Robotics
Where hardware, software and machine intelligence come together.
Our research is interdisciplinary and focuses on sensing, planning, reasoning, and control of single and multi-agent systems, including both manipulation and mobile robots. We strive to develop algorithms and methods for factory automation, smart building and transportation applications using machine learning, computer vision, RF/optical sensing, wireless communications, control theory and signal processing. Key research themes include bin picking and object manipulation, sensing and mapping of indoor areas, coordinated control of robot swarms, as well as robot learning and simulation.
Quick Links
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Researchers
Diego
Romeres
Devesh K.
Jha
Daniel N.
Nikovski
Stefano
Di Cairano
Siddarth
Jain
Arvind
Raghunathan
Yebin
Wang
Radu
Corcodel
William S.
Yerazunis
Yuki
Shirai
Toshiaki
Koike-Akino
Abraham P.
Vinod
Avishai
Weiss
Chiori
Hori
Tim K.
Marks
Scott A.
Bortoff
Jonathan
Le Roux
Alexander
Schperberg
Ye
Wang
Anoop
Cherian
Bingnan
Wang
Matthew
Brand
Pedro
Miraldo
Philip V.
Orlik
Purnanand
Elango
Abraham
Goldsmith
Jianlin
Guo
Jing
Liu
Hassan
Mansour
Saviz
Mowlavi
Anthony
Vetro
Kei
Suzuki
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Awards
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AWARD University of Padua and MERL team wins the AI Olympics with RealAIGym competition at IROS24 Date: October 17, 2024
Awarded to: Niccolò Turcato, Alberto Dalla Libera, Giulio Giacomuzzo, Ruggero Carli, Diego Romeres
MERL Contact: Diego Romeres
Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Dynamical Systems, Machine Learning, RoboticsBrief- The team composed of the control group at the University of Padua and MERL's Optimization and Robotic team ranked 1st out of the 4 finalist teams that arrived to the 2nd AI Olympics with RealAIGym competition at IROS 24, which focused on control of under-actuated robots. The team was composed by Niccolò Turcato, Alberto Dalla Libera, Giulio Giacomuzzo, Ruggero Carli and Diego Romeres. The competition was organized by the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Technical University of Darmstadt and Chalmers University of Technology.
The competition and award ceremony was hosted by IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) on October 17, 2024 in Abu Dhabi, UAE. Diego Romeres presented the team's method, based on a model-based reinforcement learning algorithm called MC-PILCO.
- The team composed of the control group at the University of Padua and MERL's Optimization and Robotic team ranked 1st out of the 4 finalist teams that arrived to the 2nd AI Olympics with RealAIGym competition at IROS 24, which focused on control of under-actuated robots. The team was composed by Niccolò Turcato, Alberto Dalla Libera, Giulio Giacomuzzo, Ruggero Carli and Diego Romeres. The competition was organized by the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Technical University of Darmstadt and Chalmers University of Technology.
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AWARD Honorable Mention Award at NeurIPS 23 Instruction Workshop Date: December 15, 2023
Awarded to: Lingfeng Sun, Devesh K. Jha, Chiori Hori, Siddharth Jain, Radu Corcodel, Xinghao Zhu, Masayoshi Tomizuka and Diego Romeres
MERL Contacts: Radu Corcodel; Chiori Hori; Siddarth Jain; Devesh K. Jha; Diego Romeres
Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, RoboticsBrief- MERL Researchers received an "Honorable Mention award" at the Workshop on Instruction Tuning and Instruction Following at the NeurIPS 2023 conference in New Orleans. The workshop was on the topic of instruction tuning and Instruction following for Large Language Models (LLMs). MERL researchers presented their work on interactive planning using LLMs for partially observable robotic tasks during the oral presentation session at the workshop.
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AWARD Joint University of Padua-MERL team wins Challenge 'AI Olympics With RealAIGym' Date: August 25, 2023
Awarded to: Alberto Dalla Libera, Niccolo' Turcato, Giulio Giacomuzzo, Ruggero Carli, Diego Romeres
MERL Contact: Diego Romeres
Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, RoboticsBrief- A joint team consisting of members of University of Padua and MERL ranked 1st in the IJCAI2023 Challenge "Al Olympics With RealAlGym: Is Al Ready for Athletic Intelligence in the Real World?". The team was composed by MERL researcher Diego Romeres and a team from University Padua (UniPD) consisting of Alberto Dalla Libera, Ph.D., Ph.D. Candidates: Niccolò Turcato, Giulio Giacomuzzo and Prof. Ruggero Carli from University of Padua.
The International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) is a premier gathering for AI researchers and organizes several competitions. This year the competition CC7 "AI Olympics With RealAIGym: Is AI Ready for Athletic Intelligence in the Real World?" consisted of two stages: simulation and real-robot experiments on two under-actuated robotic systems. The two robotics systems were treated as separate tracks and one final winner was selected for each track based on specific performance criteria in the control tasks.
The UniPD-MERL team competed and won in both tracks. The team's system made strong use of a Model-based Reinforcement Learning algorithm called (MC-PILCO) that we recently published in the journal IEEE Transaction on Robotics.
- A joint team consisting of members of University of Padua and MERL ranked 1st in the IJCAI2023 Challenge "Al Olympics With RealAlGym: Is Al Ready for Athletic Intelligence in the Real World?". The team was composed by MERL researcher Diego Romeres and a team from University Padua (UniPD) consisting of Alberto Dalla Libera, Ph.D., Ph.D. Candidates: Niccolò Turcato, Giulio Giacomuzzo and Prof. Ruggero Carli from University of Padua.
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News & Events
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NEWS Diego Romeres Delivers Invited Talks at Fraunhofer Italia and the University of Padua Date: July 16, 2025 - July 18, 2025
MERL Contact: Diego Romeres
Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Control, Machine Learning, Optimization, Robotics, Human-Computer InteractionBrief- MERL researcher Diego Romeres was invited to present MERL's latest research at two institutions in Italy this July, focusing on human-robot collaboration and LLM-driven assembly systems.
On July 16th, Dr. Romeres delivered a talk titled “Human-Robot Collaborative Assembly” at Fraunhofer Italia – Innovation Engineering Center (EIC) in Bolzano. His presentation showcased research on human-robot collaboration for efficient and flexible assembly processes. Fraunhofer Italia EIC is a non-profit research institute focused on enabling digital and sustainable transformation through applied innovation in close collaboration with both public and private sectors.
Two days later, on July 18th, Dr. Romeres was hosted by the University of Padua, one of Europe’s oldest and most renowned universities. His invited lecture, “Robot Assembly through Human Collaboration & Large Language Models”, explored how artificial intelligence can enhance human-robot synergy in complex assembly tasks.
- MERL researcher Diego Romeres was invited to present MERL's latest research at two institutions in Italy this July, focusing on human-robot collaboration and LLM-driven assembly systems.
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NEWS MERL researchers present 13 papers at ACC 2025 Date: July 8, 2025 - July 10, 2025
Where: Denver, USA
MERL Contacts: Vedang M. Deshpande; Stefano Di Cairano; Purnanand Elango; Jordan Leung; Saviz Mowlavi; Diego Romeres; Abraham P. Vinod; Yebin Wang; Avishai Weiss
Research Areas: Control, Dynamical Systems, Electric Systems, Machine Learning, Multi-Physical Modeling, RoboticsBrief- MERL researchers presented 13 papers at the recently concluded American Control Conference (ACC) 2025 in Denver, USA. The papers covered a wide range of topics including Bayesian optimization for personalized medicine, machine learning for battery performance in eVTOLs, model predictive control for space and building systems, process systems engineering for sustainability, GNSS-RTK optimization, convex set manipulation, PDE control, servo system modeling, battery fault diagnosis, truck fleet coordination, interactive motion planning, and satellite station keeping. Additionally, MERL researchers (Vedang Deshpande and Ankush Chakrabarty) organized an invited session on design and optimization of energy systems.
As a sponsor of the conference, MERL maintained a booth for open discussions with researchers and students, and hosted a special session to discuss highlights of MERL research and work philosophy.
- MERL researchers presented 13 papers at the recently concluded American Control Conference (ACC) 2025 in Denver, USA. The papers covered a wide range of topics including Bayesian optimization for personalized medicine, machine learning for battery performance in eVTOLs, model predictive control for space and building systems, process systems engineering for sustainability, GNSS-RTK optimization, convex set manipulation, PDE control, servo system modeling, battery fault diagnosis, truck fleet coordination, interactive motion planning, and satellite station keeping. Additionally, MERL researchers (Vedang Deshpande and Ankush Chakrabarty) organized an invited session on design and optimization of energy systems.
See All News & Events for Robotics -
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Research Highlights
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Internships
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EA0185: Internship - Planning and Control of Mobile Manipulators
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CA0165: Internship - Optimization of Aerial Robot Coordination
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SA0191: Human-Robot Interaction Based on Multimodal Scene Understanding
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Openings
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CA0093: Research Scientist - Control for Autonomous Systems
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CI0177: Postdoctoral Research Fellow - Agentic AI
See All Openings at MERL -
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Recent Publications
- , "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}
- }
- , "Analytic Conditions for Differentiable Collision Detection in Trajectory Optimization", IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), October 2025.BibTeX TR2025-150 PDF Video
- @inproceedings{Jaitly2025oct,
- author = {Jaitly, Akshay and Jha, Devesh K. and Ota, Kei and Shirai, Yuki},
- title = {{Analytic Conditions for Differentiable Collision Detection in Trajectory Optimization}},
- booktitle = {IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)},
- year = 2025,
- month = oct,
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2025-150}
- }
- , "Energy-constrained multi-robot exploration for autonomous map building", IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), October 2025.BibTeX TR2025-131 PDF
- @inproceedings{Karumanchi2025oct,
- author = {Karumanchi, Sambhu and Rokaha, Bhagawan and Schperberg, Alexander and Vinod, Abraham P.},
- title = {{Energy-constrained multi-robot exploration for autonomous map building}},
- booktitle = {IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)},
- year = 2025,
- month = oct,
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2025-131}
- }
- , "Offline Imitation Learning upon Arbitrary Demonstrations by Pre-Training Dynamics Representations", IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), October 2025.BibTeX TR2025-147 PDF
- @inproceedings{Ma2025oct,
- author = {Ma, Haitong and Dai, Bo and Ren, Zhaolin and Wang, Yebin and Li, Na},
- title = {{Offline Imitation Learning upon Arbitrary Demonstrations by Pre-Training Dynamics Representations}},
- booktitle = {IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)},
- year = 2025,
- month = oct,
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2025-147}
- }
- , "SAC-GNC: SAmple Consensus for adaptive Graduated Non-Convexity", IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), October 2025.BibTeX TR2025-146 PDF Presentation
- @inproceedings{Piedade2025oct,
- author = {{{Piedade, Valter and Chitturi, Sidhartha and Gaspar, Jose and Govindu, Venu and Miraldo, Pedro}}},
- title = {{{SAC-GNC: SAmple Consensus for adaptive Graduated Non-Convexity}}},
- booktitle = {IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV)},
- year = 2025,
- month = oct,
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2025-146}
- }
- , "Energy-Efficient Motion Planner for Legged Robots", IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), October 2025.BibTeX TR2025-151 PDF Video
- @inproceedings{Schperberg2025oct,
- author = {Schperberg, Alexander and Menner, Marcel and {Di Cairano}, Stefano},
- title = {{Energy-Efficient Motion Planner for Legged Robots}},
- booktitle = {IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)},
- year = 2025,
- month = oct,
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2025-151}
- }
- , "RecoveryChaining: Learning Local Recovery Policies for Robust Manipulation", IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), October 2025.BibTeX TR2025-152 PDF Video
- @inproceedings{Vats2025oct,
- author = {Vats, Shivam and Jha, Devesh K. and Likhachev, Maxim and Kroemer, Oliver and Romeres, Diego},
- title = {{RecoveryChaining: Learning Local Recovery Policies for Robust Manipulation}},
- booktitle = {IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)},
- year = 2025,
- month = oct,
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2025-152}
- }
- , "Bipedalism for Quadrupedal Robots: Versatile Loco-Manipulation through Risk-Adaptive Reinforcement Learning", IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots, September 2025.BibTeX TR2025-140 PDF
- @inproceedings{Zhang2025sep2,
- author = {Zhang, Yuyou and Corcodel, Radu},
- title = {{Bipedalism for Quadrupedal Robots: Versatile Loco-Manipulation through Risk-Adaptive Reinforcement Learning}},
- booktitle = {IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots},
- year = 2025,
- month = sep,
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2025-140}
- }
- , "Observation-Based Inverse Kinematics for Visual Servo Control", 22nd International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics (ICINCO), October 2025.
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Videos
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Software & Data Downloads
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Lagrangian Inspired Polynomial for Robot Inverse Dynamics -
Monte Carlo Probabilistic Inference for Learning COntrol -
Python-based Robotic Control & Optimization Package -
Context-Aware Zero Shot Learning -
Online Feature Extractor Network -
Quasi-Newton Trust Region Policy Optimization -
Circular Maze Environment
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