Past News: Before we moved our news to twitter...

2019

• New conference papers:

1. •     Bib
     Lutter, M.; Peters, J. (2019). Deep Lagrangian Networks for end-to-end learning of energy-based control for under-actuated systems, International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).
2. •     Bib
     Celik, O.; Abdulsamad, H.; Peters, J. (2019). Chance-Constrained Trajectory Optimization for Nonlinear Systems with Unknown Stochastic Dynamics, Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).
3. •     Bib
     Nass, D.; Belousov, B.; Peters, J. (2019). Entropic Risk Measure in Policy Search, Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).
4. •     Bib
     Koert, D.; Pajarinen, J.; Schotschneider, A.; Trick, S., Rothkopf, C.; Peters, J. (2019). Learning Intention Aware Online Adaptation of Movement Primitives, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), with presentation at the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).
5. •     Bib
     Trick, S.; Koert, D.; Peters, J.; Rothkopf, C. (2019). Multimodal Uncertainty Reduction for Intention Recognition in Human-Robot Interaction, Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).
6. •     Bib
     Stark, S.; Peters, J.; Rueckert, E. (2019). Experience Reuse with Probabilistic Movement Primitives, Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).
7. •     Bib
     Liu, Z.; Hitzmann, A.; Ikemoto, S.; Stark, S.; Peters, J.; Hosoda, K. (2019). Local Online Motor Babbling: Learning Motor Abundance of a Musculoskeletal Robot Arm, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).
8. •     Bib
     Akrour, R.; Pajarinen, J.; Neumann, G.; Peters, J. (2019). Projections for Approximate Policy Iteration Algorithms, Proceedings of the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML).
9. •     Bib
     Tosatto, S.; D'Eramo, C.; Pajarinen, J.; Restelli, M.; Peters, J. (2019). Exploration Driven By an Optimistic Bellman Equation, Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN).
10. •     Bib
      Lutter, M.; Ritter, C.; Peters, J. (2019). Deep Lagrangian Networks: Using Physics as Model Prior for Deep Learning, International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR).
11. •     Bib
      Lauri, M.; Pajarinen, J.; Peters, J. (2019). Information gathering in decentralized POMDPs by policy graph improvement, Proceedings of the International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS).
12. •     Bib
      Wibranek, B.; Belousov, B.; Sadybakasov, A.; Tessmann, O. (2019). Interactive Assemblies: Man-Machine Collaboration through Building Components for As-Built Digital Models, Computer-Aided Architectural Design Futures (CAAD Futures).

• New blog post on quantifying the transferability of sim-to-real control policies at sim2realai.github.io.
• Jan Peters was appointed Fellow by the IEEE.
• Best Paper Award at the International Conference on Advances in System Testing and Validation for M.Sc. student K.D. Gondaliya, Elmar Rueckert and Jan Peters.

• New Journal papers:

1. •     Bib
     Pajarinen, J.; Thai, H.L.; Akrour, R.; Peters, J.; Neumann, G. (2019). Compatible natural gradient policy search, Machine Learning (MLJ), 108, 8, pp.1443--1466, Springer.
2. •       Bib
     Belousov, B.; Peters, J. (2019). Entropic Regularization of Markov Decision Processes, Entropy, 21, 7, MDPI.
3. •     Bib
     Parisi, S.; Tangkaratt, V.; Peters, J.; Khan, M. E. (2019). TD-Regularized Actor-Critic Methods, Machine Learning (MLJ), 108, 8, pp.1467-1501.
4. •       Bib
     Tanneberg, D.; Peters, J.; Rueckert, E. (2019). Intrinsic Motivation and Mental Replay enable Efficient Online Adaptation in Stochastic Recurrent Networks, Neural Networks, 109, pp.67-80.
5. •     Bib
     Koc, O.; Peters, J. (2019). Learning to serve: an experimental study for a new learning from demonstrations framework, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (ICRA/RA-L), with Presentation at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).
6. •     Bib
     Vinogradska, J.; Bischoff, B.; Koller, T.; Achterhold, J.; Peters, J. (2020). Numerical Quadrature for Probabilistic Policy Search, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (PAMI), 42, 1, pp.164-175.
7. •     Bib
     Brandherm, F.; Peters, J.; Neumann, G.; Akrour, R. (2019). Learning Replanning Policies with Direct Policy Search, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L).

2018

• New HUMANOIDS papers:

1. •     Bib
     Koert, D.; Trick, S.; Ewerton, M.; Lutter, M.; Peters, J. (2018). Online Learning of an Open-Ended Skill Library for Collaborative Tasks, Proceedings of the International Conference on Humanoid Robots (HUMANOIDS).
2. •     Bib
     Hoelscher, J.; Koert, D.; Peters, J.; Pajarinen, J. (2018). Utilizing Human Feedback in POMDP Execution and Specification, Proceedings of the International Conference on Humanoid Robots (HUMANOIDS).

• New CoRL paper:

1. •       Bib
     Muratore, F.; Treede, F.; Gienger, M.; Peters, J. (2018). Domain Randomization for Simulation-Based Policy Optimization with Transferability Assessment, Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL).

• New IROS paper:

1. •     Bib
     Akrour, R.; Veiga, F.; Peters, J.; Neumann, G. (2018). Regularizing Reinforcement Learning with State Abstraction, Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).

• New Journal Papers:

1. •     Bib
     Akrour, R.; Abdolmaleki, A.; Abdulsamad, H.; Peters, J.; Neumann, G. (2018). Model-Free Trajectory-based Policy Optimization with Monotonic Improvement, Journal of Machine Learning Research (JMLR).
2. •     Bib
     Ewerton, M.; Rother, D.; Weimar, J.; Kollegger, G.; Wiemeyer, J.; Peters, J.; Maeda, G. (2018). Assisting Movement Training and Execution with Visual and Haptic Feedback, Frontiers in Neurorobotics.
3. •     Bib
     Koc, O.; Maeda, G.; Peters, J. (2018). Online optimal trajectory generation for robot table tennis, Robotics and Autonomous Systems (RAS).

• New ICML papers:

1. •   Bib
     Parmas, P.; Doya, K.; Rasmussen, C.; Peters, J. (2018). PIPPS: Flexible Model-Based Policy Search Robust to the Curse of Chaos, Proceedings of the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML).
2. •     Bib
     Arenz, O.; Zhong, M.; Neumann, G. (2018). Efficient Gradient-Free Variational Inference using Policy Search, in: Dy, Jennifer and Krause, Andreas (eds.), Proceedings of the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), 80, pp.234--243, PMLR.

• New ICRA papers:

1. •     Bib
     Gebhardt, G.H.W.; Daun, K.; Schnaubelt, M.; Neumann, G. (2018). Learning Robust Policies for Object Manipulation with Robot Swarms, Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).
2. •     Bib
     Pinsler, R.; Akrour, R.; Osa, T.; Peters, J.; Neumann, G. (2018). Sample and Feedback Efficient Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning from Human Preferences, Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).
3. •     Bib
     Lioutikov, R.; Maeda, G.; Veiga, F.F.; Kersting, K.; Peters, J. (2018). Inducing Probabilistic Context-Free Grammars for the Sequencing of Robot Movement Primitives, Proceedings of the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).
4. •     Bib
     Koert, D.; Maeda, G.; Neumann, G.; Peters, J. (2018). Learning Coupled Forward-Inverse Models with Combined Prediction Errors, Proceedings of the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).

• Julia Vinogradska will receive the Best Junior Scientist Award of the Stiftung Werner-von-Siemens-Ring

2017

• Daniel Tanneberg received the Hanns-Voith-Stiftungspreis Award 2017 for his master thesis.
• new HUMANOIDS Papers:

1. •     Bib
     Tanneberg, D.; Peters, J.; Rueckert, E. (2017). Efficient Online Adaptation with Stochastic Recurrent Neural Networks, Proceedings of the International Conference on Humanoid Robots (HUMANOIDS).
2. •     Bib
     Stark, S.; Peters, J.; Rueckert, E. (2017). A Comparison of Distance Measures for Learning Nonparametric Motor Skill Libraries, Proceedings of the International Conference on Humanoid Robots (HUMANOIDS).

• New CoRL Papers:

1. •     Bib
     Maeda, G.; Ewerton, M.; Osa, T.; Busch, B.; Peters, J. (2017). Active Incremental Learning of Robot Movement Primitives, Proceedings of the Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL).
2. •     Bib
     Tanneberg, D.; Peters, J.; Rueckert, E. (2017). Online Learning with Stochastic Recurrent Neural Networks using Intrinsic Motivation Signals, Proceedings of the Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL).

• New Journal Papers:

1. •     Bib
     Kroemer, O.; Leischnig, S.; Luettgen, S.; Peters, J. (2018). A Kernel-based Approach to Learning Contact Distributions for Robot Manipulation Tasks, Autonomous Robots (AURO), 42, 3, pp.581-600.
2. •     Bib
     Paraschos, A.; Daniel, C.; Peters, J.; Neumann, G. (2018). Using Probabilistic Movement Primitives in Robotics, Autonomous Robots (AURO), 42, 3, pp.529-551.
3. •     Bib
     Lioutikov, R.; Neumann, G.; Maeda, G.; Peters, J. (2017). Learning Movement Primitive Libraries through Probabilistic Segmentation, International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR), 36, 8, pp.879-894.
4. •     Bib
     Maeda, G.; Ewerton, M.; Neumann, G.; Lioutikov, R.; Peters, J. (2017). Phase Estimation for Fast Action Recognition and Trajectory Generation in Human-Robot Collaboration, International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR), 36, 13-14, pp.1579-1594.
5. •     Bib
     van Hoof, H.; Neumann, G.; Peters, J. (2017). Non-parametric Policy Search with Limited Information Loss, Journal of Machine Learning Research (JMLR), 18, 73, pp.1-46.
6. •     Bib
     van Hoof, H.; Tanneberg, D.; Peters, J. (2017). Generalized Exploration in Policy Search, Machine Learning (MLJ), 106, 9-10, pp.1705-1724.

• New IROS papers accepted:

1. •     Bib
     Paraschos, A.; Lioutikov, R.; Peters, J.; Neumann, G. (2017). Probabilistic Prioritization of Movement Primitives, Proceedings of the International Conference on Intelligent Robot Systems, and IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L).
2. •     Bib
     Parisi, S.; Ramstedt, S.; Peters, J. (2017). Goal-Driven Dimensionality Reduction for Reinforcement Learning, Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).
3. •   Bib
     Busch, B.; Maeda, G.; Mollard, Y.; Demangeat, M.; Lopes, M. (2017). Postural Optimization for an Ergonomic Human-Robot Interaction, Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).
4. •     Bib
     Pajarinen, J.; Kyrki, V.; Koval, M.; Srinivasa, S; Peters, J.; Neumann, G. (2017). Hybrid Control Trajectory Optimization under Uncertainty, Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).

• New ICML paper accepted:
  •     Bib
    Akrour, R.; Sorokin, D.; Peters, J.; Neumann, G. (2017). Local Bayesian Optimization of Motor Skills, Proceedings of the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML).
• JMLR review paper accepted!
  •     Bib
    Wirth, C.; Akrour, R.; Fürnkranz, J.; Neumann G. (2017). A Survey of Preference-Based Reinforcement Learning Methods, Journal of Machine Learning Research (JMLR).
• New IJCAI paper:
  •     Bib
    Abdolmaleki, A.; Price, B.; Lau, N.; Reis, P.; Neumann, G. (2017). Contextual CMA-ES, International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI).
• Our new GECCO paper:
  •     Bib
    Abdolmaleki, A.; Price, B.; Neumann, G. (2017). Deriving and Improving CMA-ES with Information Geometric Trust Regions, Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO).
  is best paper finalist for the evolutionary numerical optimization track. Lets keep the fingers crossed!
• We were on German TV.
• Jan Peters is going to be program co-chair of the IEEE RAS Conference in Humanoid Robotics (HUMANOIDS) 2017.
• New ICAPS 2017 paper accepted:
  •     Bib
    Abdulsamad, H.; Arenz, O.; Peters, J.; Neumann, G. (2017). State-Regularized Policy Search for Linearized Dynamical Systems, Proceedings of the International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS).
• Gerhard Neumann and Jan Peters will give a tutorial about Policy Search Methods in Robotics at AAMAS 2017.
• Jan Peters will be Area Chair at the International Conference in Machine Learning (ICML 2017).
• New ICRA 2017 papers accepted:

1. •     Bib
     Farraj, F. B.; Osa, T.; Pedemonte, N.; Peters, J.; Neumann, G.; Giordano, P.R. (2017). A Learning-based Shared Control Architecture for Interactive Task Execution, Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).
2. •     Bib
     Wilbers, D.; Lioutikov, R.; Peters, J. (2017). Context-Driven Movement Primitive Adaptation, Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).
3. •     Bib
     End, F.; Akrour, R.; Peters, J.; Neumann, G. (2017). Layered Direct Policy Search for Learning Hierarchical Skills, Proceedings of the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).
4. •     Bib
     Gabriel, A.; Akrour, R.; Peters, J.; Neumann, G. (2017). Empowered Skills, Proceedings of the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).

• New IJRR 2017 paper:
  •     Bib
    Maeda, G.; Ewerton, M.; Neumann, G.; Lioutikov, R.; Peters, J. (2017). Phase Estimation for Fast Action Recognition and Trajectory Generation in Human-Robot Collaboration, International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR), 36, 13-14, pp.1579-1594.
• New AAAI-2017 papers:
  •     Bib
    Tangkaratt, V.; van Hoof, H.; Parisi, S.; Neumann, G.; Peters, J.; Sugiyama, M. (2017). Policy Search with High-Dimensional Context Variables, Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI).

• Our undergraduate student Karl-Heinz Fiebig won the IEEE Brain Initiative Best Paper Award for the paper
  •   Bib
    Fiebig, K.-H. (2017). Multi-Task Logistic Regression in Brain-Computer Interfaces, Bachelor Thesis.
  •     Bib
    Fiebig, K.-H.; Jayaram, V.; Peters, J.; Grosse-Wentrup, M. (2016). Multi-Task Logistic Regression in Brain-Computer Interfaces, IEEE SMC 2016 — 6th Workshop on Brain-Machine Interface Systems.
  . Congratulations!
• Jan Peters was invited for a talk at the 3rd Multidisciplinary Conference on ReinforcementLearning and Decision Making (RLDM2017).

2016

• Our cybathlon team was on SAT1, one of Germany's main TV channels, see video!
• Herke van Hoof is co-organizaing an R:SS 2016 workshop on Robot-Environment Interaction for Perception and Manipulation, together with Karol Hausman, Nikolay Atanasov, Roberto Martin Martin and Oliver Brock.
• Guilherme Maeda and Luka Peternel (IIT) are the main organizers of a workshop at IROS 2016 on Co-adaptation and Learning in Human-Robot Collaboration
• New ICML papers:

1. •     Bib
     Vinogradska, J.; Bischoff, B.; Nguyen-Tuong, D.; Peters, J. (2017). Stability of Controllers for Gaussian Process Forward Models, Journal of Machine Learning Research (JMLR), 18, 100, pp.1-37.
   •     Bib
     Vinogradska, J.; Bischoff, B.; Nguyen-Tuong, D.; Romer, A.; Schmidt, H.; Peters, J. (2016). Stability of Controllers for Gaussian Process Forward Models, Proceedings of the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML).
2. •     Bib
     Akrour, R.; Abdolmaleki, A.; Abdulsamad, H.; Neumann, G. (2016). Model-Free Trajectory Optimization for Reinforcement Learning, Proceedings of the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML).

• Jan Peters has been invited as keynote speaker for the 11th Joint Conference on Motor Control & Learning, Biomechanics & Training, Sensing: From Mind to Machines and the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence Applications and Innovations (AIAI 2016).
• Four ICRA 2016 papers accepted:

1. •   Bib
     Buechler, D.; Ott, H.; Peters, J. (2016). A Lightweight Robotic Arm with Pneumatic Muscles for Robot Learning, Proceedings of the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).
2. •     Bib
     Ewerton, M.; Maeda, G.; Neumann, G.; Kisner, V.; Kollegger, G.; Wiemeyer, J.; Peters, J. (2016). Movement Primitives with Multiple Phase Parameters, Proceedings of the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pp.201--206.
3. •     Bib
     Modugno, V.; Neumann, G.; Rueckert, E.; Oriolo, G.; Peters, J.; Ivaldi, S. (2016). Learning soft task priorities for control of redundant robots, Proceedings of the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).

• Jan Peters will be Area Chair at the Robotics: Science and Systems (R:SS 2016).
• New ADPRL 2016 paper:
  •     Bib
    Parisi, S; Blank, A; Viernickel T; Peters, J (2016). Local-utopia Policy Selection for Multi-objective Reinforcement Learning, Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Adaptive Dynamic Programming and Reinforcement Learning (ADPRL).
• New NIPS 2016 paper:
  •     Bib
    Belousov, B.; Neumann, G.; Rothkopf, C.A.; Peters, J. (2017). Catching Heuristics Are Optimal Control Policies, Proceedings of the Karniel Thirteenth Computational Motor Control Workshop.
  •     Bib
    Belousov, B.; Neumann, G.; Rothkopf, C.; Peters, J. (2016). Catching Heuristics Are Optimal Control Policies, Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS / NeurIPS).
• Christian Daniel received the Best Student Paper Award at ECMLPKDD 2016 for his paper
  •     Bib
    Daniel, C.; van Hoof, H.; Peters, J.; Neumann, G. (2016). Probabilistic Inference for Determining Options in Reinforcement Learning, Machine Learning (MLJ), 104, 2-3, pp.337-357.
  in the MLJ track.
• Five new HUMANOIDS papers:

• Roberto Calandra is co-organizing a NIPS 2016 workshop on Bayesian Optimization, together with Bobak Shahriari, Javier Gonzalez, Frank Hutter and Ryan P. Adams.
• Five new IROS papers:

1. •     Bib
     Arenz, O.; Abdulsamad, H.; Neumann, G. (2016). Optimal Control and Inverse Optimal Control by Distribution Matching, Proceedings of the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), IEEE.
2. •   Bib
     Koc, O.; Peters, J.; Maeda, G. (2016). A New Trajectory Generation Framework in Robotic Table Tennis, Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).
3. •     Bib
     Manschitz, S.; Gienger, M.; Kober, J.; Peters, J. (2016). Probabilistic Decomposition of Sequential Force Interaction Tasks into Movement Primitives, Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).
4. •     Bib
     van Hoof, H.; Chen, N.; Karl, M.; van der Smagt, P.; Peters, J. (2016). Stable Reinforcement Learning with Autoencoders for Tactile and Visual Data, Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).
5. •     Bib
     Yi, Z.; Calandra, R.; Veiga, F.; van Hoof, H.; Hermans, T.; Zhang, Y.; Peters, J. (2016). Active Tactile Object Exploration with Gaussian Processes, Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).

• New journal papers:

1. •     Bib
     Parisi, S.; Pirotta, M.; Peters, J. (2017). Manifold-based Multi-objective Policy Search with Sample Reuse, Neurocomputing, 263, pp.3-14.
2. •       Bib
     Rueckert, E.; Camernik, J.; Peters, J.; Babic, J. (2016). Probabilistic Movement Models Show that Postural Control Precedes and Predicts Volitional Motor Control, Nature PG: Scientific Reports, 6, 28455.
3. •       Bib
     Rueckert, E.; Kappel, D.; Tanneberg, D.; Pecevski, D; Peters, J. (2016). Recurrent Spiking Networks Solve Planning Tasks, Nature PG: Scientific Reports, 6, 21142, Nature Publishing Group.
4. •     Bib
     Maeda, G.; Neumann, G.; Ewerton, M.; Lioutikov, R.; Kroemer, O.; Peters, J. (2017). Probabilistic Movement Primitives for Coordination of Multiple Human-Robot Collaborative Tasks, Autonomous Robots (AURO), 41, 3, pp.593-612.
5. •     Bib
     Maeda, G.; Ewerton, M.; Koert, D; Peters, J. (2016). Acquiring and Generalizing the Embodiment Mapping from Human Observations to Robot Skills, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 1, 2, pp.784--791.
6. •     Bib
     Daniel, C.; Neumann, G.; Kroemer, O.; Peters, J. (2016). Hierarchical Relative Entropy Policy Search, Journal of Machine Learning Research (JMLR), 17, pp.1-50.

2015

• Jan Peters has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant.
• Tucker Hermans will become Assistant Professor at University of Utah, Abdeslam Boularias will become Assistant Professor at Rutgers University, and Heni Ben Amor will become Assistant Professor at Arizona State University. Congrats to all three of them!
• Katharina Muelling receives the Award for Excellent Scientific Achievement of the TU Darmstadt Alumni Association!
• Simon Manschitz will receive the Odenwald 2015 award for his research.
• Oliver Kroemer was Runner Up for the 2015 Georges Giralt Award (Best European Robotics Ph.D. Thesis Award).
• Christoph Dann (former IAS Master's student and current CMU Ph.D. student) has won the 2015 Datenlotsen Award for the best IT master's thesis at TU Darmstadt! More on him here!
• Jan Peters has been invited as keynote speaker for the 2015 IEEE Symposium on Adaptive Dynamic Programming and Reinforcement Learning (ADPRL 2015) and the PRASA-RobMech International Conference.
• New journal papers:

1. •     Bib
     Daniel, C.; Kroemer, O.; Viering, M.; Metz, J.; Peters, J. (2015). Active Reward Learning with a Novel Acquisition Function, Autonomous Robots (AURO), 39, pp.389-405.
2. •     Bib
     Manschitz, S.; Kober, J.; Gienger, M.; Peters, J. (2015). Learning Movement Primitive Attractor Goals and Sequential Skills from Kinesthetic Demonstrations, Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 74, pp.97-107.
3. •     Bib
     Maeda, G.; Neumann, G.; Ewerton, M.; Lioutikov, R.; Peters, J. (2015). A Probabilistic Framework for Semi-Autonomous Robots Based on Interaction Primitives with Phase Estimation, Proceedings of the International Symposium of Robotics Research (ISRR).

• Jan Peters will be Area Chair at the Robotics: Science and Systems (R:SS 2015).
• Jan Peters will be Editor and Workshop-Chair at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2015).
• Four ICRA 2015 papers accepted:

1. •     Bib
     Calandra, R.; Ivaldi, S.; Deisenroth, M.;Rueckert, E.; Peters, J. (2015). Learning Inverse Dynamics Models with Contacts, Proceedings of the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).
2. •     Bib
     Ewerton, M.; Neumann, G.; Lioutikov, R.; Ben Amor, H.; Peters, J.; Maeda, G. (2015). Learning Multiple Collaborative Tasks with a Mixture of Interaction Primitives, Proceedings of the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pp.1535--1542.
3. •     Bib
     Kroemer, O.; Daniel, C.; Neumann, G; van Hoof, H.; Peters, J. (2015). Towards Learning Hierarchical Skills for Multi-Phase Manipulation Tasks, Proceedings of the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).
4. •     Bib
     Rueckert, E.; Mundo, J.; Paraschos, A.; Peters, J.; Neumann, G. (2015). Extracting Low-Dimensional Control Variables for Movement Primitives, Proceedings of the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).

• New IROS 2015 papers accepted:

1. •     Bib
     Ewerton, M.; Maeda, G.J.; Peters, J.; Neumann, G. (2015). Learning Motor Skills from Partially Observed Movements Executed at Different Speeds, Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), pp.456--463.
2. •     Bib
     Huang, Y.; Schoelkopf, B.; Peters, J. (2015). Learning Optimal Striking Points for A Ping-Pong Playing Robot, Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).
3. •     Bib
     Manschitz, S.; Kober, J.; Gienger, M.; Peters, J. (2015). Probabilistic Progress Prediction and Sequencing of Concurrent Movement Primitives, Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).
4. •     Bib
     Paraschos, A.; Rueckert, E.; Peters, J; Neumann, G. (2015). Model-Free Probabilistic Movement Primitives for Physical Interaction, Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).
5. •     Bib
     Parisi, S.; Abdulsamad, H.; Paraschos, A.; Daniel, C.; Peters, J. (2015). Reinforcement Learning vs Human Programming in Tetherball Robot Games, Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).
6. •     Bib
     Veiga, F.F.; van Hoof, H.; Peters, J.; Hermans, T. (2015). Stabilizing Novel Objects by Learning to Predict Tactile Slip, Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).
7. •     Bib
     Wahrburg, A.; Zeiss, S.; Matthias, B.; Peters, J.; Ding, H. (2015). Combined Pose-Wrench and State Machine Representation for Modeling Robotic Assembly Skills, Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).

• Tucker Hermans is co-organizing a workshop at RSS 2015 with Patrick van der Smagt and Heni Ben Amor on Visual and Tactile Learning
• New AAAI paper:
  •     Bib
    Wirth, C.; Fürnkranz, J.; Neumann G. (2015). Model-Free Preference-Based Reinforcement Learning, Twenty-Ninth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-15).
• Herke van Hoof got a new paper accepted:
  •     Bib
    van Hoof, H.; Peters, J.; Neumann, G. (2015). Learning of Non-Parametric Control Policies with High-Dimensional State Features, Proceedings of the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics (AISTATS).
• New NIPS paper:
  •     Bib
    Abdolmaleki, A.; Lioutikov, R.; Peters, J; Lau, N.; Reis, L.; Neumann, G. (2015). Model-Based Relative Entropy Stochastic Search, Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS / NeurIPS), MIT Press.
• Six new HUMANOIDS 2015 papers accepted. Highlighted:

1. •     Bib
     Calandra, R.; Ivaldi, S.; Deisenroth, M.; Peters, J. (2015). Learning Torque Control in Presence of Contacts using Tactile Sensing from Robot Skin, Proceedings of the International Conference on Humanoid Robots (HUMANOIDS).
2. •     Bib
     Hoelscher, J.; Peters, J.; Hermans, T. (2015). Evaluation of Interactive Object Recognition with Tactile Sensing, Proceedings of the International Conference on Humanoid Robots (HUMANOIDS).
3. •       Bib
     van Hoof, H.; Hermans, T.; Neumann, G.; Peters, J. (2015). Learning Robot In-Hand Manipulation with Tactile Features, Proceedings of the International Conference on Humanoid Robots (HUMANOIDS).

2014

• WIRED Magazine (German edition) visited us and wrote a piece on us... and our university newspaper Hoch3 did the same.
• Five HUMANOIDS 2014 papers accepted:

1. •     Bib
     Brandl, S.; Kroemer, O.; Peters, J. (2014). Generalizing Pouring Actions Between Objects using Warped Parameters, Proceedings of the International Conference on Humanoid Robots (HUMANOIDS).
2. •     Bib
     Colome, A.; Neumann, G.; Peters, J.; Torras, C. (2014). Dimensionality Reduction for Probabilistic Movement Primitives, Proceedings of the International Conference on Humanoid Robots (HUMANOIDS).
3. •     Bib
     Ivaldi, S.; Peters, J.; Padois, V.; Nori, F. (2014). Tools for simulating humanoid robot dynamics: a survey based on user feedback, Proceedings of the International Conference on Humanoid Robots (HUMANOIDS).
4. •     Bib
     Maeda, G.J.; Ewerton, M.; Lioutikov, R.; Amor, H.B.; Peters, J.; Neumann, G. (2014). Learning Interaction for Collaborative Tasks with Probabilistic Movement Primitives, Proceedings of the International Conference on Humanoid Robots (HUMANOIDS), pp.527--534.
5. •     Bib
     Rueckert, E.; Mindt, M.; Peters, J.; Neumann, G. (2014). Robust Policy Updates for Stochastic Optimal Control, Proceedings of the International Conference on Humanoid Robots (HUMANOIDS).

• Herke van Hoof, Johannes Kulick, Marc Toussaint and Jan Peters will organize a Workshop on Active Learning in Robotics: Exploration Strategies in Complex Environments at the IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids 2014).
• Gerhard Neumann will co-organize a Workshop with Heni Ben Amor and Neil Dantam on Policy Representations for Humanoid Robots at the IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids 2014).
• Gerhard Neumann will organize a NIPS worskhop on Autonomously Learning Robots.
• Gerhard Neumann will be promoted to Assistant Professor at TU Darmstadt and will turn down a competing Assistant Professorship offer of Kassel University.
• several cool journal papers have been accepted:

1. •     Bib
     Wang, Z.; Boularias, A.; Muelling, K.; Schoelkopf, B.; Peters, J. (2017). Anticipatory Action Selection for Human-Robot Table Tennis, Artificial Intelligence, 247, pp.399-414.
2. •     Bib
     Kupcsik, A.G.; Deisenroth, M.P.; Peters, J.; Ai Poh, L.; Vadakkepat, V.; Neumann, G. (2017). Model-based Contextual Policy Search for Data-Efficient Generalization of Robot Skills, Artificial Intelligence, 247, pp.415-439.
3. •   Bib
     Dann, C.; Neumann, G.; Peters, J. (2015). Policy Evaluation with Temporal Differences: A Survey and Comparison, Proceedings of the Twenty-Fifth International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS), pp.359-360.
   •     Bib
     Dann, C.; Neumann, G.; Peters, J. (2014). Policy Evaluation with Temporal Differences: A Survey and Comparison, Journal of Machine Learning Research (JMLR), 15, March, pp.809-883.
4. •       Bib
     Meyer, T.; Peters, J.; Zander, T.O.; Schoelkopf, B.; Grosse-Wentrup, M. (2014). Predicting Motor Learning Performance from Electroencephalographic Data, Journal of Neuroengineering and Rehabilitation, 11, 1.
5. •     Bib
     Muelling, K.; Boularias, A.; Schoelkopf, B.; Peters, J. (2014). Learning Strategies in Table Tennis using Inverse Reinforcement Learning, Biological Cybernetics, 108, 5, pp.603-619.
6. •     Bib
     Neumann, G.; Daniel, C.; Paraschos, A.; Kupcsik, A.; Peters, J. (2014). Learning Modular Policies for Robotics, Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience.
7. •     Bib
     Wierstra, D.; Schaul, T.; Glasmachers, T.; Sun, Y.; Peters, J.; Schmidhuber, J. (2014). Natural Evolution Strategies, Journal of Machine Learning Research (JMLR), 15, March, pp.949-980.
8. •     Bib
     Lioutikov, R.; Paraschos, A.; Peters, J.; Neumann, G. (2014). Generalizing Movements with Information Theoretic Stochastic Optimal Control, Journal of Aerospace Information Systems, 11, 9, pp.579-595.

• Jan Peters will be session keynote plenary speaker at the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2014).
• We have received the ICRA 2014 Best Cognitive Robotics Paper Award for
  •     Bib
    Deisenroth, M.P.; Englert, P.; Peters, J.; Fox, D. (2014). Multi-Task Policy Search for Robotics, Proceedings of 2014 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).
  and have been finalists for the same award with our paper
  •     Bib
    Kroemer, O.; van Hoof, H.; Neumann, G.; Peters, J. (2014). Learning to Predict Phases of Manipulation Tasks as Hidden States, Proceedings of 2014 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).
• Jan Peters will be invited speaker at the International Conference on Intelligent Autonomous Systems (IAS 2014) and the IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM 2014).
• Christian Daniel got his active reward learning paper into Robotics: Science & Systems. Well done! For more information read:
  •     Bib
    Daniel, C.; Kroemer, O.; Viering, M.; Metz, J.; Peters, J. (2015). Active Reward Learning with a Novel Acquisition Function, Autonomous Robots (AURO), 39, pp.389-405.
  •     Bib
    Daniel, C.; Viering, M.; Metz, J.; Kroemer, O.; Peters, J. (2014). Active Reward Learning, Proceedings of Robotics: Science & Systems (R:SS).
• Four IROS 2014 papers have been accepted (100% acceptance rate for our team):

1. •     Bib
     Chebotar, Y.; Kroemer, O.; Peters, J. (2014). Learning Robot Tactile Sensing for Object Manipulation, Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).
2. •     Bib
     Kroemer, O.; Peters, J. (2014). Predicting Object Interactions from Contact Distributions, Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).
3. •     Bib
     Luck, K.S.; Neumann, G.; Berger, E.; Peters, J.; Ben Amor, H. (2014). Latent Space Policy Search for Robotics, Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).
4. •     Bib
     Manschitz, S.; Kober, J.; Gienger, M.; Peters, J. (2014). Learning to Sequence Movement Primitives from Demonstrations, Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).

• Jan Peters will be Area Chair at Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS 2014).
• Six ICRA 2014 papers accepted (100% acceptance rate for our team):

1. •     Bib
     Kroemer, O.; van Hoof, H.; Neumann, G.; Peters, J. (2014). Learning to Predict Phases of Manipulation Tasks as Hidden States, Proceedings of 2014 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).
2. •     Bib
     Ben Amor, H.; Neumann, G.; Kamthe, S.; Kroemer, O.; Peters, J. (2014). Interaction Primitives for Human-Robot Cooperation Tasks , Proceedings of 2014 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).
3. •     Bib
     Calandra, R.; Seyfarth, A.; Peters, J.; Deisenroth, M.P. (2014). An Experimental Comparison of Bayesian Optimization for Bipedal Locomotion, Proceedings of 2014 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).
4. •     Bib
     Deisenroth, M.P.; Englert, P.; Peters, J.; Fox, D. (2014). Multi-Task Policy Search for Robotics, Proceedings of 2014 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).
5. •     Bib
     Lioutikov, R.; Paraschos, A.; Peters, J.; Neumann, G. (2014). Sample-Based Information-Theoretic Stochastic Optimal Control, Proceedings of the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).
6. •     Bib
     Bischoff, B.; Nguyen-Tuong, D.; van Hoof, H. McHutchon, A.; Rasmussen, C.E.; Knoll, A.; Peters, J.; Deisenroth, M.P. (2014). Policy Search For Learning Robot Control Using Sparse Data, Proceedings of 2014 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).
   .

• Jan Peters will be Editor at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2014)
• Jan Peters will be Area Chair at the Seventeenth International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics (AIStats 2014).

2013

• Jan Peters picked up the IEEE Robotics & Automation Society's 2013 Early Career Award at ICRA 2013 at Karlsruhe. See also the Max Planck Press Release and the TU Darmstadt News.
• Jens Kober has won the Georges Giralt PhD Award for the best Robotics PhD thesis in Europe in 2013.
• Christian Daniel wins the Datenlotsenpreis 2013 for the best Master's thesis in Computer Science at TU Darmstadt.
• Jan Peters will receive the 2013 Young Investigator Award of the International Neural Network Society (INNS). See also the Max Planck Press Release.
• Success at NIPS 2013:
  •     Bib
    Carvalho, J.; Koert, D.; Daniv, M.; Peters, J. (2022). Adapting Object-Centric Probabilistic Movement Primitives with Residual Reinforcement Learning, 2022 IEEE-RAS 21st International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids).
  •     Bib
    Vorndamme, J.; Carvalho, J.; Laha, R.; Koert, D.; Figueredo, L.; Peters, J.; Haddadin, S. (2022). Integrated Bi-Manual Motion Generation and Control shaped for Probabilistic Movement Primitives, 2022 IEEE-RAS 21st International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids).
  •     Bib
    Knaust, M.; Koert, D. (2021). Guided Robot Skill Learning: A User-Study on Learning Probabilistic Movement Primitives with Non-Experts, Proceedings of the International Conference on Humanoid Robots (HUMANOIDS).
  •     Bib
    Gomez-Gonzalez, S.; Neumann, G.; Schölkopf, B.; Peters, J. (2020). Adaptation and Robust Learning of Probabilistic Movement Primitives, IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-Ro), 36, 2, pp.366-379.
  •     Bib
    Motokura, K.; Takahashi, M.; Ewerton, M.; Peters, J. (2020). Plucking Motions for Tea Harvesting Robots Using Probabilistic Movement Primitives, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (ICRA/RA-L), with Presentation at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 5, 2, pp.2377-3766.
  •     Bib
    Stark, S.; Peters, J.; Rueckert, E. (2019). Experience Reuse with Probabilistic Movement Primitives, Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).
  •     Bib
    Paraschos, A.; Daniel, C.; Peters, J.; Neumann, G. (2018). Using Probabilistic Movement Primitives in Robotics, Autonomous Robots (AURO), 42, 3, pp.529-551.
  •     Bib
    Paraschos, A.; Rueckert, E.; Peters, J.; Neumann, G. (2018). Probabilistic Movement Primitives under Unknown System Dynamics, Advanced Robotics (ARJ), 32, 6, pp.297-310.
  •     Bib
    Maeda, G.; Neumann, G.; Ewerton, M.; Lioutikov, R.; Kroemer, O.; Peters, J. (2017). Probabilistic Movement Primitives for Coordination of Multiple Human-Robot Collaborative Tasks, Autonomous Robots (AURO), 41, 3, pp.593-612.
  •       Bib
    Paraschos, A. (2017). Robot Skill Representation, Learning and Control with Probabilistic Movement Primitives, PhD Thesis.
  •     Bib
    Dermy, O.; Paraschos, A.; Ewerton, M.; Charpillet, F.; Peters, J.; Ivaldi, S (2017). Prediction of intention during interaction with iCub with Probabilistic Movement Primitives, Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 4, pp.45.
  •   Bib
    Gomez-Gonzalez, S.; Neumann, G.; Schoelkopf, B.; Peters, J. (2016). Using Probabilistic Movement Primitives for Striking Movements, Proceedings of the International Conference on Humanoid Robots (HUMANOIDS).
  •     Bib
    Klink, P (2016). Model Learning for Probabilistic Movement Primitives, Bachelor Thesis.
  •     Bib
    Paraschos, A.; Rueckert, E.; Peters, J; Neumann, G. (2015). Model-Free Probabilistic Movement Primitives for Physical Interaction, Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).
  •     Bib
    Ewerton, M.; Neumann, G.; Lioutikov, R.; Ben Amor, H.; Peters, J.; Maeda, G. (2015). Modeling Spatio-Temporal Variability in Human-Robot Interaction with Probabilistic Movement Primitives, Workshop on Machine Learning for Social Robotics, ICRA.
  •     Bib
    Maeda, G.J.; Ewerton, M.; Lioutikov, R.; Amor, H.B.; Peters, J.; Neumann, G. (2014). Learning Interaction for Collaborative Tasks with Probabilistic Movement Primitives, Proceedings of the International Conference on Humanoid Robots (HUMANOIDS), pp.527--534.
  •     Bib
    Colome, A.; Neumann, G.; Peters, J.; Torras, C. (2014). Dimensionality Reduction for Probabilistic Movement Primitives, Proceedings of the International Conference on Humanoid Robots (HUMANOIDS).
  •     Bib
    Paraschos, A.; Daniel, C.; Peters, J.; Neumann, G (2013). Probabilistic Movement Primitives, Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS / NeurIPS), MIT Press.
• Our review paper "A survey of policy search in robotics" got published at Frontiers and Trends in Robotics:
  •       Bib
    Deisenroth, M. P.; Neumann, G.; Peters, J. (2013). A Survey on Policy Search for Robotics, Foundations and Trends in Robotics, 21, pp.388-403.
• Three Humanoids papers accepted! Good Job, Alexandros Paraschos, Gerhard Neumann, Herke van Hoof, Heni Ben Amor and Oliver Kroemer!
• Jan Peters has been invited as Action Editor for the Journal of Machine Learning Research (JMLR).
• Jens Kober has gotten his last Ph.D.-related paper
  •       Bib
    Kober, J.; Bagnell, D.; Peters, J. (2013). Reinforcement Learning in Robotics: A Survey, International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR), 32, 11, pp.1238-1274.
  into IJRR, the highest ranked robotics journal.
• Gerhard Neumann, George Konidaris, Freek Stulp and Jan Peters will organize the RSS 2013 Workshop: Hierarchical and Structured Learning for Robotics.
• Jan Peters will be Area Chair at Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS 2013).
• Katharina Muelling was featured in Deutschlandfunk (German Public Radio, kinda like NPR).
• Zhikun Wang got a paper into IJRR, the highest ranked robotics journal:
  •       Bib
    Wang, Z.; Muelling, K.; Deisenroth, M. P.; Ben Amor, H.; Vogt, D.; Schoelkopf, B.; Peters, J. (2013). Probabilistic Movement Modeling for Intention Inference in Human-Robot Interaction, International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR), 32, 7, pp.841-858.
  .
• Katharina Muelling got a paper into IJRR, the highest ranked robotics journal:
  •       Bib
    Muelling, K.; Kober, J.; Kroemer, O.; Peters, J. (2013). Learning to Select and Generalize Striking Movements in Robot Table Tennis, International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR), 32, 3, pp.263-279.
  .
• Katja Mombaur, Gerhard Neumann, Martin Felis and Jan Peters will organize the ICRA 2013 Workshop: Novel Methods for Learning and Optimization of Control Policies and Trajectories for Robotics.
• Three ICRA 2013 papers accepted: (i)
  •       Bib
    Daniel, C.; Neumann, G.; Kroemer, O.; Peters, J. (2013). Learning Sequential Motor Tasks, Proceedings of 2013 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).
  and (ii)
  •       Bib
    Englert, P.; Paraschos, A.; Peters, J.; Deisenroth, M. P. (2013). Model-based Imitation Learning by Probabilistic Trajectory Matching, Proceedings of 2013 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).
  •     Bib
    Englert, P. (2013). Model-based Imitation Learning by Probabilistic Trajectory Matching, Master Thesis.
  and (iii)
  •       Bib
    Gopalan, N.; Deisenroth, M. P.; Peters, J. (2013). Feedback Error Learning for Rhythmic Motor Primitives, Proceedings of 2013 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).
  .
• Andras Kupcsik has gotten a AAAI paper accepted on his work at IAS:
  •       Bib
    Kupcsik, A.G.; Deisenroth, M.P.; Peters, J.; Neumann, G. (2013). Data-Efficient Generalization of Robot Skills with Contextual Policy Search, Proceedings of the National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) .
  .

2012

• Jan Peters got invited for an Early Career Spotlight talk at Robotics: Science and Systems (R:SS 2012).
• Jan Peters got invited for a Frontiers of Artificial Intelligence talk at the European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI 2012).
• Jan Peters becomes Area Chair for International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics (AISTATS 2012)
• Marc Deisenroth got a NIPS 2012 paper accepted:
  •     Bib
    Deisenroth, M.P.; Mohamed, S. (2012). Expectation Propagation in Gaussian Process Dynamical Systems, Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 26 (NIPS/NeurIPS), Cambridge, MA: MIT Press., The MIT Press.
  .
• Abdeslam Boularias got a NIPS 2012 paper accepted:
  •       Bib
    Boularias, A.; Kroemer, O.; Peters, J. (2012). Algorithms for Learning Markov Field Policies, Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 26 (NIPS/NeurIPS), Cambridge, MA: MIT Press., MIT Press.
  .
• Christian Daniel, Gerhard Neumann, Jan Peters paper
  •       Bib
    Daniel, C.; Neumann, G.; Peters, J. (2012). Learning Concurrent Motor Skills in Versatile Solution Spaces, Proceedings of the International Conference on Robot Systems (IROS).
  received the IROS CoTeSys Cognitive Robotics Best Paper Award while being both the IROS 2012 Best Paper Award Finalist and the IROS 2012 Best Student Paper Award Finalist.
• Heni Ben Amor received a very competitive grant from the Daimler-Benz (Stipendium fuer Postdoktoranden und Juniorprofessoren) where out of 800 post-docs and junior professors only 10 were funded. See for more information.
• Katharina Muelling was featured in the Engadget, the New Scientist and the Spiegel.
• Oliver Kroemer got a Humanoids paper accepted:
• Heni Ben Amor, Oliver Kroemer, Ashutosh Saxena and Jan Peters will organize the IROS 2012 Workshop: Beyond Robot Grasping - Modern Approaches for Dynamic Manipulation.
• IAS members had five accepted IROS 2012 papers and one video! See Publications for the papers...
• Heni Ben Amor and Jan Peters will be giving invited talks at the IROS'2012 Workshop on Learning and Interaction in Haptic Robots.
• Abdeslam Boularias got a paper into ECML 2012:
  •       Bib
    Boularias, A.; Kroemer, O.; Peters, J. (2012). Structured Apprenticeship Learning, Proceedings of the European Conference on Machine Learning (ECML).
  •   Bib
    Boularias, A.; Kroemer, O.; Peters, J. (2012). Structured Apprenticeship Learning, Proceedings of the European Workshop on Reinforcement Learning (EWRL).
• Duy Nguyen-Tuong got his last Ph.D. thesis chapter accepted as journal paper:
  •       Bib
    Nguyen-Tuong, D.; Peters, J. (2012). Online Kernel-based Learning for Task-Space Tracking Robot Control, IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, 23, 9, pp.1417-1425 .
• Zhikun Wang has a new R:SS 2012 paper
  •       Bib
    Wang, Z.;Deisenroth, M; Ben Amor, H.; Vogt, D.; Schoelkopf, B.; Peters, J. (2012). Probabilistic Modeling of Human Movements for Intention Inference, Proceedings of Robotics: Science and Systems (R:SS).
• Jens Kober had his Autonomous Robots journal paper accepted: (:authorsearch Wilhelm :)
• Marc Deisenroth, Csaba Szepezvari and Jan Peters organize the 10th European Workshop on Reinforcement Learning (EWRL 2012) as an ICML workshop dedicated to Reinforcement Learning.
• Christian Daniel has gotten an AIStats paper accepted:
  •     Bib
    Daniel, C.; Neumann, G.; Kroemer, O.; Peters, J. (2016). Hierarchical Relative Entropy Policy Search, Journal of Machine Learning Research (JMLR), 17, pp.1-50.
  •       Bib
    Daniel, C.; Neumann, G.; Peters, J. (2012). Hierarchical Relative Entropy Policy Search, Proceedings of the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics (AISTATS 2012).
• Jan Peters and Pieter Abeel will hold a Tutorial on Reinforcement Learning at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2012).
• Two ICRA 2012 papers accepted: (i)
  •       Bib
    Bocsi, B.; Hennig, P.; Csato, L.; Peters, J. (2012). Learning Tracking Control with Forward Models, Proceedings of the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).
  and (ii)
  •       Bib
    Kroemer, O.; Ugur, E.; Oztop, E. ; Peters, J. (2012). A Kernel-based Approach to Direct Action Perception, Proceedings of the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).
• Marc Deisenroth is Workshop Chair for Robotics: Science and Systems (R:SS 2013). Please go to RSS 2013 to propose a workshop.
• Jan Peters will be giving an invited talk at WAF 2012.
• Jan Peters will be giving an invited talk at the Cinacs Workshop on Learning Multimodal Agents.

2011

• Jan Peters becomes Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Robotics.
• Oliver Kroemer has a full NIPS-2011 plenary presentation (~1% acceptance rate) on
  •       Bib
    Kroemer, O.; Peters, J. (2011). A Non-Parametric Approach to Dynamic Programming, Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 25 (NIPS/NeurIPS), MIT Press.
• Jan Peters receives Dick Volz Best 2007 US PhD Thesis Runner Up Award.
• Jan Peters and Oliver Kroemer move to TU Darmstadt to setup the new group.