Kai Ploeger

Research Interests

Robotics, Motor Skill Learning, Reinforcement Learning, Control

Affiliation

TU Darmstadt, Intelligent Autonomous Systems, Computer Science Department

Contact

kai.ploeger@tu-darmstadt.de
kai@robot-learning.de
Room E226, Building S2|02, TU Darmstadt, FG-IAS, Hochschulstr. 10, 64289 Darmstadt
+49-6151-16-20074

Kai joined the Intelligent Autonomous Systems Group at TU Darmstadt as a Ph.D. researcher in January 2021. Previously, he received his bachelor‘s degree in Electrical Engineering and Information Technology from TU Dortmund, as well as his master’s degree in Autonomous Systems from TU Darmstadt.

During his studies on dynamic motor skill learning, Kai completed several applied projects, including his master's thesis on "High acceleration reinforcement learning for real-world juggling with binary rewards" at IAS and his bachelor's thesis on the "Generation of locomotion patterns for a compliantly actuated quadruped with modally matched legs" at the German Aerospace Center (DLR).

Publications

Manipulation

  •       Bib
    Klink, P.; Wolf, F.; Ploeger, K.; Peter, J.; Pajarinen, J. (submitted). Tracking Control for a Spherical Pendulum via Curriculum Reinforcement Learning, Submitted to the IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-Ro).
  •     Bib
    Ploeger, K.; Peters, J. (2022). Controlling the Cascade: Kinematic Planning for N-ball Toss Juggling, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).
  •     Bib
    Ploeger, K.; Lutter, M.; Peters, J. (2020). High Acceleration Reinforcement Learning for Real-World Juggling with Binary Rewards, Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL).

Locomotion

  •     Bib
    Liu, Z.; Ploeger, K.; Stark, S.; Rueckert, E.; Peters, J. (2019). Learning walk and trot from the same objective using different types of exploration, arXiv.
  •     Bib
    Lakatos, D.; Ploeger, K; Loeffl, F; Seidel, D; Schmidt, F; Gumpert, T; John, F; Bertram, T; Albu-Schäffer, A (2018). Dynamic locomotion gaits of a compliantly actuated quadruped with slip-like articulated legs embodied in the mechanical design, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters.