I am now a tenured research scientist in INRIA Nancy Grand-Est and LORIA. Please see my new homepage...

Serena Ivaldi

Serena Ivaldi joined the IAS group as a postdoc in May 2014, to work on the CoDyCo project. Since November 2014 she is permanent researcher in INRIA, France: please visit her new webpage!

Before coming to Darmstadt, she was postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Intelligent Systems and Robotics (ISIR) in Paris, France, from 2011 to 2014, where she worked with Vincent Padois, Olivier Sigaud and Mohamed Chetouani. In ISIR, she was in charge of two iCub platforms. She was key investigator in CoDyCo, co-PI in project EDHHI and coordinator of the experiments in project MACSi. Serena did her PhD at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) under the supervision of Giorgio Metta. In IIT she worked in the Robotics, Brain and Cognitive Science Lab, directed by Giulio Sandini, and worked in the team of Francesco Nori for the iCub's dynamics. During her PhD thesis and M.S, she also worked at the Neuro-Optimization Complexity and Control Lab at the University of Genoa, studying neural networks and stochastic optimal control.

Her research is centered on robots interacting physically with humans and environment. She is also interested in developmental robotics, blending learning, perception and control, and is now starting an activity of assistive robotics in Inria.

She co-organised a Special Issue on Whole-body control of contacts and dynamics for humanoid robots, in the Autonomous Robots journal.

Research interests

• humanoid robotics
• robot dynamics and physical interaction
• human-robot interaction
• learning and control

Key References

1. •     Bib
     Droniou, A.; Ivaldi, S.; Sigaud, O. (2014). Deep unsupervised network for multimodal perception, representation and classification, Robotics and Autonomous Systems.
2. •     Bib
     Ivaldi, S.; Nguyen, S.M.; Lyubova, N.; Droniou, A.; Padois, V.; Filliat, D.; Oudeyer, P.-Y.; Sigaud, O. (2014). Object learning through active exploration, IEEE Transactions on Autonomous Mental Development, 6, pp.56-72.
3. •     Bib
     Ivaldi, S.; Anzalone, S.M.; Rousseau, W.; Sigaud, O.; Chetouani, M. (2014). Robot initiative in a team learning task increases the rhythm of interaction but not the perceived engagement, Frontiers in Neurorobotics, 8, 5.
4. •     Bib
     *Fumagalli, M.; *Ivaldi, S.; Randazzo, M.; Natale, L.; Metta, G.; Sandini, G.; Nori, F. (2012). Force feedback exploiting tactile and proximal force/torque sensing. Theory and implementation on the humanoid robot iCub., Autonomous Robots, 33, 4, pp.381-398 (* equal contribution).
5. •     Bib
     Ivaldi, S.; Fumagalli, M.; Randazzo, M.; Nori, F.; Metta, G.; Sandini, G. (2011). Computing robot internal/external wrenches by means of inertial, tactile and F/T sensors: theory and implementation on the iCub, Proc. of the 11th IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots, pp.521-528.
6. •     Bib
     Ivaldi, S.; Fumagalli, M.; Nori, F.; Baglietto, M.; Metta, G.; Sandini, G. (2010). Approximate optimal control for reaching and trajectory planning in a humanoid robot, Proc. of the 2010 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pp.1290-1296.

For all publications please see the page on her new website.

Workshops

• Serena organized the ICRA 2015 Workshop "Get in touch! Tactile and force sensing for autonomous, compliant and intelligent robots" with Lorenzo Jamone and Bruno Siciliano
• Serena organized the ICRA 2013 Workshop "Whole-body Compliant Dynamical Contacts for Humanoid Robotics" with Tadej Petric, Jan Babic and Mike Mistry
• Serena organized the IROS 2012 Workshop "Optimality principles and adaptation in humanoid robotic control" with Bastien Berret, Francesco Nori and Olivier Sigaud

Special issue on Whole-body control of contacts and dynamics for humanoid robots

Serena organized with Jan Babic, Mike Mistry and Robin Murphy, a Special Issue on Whole-body control of contacts and dynamics for humanoid robots, in the Springer Journal Autonomous Robots.

• Call for papers
• Deadline for submission: August 15th, 2014 => EXTENDED: October 20th, 2014