I am a senior research scientist / director of research (directrice de recherche) in the Inria Center of the University of Lorraine (formerly Inria Nancy Grand-Est) and Loria, working in the project team LARSEN. My research is currently focused on robots collaborating with humans. I am interested in combining machine learning with control to improve the prediction, adaptation, and interaction skills of robots. I strongly believe in user evaluation, i.e., making potential end-users evaluate our technologies, to improve usability, trust, and acceptance.
Before joining Inria, I was a postdoc in the Intelligent Autonomous Systems Lab of TU Darmstadt (Germany), with Jan Peters, and in the Institute of Intelligent Systems and Robotics (ISIR) in Paris (France), with Olivier Sigaud and Vincent Padois. I obtained my PhD at the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa (Italy) with Francesco Nori and Giorgio Metta in 2011. I defended my French Habilitation to Direct Research (HDR) in November 2022.
I currently serve as Editor in Chief of the International Journal of Social Robotics (2021-..). I have served as Associate Editor for IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (2017-2021), for which I received the IEEE RA-L Distinguished Service Award as Outstanding Associate Editor. I was the Program Chair of IEEE-RAS Humanoids 2019 and IEEE ARSO 2023. I am the General Chair of IEEE-RAS HUMANOIDS 2024.
I served the GDR Robotique (the French Robotics Society) as co-lead of the GT7 Humanoid Robotics (2021-2023); I have been serving IEEE RAS as co-chair of the ICRA Steering Committee (2022-2023) and since 2022 I am Associate Vice-President of the IEEE RAS MAB.
I obtained the Suzanne Zivi Award 2020 for excellence in research and was nominated by Robohub and Women in Robotics in the list of “50 Women in Robotics you need to know about” in 2021. I was one of the Judges of the ANA Avatar Xprize competition where robots were teleoperated to be avatars!
I am currently involved in the following projects:
- PEPR O2R “Robotique Organique” – Action Structurante AS3 “Decision, Learning and Social Interaction” (FR, ANR, coord.)
- EuROBIN (EU, Horizon, PI): network of excellence in robotics and AI – leading the Inria robotics team in the Personal Robotics challenge
- EXOSIM (FR, LUE, PI): to investigate active exoskeletons to support the hospital staff, collaboration with CHRU Nancy
- ATOR (FR, DGA-Inria): to investigate assistive teleoperation of robots
- ENACT (FR, France2030 AI cluster): to investigate the use of LLMs for robotics
Upcoming events:
- Humanoids 2024 (22-24 november 2024, in Nancy)
- the 2nd euROBIN event and coopetition in Nancy (25-28 November 2024)
- the European robotics week in Nancy (22-28 November 2024)
Past events:
- Invited talks at ICRA 2024 at the Workshops: Human-centric teleoperation, Human modelling in pHRI, Trajectory optimization and MPC for legged systems
- Kickoff PEPR robotique (march 2024)
- IROS 2023 – Keynote!
- Invited talk at Wearacon 2023
- Journées Scientifiques Inria 2023 (JSI 2023)
- ICRA 2023 Workshop Toward Robot Avatars
- I will be Area Chair for CORL 2022
- Invited talk at the RSS 2022 Workshop on “Toward Robot Avatars: Perspectives on the ANA Avatar XPRIZE Competition”
- Invited talk at ICRA 2022 Workshop on Legged Robots
- I have been appointed as co-chair of the ICRA Steering Committee
- Speaker at FUTUROBOT 2021 (Percez les secrets de la robotique – Discover the secrets of robotics) at Centre Prouvé – Nancy
- Invited talk at Workshop HRI@Montpellier “AI for improving machine interactions with humans and the environment” at LIRMM
- Invited talk at IROS 2021 Workshop on Human-like Behavior and Cognition in Robots
- Invited talk at HUMANOIDS 202o Workshop Towards Physical-social human-robot interaction
- Invited talk at HUMANOIDS 202o Workshop on Talos
- Plenary lecture at Journée FéDéV 2021 – Université Paris Saclay
- Invited talk at ICRA 2021 Workshop on Bridging the Gap between Data-driven and Analytical Physics-based Grasping and Manipulation II
- Invited lecture at University of Naples Federico II
- Invited seminar at GV lab at University of Tokyo
- Speaker at the IEEE Women In Engineering International Leadership Conference
- Speaking at European Robotics Forum 2021
- Invited seminar at Queen Mary University (UK)
- Panelist at Cercle Entreprise et Santé – 6eme UX Forum Exosquelettes
- Panelist at the HRI Pioneers Workshop 2021 – Academic Panel
- Invited talk at Journée GT5 Perception et interaction homme-robot 2020
- Invited talk at IROS 2020 Workshop on Ergonomic Physical Human-Robot Collaboration
- Invited talk at RSS 2020 Workshop on Closing the academia to real-world gap in service robotics
- Invited talk at ICRA 2020 Workshop on Human-Robot Handovers