Research

My research is focused on innovating and pushing the boundaries of systems and control theory, as well as on exploiting and further developing its mathematical ideas, for (human-centered) applications that directly impact societies. I particularly work on robotics for search-and-rescue and on social robotics in mental healthcare.

The ultimate goal of these robots is to perform their given tasks, in an autonomous way and with excellently performance. Next to that, these robots must manifest proper social capabilities in interaction with humans. 

In my research group, we develop generalizable systems-and-control-theoretic approaches to provide robots with human-inspired perception and cognition and to develop novel control approaches that enable robots to successfully interact with their environment and with humans by making adaptive and optimal decisions. 

We implement and validate these approaches with real robots, including i-Robot Create 3,Turtlebot3 Burger, Turtlebot3 Waffle Pi, and SoftBank Robotics Nao.