Today's robots need to automatically generate and control a variety of behaviors in order to be more flexible and adapt to changing environments. Here, optimization or optimal control methods provide extremely promising results. The IEEE-RAS Technical Committee for Model-based Optimization promotes the development and application of model-based optimization methods for the generation and control of dynamic behavior in robotics and their practical implementation. To advance research in this area and promote it in the robotics community, the Technical Committee (TC) organizes, among other things, a variety of events including workshops at the most prestigious robotics conferences, such as the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) and the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) as well as specialized conferences in the field of model-based optimization, summer-schools, and tutorials.
As a Junior Co-Chair Shivesh Kumar will assist with, and in some cases lead, the ongoing and future activities of the TC. Junior Co-Chairs will also be considered natural candidates to serve as Co-Chairs when the TC Co-Chairs rotate. The head of the Mechanics & Control team and the Underactuated Robotics Lab has extensive knowledge in researching and applying model-based optimization to generate complex robot behavior. As such, he is eager to bring this knowledge to the work of the TC as well.
Dr. Shivesh Kumar: "I believe that every robot task can be formulated as a constrained optimization problem and hence mathematical optimization has a profound impact on robotics. I am very excited to support the committee's work as a Junior Co-Chair, as this is a great opportunity for me as a researcher, but also for my team, to contribute our expertise and help shape this very important topic in robotics."
About Dr. Shivesh Kumar
Dr. Shivesh Kumar is a senior researcher at the Robotics Innovation Center of the DFKI in Bremen, Germany. Here, he leads the Team Mechanics & Control and the Underactuated Robotics Lab. He is also leading the projects VeryHuman and M-ROCK at DFKI-RIC. He obtained his PhD from the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of Bremen in 2019. Priorly, he holds a master's degree (2013-2015) in Control Engineering, Robotics and Applied Informatics from Ecole Centrale de Nantes and a bachelor's degree (2009-2013) in Mechanical Engineering from NITK Surathkal in India.
Contact: Dr. Shivesh Kumar
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Dr. Shivesh Kumar elected as a Junior Co-Chair of IEEE-RAS Technical Committee for Model-Based Optimization for Robotics
Dr. Shivesh Kumar (Photo: DFKI, Annemarie Popp)