 1, 2015
    • Title: "Method for Globally Optimizing Power Flows in Electric Networks"
      Inventors: Raghunathan, Arvind U.; Nikovski, Daniel N.
      Patent No.: 9,093,842
      Issue Date: Jul 28, 2015
    • Title: "Method for Detecting Anomalies in Multivariate Time Series Data"
      Inventors: Nikovski, Daniel N.; Jones, Michael J.
      Patent No.: 9,075,713
      Issue Date: Jul 7, 2015
    • Title: "Method for Scheduling Power Generators Based on Optimal Configurations and Approximate Dynamic Programming"
      Inventors: Nikovski, Daniel N.; Zhang, Weihong
      Patent No.: 8,996,185
      Issue Date: Mar 31, 2015
    • Title: "Method for Operating Building Climate Control System Using Integrated Temperature and Humidity Models"
      Inventors: Xu, Jingyang; Nikovski, Daniel N.
      Patent No.: 8,958,921
      Issue Date: Feb 17, 2015
    • Title: "Method for Predicting Outputs of Photovoltaic Devices Based on Two-Dimensional Fourier Analysis and Seasonal Auto-Regression"
      Inventors: Zhang, Weihong; Nikovski, Daniel N.
      Patent No.: 8,942,959
      Issue Date: Jan 27, 2015
    • Title: "Method for Optimizing Run Curve of Vehicles"
      Inventors: Nikovski, Daniel N.; Lidicky, Bernard
      Patent No.: 8,938,348
      Issue Date: Jan 20, 2015
    • Title: "Method for Determining Run-Curves for Vehicles Based on Travel Time"
      Inventors: Xu, Jingyang; Nikovski, Daniel N.
      Patent No.: 8,838,304
      Issue Date: Sep 16, 2014
    • Title: "Controlling Operation of Vapor Compression System"
      Inventors: Nikovski, Daniel N.; Laughman, Christopher; Burns, Dan J.
      Patent No.: 8,793,003
      Issue Date: Jul 29, 2014
    • Title: "Method for Predicting Travel Times Using Autoregressive Models"
      Inventors: Nikovski, Daniel N.
      Patent No.: 8,762,036
      Issue Date: Jun 24, 2014
    • Title: "Method for Determining Run-Curves for Vehicles in Real-Time Subject to Dynamic Travel Time and Speed Limit Constraint"
      Inventors: Xu, Jingyang; Nikovski, Daniel N.
      Patent No.: 8,660,723
      Issue Date: Feb 25, 2014
    • Title: "Method for Matching Elements in Schemas of Databases Using a Bayesian Network"
      Inventors: Nikovski, Daniel N.
      Patent No.: 8,577,857
      Issue Date: Nov 5, 2013
    • Title: "Method for Scheduling the Operation of Power Generators using Factored Markov Decision Process"
      Inventors: Nikovski, Daniel N.
      Patent No.: 8,566,266
      Issue Date: Oct 22, 2013
    • Title: "HVAC Control System"
      Inventors: Forlines, Clifton L.; Nikovski, Daniel N.
      Patent No.: 8,412,381
      Issue Date: Apr 2, 2013
    • Title: "A Method for Converting Dynamical Systems with Continuous State Spaces into Markov Decision Processes with Discrete States"
      Inventors: Nikovski, Daniel N.
      Patent No.: 8,412,649
      Issue Date: Apr 2, 2013
    • Title: "A Method for Predicting Time Series with Seasonal Components"
      Inventors: Nikovski, Daniel N.
      Patent No.: 8,315,961
      Issue Date: Nov 20, 2012
    • Title: "Method and System for Classifying Data in System with Limited Memory"
      Inventors: Jain, Ankur; Nikovski, Daniel N.
      Patent No.: 8,108,325
      Issue Date: Jan 31, 2012
    • Title: "Method and System for Determining Instantaneous Peak Power Consumption in Elevator Banks"
      Inventors: Brand, Matthew E.; Nikovski, Daniel N.
      Patent No.: 7,743,890
      Issue Date: Jun 29, 2010
    • Title: "Method and Apparatus for Representing and Classifying Microwave Back-Projection Radar Signals"
      Inventors: Nikovski, Daniel N.; Jain, Ankur
      Patent No.: 7,671,786
      Issue Date: Mar 2, 2010
    • Title: "Method and System for Detecting Changes in Sensor Sample Streams"
      Inventors: Jain, Ankur; Nikovski, Daniel N.
      Patent No.: 7,555,399
      Issue Date: Jun 30, 2009
    • Title: "System and Method for Scheduling Elevator Cars Using Pairwise Delay Minimization"
      Inventors: Nikovski, Daniel N.; Brand, Matthew E.; Ebner, Dietmar
      Patent No.: 7,546,905
      Issue Date: Jun 16, 2009
    • Title: "System and Method for Scheduling Elevator Cars Using Branch-and-Bound"
      Inventors: Brand, Matthew E.; Nikovski, Daniel N.; Ebner, Dietmar
      Patent No.: 7,484,597
      Issue Date: Feb 3, 2009
    • Title: "Detecting and Diagnosing Faults in HVAC Equipment"
      Inventors: Peker, Kadir A.; Nikovski, Daniel N.; Radhakrishnan, Regunathan; Divakaran, Ajay
      Patent No.: 7,444,251
      Issue Date: Oct 28, 2008
    • Title: "Real-Time Retail Marketing System and Method"
      Inventors: Kato, Mamoru; Nikovski, Daniel N.; Divakaran, Ajay
      Patent No.: 7,240,834
      Issue Date: Jul 10, 2007
    • Title: "Method and System for Scheduling Cars in Elevator Systems Considering Existing and Future Passengers"
      Inventors: Brand, Matthew E.; Nikovski, Daniel N.
      Patent No.: 7,014,015
      Issue Date: Mar 21, 2006
    • Title: "Optimal Parking of Free Cars in Elevator Group Control"
      Inventors: Brand, Matthew E.; Nikovski, Daniel N.
      Patent No.: 6,808,049
      Issue Date: Oct 26, 2004
    • Title: "Method and System for Dynamic Programming of Elevators for Optimal Group Elevator Control"
      Inventors: Brand, Matthew E.; Nikovski, Daniel N.
      Patent No.: 6,672,431
      Issue Date: Jan 6, 2004
    See All Patents for MERL