NOTE: I've mostly migrated this content to my new personal webpage; please refer to https://nrotella.github.io.
Nicholas (Nick) Rotella is a former Ph.D. student at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles, CA. He studied at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York, NY from which he received a B.Sc. degree in Mechanical Engineering in 2012. Having spent the summer/fall of 2011 performing computational neuroscience research in the Joe Francis Lab at SUNY Downstate in Brooklyn, NY, Nick decided to pursue graduate studies in robotics as the field combined his interests in neuroscience and mechatronics. He joined the Computational Learning and Motor Control Lab at USC in 2012 to pursue a Ph.D. in Computer Science in collaboration with the Autonomous Motion Department at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tuebingen, Germany.
Nick received a M.Sc. degree in Computer Science with a specialization in Intelligent Robotics from USC in 2014 and passed his Ph.D. qualifying exam in fall 2016. He defended his thesis titled "Estimation-Based Control for Humanoid Robots" in December 2017. You can download the thesis or watch the defense recording.
Curriculum Vitae: CV
Email: nrotella [snail] usc [period] edu
Max Planck IIS Webpage: https://is.tuebingen.mpg.de/person/nrotella
Research Interests:
Optimal estimation and control for legged robotic systems, controlling contact interactions for locomotion and trajectory optimization for planning of complex motor control tasks
Teaching Resources:
Throughout my Ph.D. I've amassed many notes on various topics which have been relevant to my coursework/research. A large portion of this information has come from others' personal notes which I've found on the internet; in the spirit of passing this knowledge along, I've consolidated my Ph.D. notes to make them publicly-accessible; these are updated periodically.
Videos:
The following videos highlight the different aspects of humanoid estimation and control I have worked on. For more details, please visit my vimeo page or refer to my publications.
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Video Direct Links:
Joystick-Based Walking Using Model Predictive Control and Optimization-Based Inverse Dynamics
Hermes Inverse Dynamics Control
Athena Robot Base State Estimation
Publications:
Conference Papers:
Unsupervised Contact Learning for Humanoid Estimation and Control
Nicholas Rotella, Stefan Schaal, Ludovic Righetti. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2018. [link] [pdf] [video]
MPC Walking Framework With External Contact Forces
Sean Mason, Nicholas Rotella, Stefan Schaal, Ludovic Righetti. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2018.
Balancing and walking using full dynamics LQR control with contact constraints
Sean Mason, Nicholas Rotella, Stefan Schaal, Ludovic Righetti. Proceedings of the IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids), 2016. [link] [pdf]
Inertial sensor-based humanoid joint state estimation
Nicholas Rotella, Sean Mason, Stefan Schaal, Ludovic Righetti. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2016. [link] [pdf]
Humanoid momentum estimation using sensed contact wrenches
Nicholas Rotella, Alexander Herzog, Stefan Schaal, Ludovic Righetti. Proceedings of the IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids), 2015. [link] [pdf]
Trajectory generation for multi-contact momentum-control
Alexander Herzog, Nicholas Rotella, Stefan Schaal, Ludovic Righetti. Proceedings of the IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids), 2015. [link] [pdf]
State estimation for a humanoid robot
Nicholas Rotella, Michael Bloesch, Ludovic Righetti, Stefan Schaal. In Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2014. [link] [pdf] [linearization appendix] [observability appendix]
Properties of a temporal difference reinforcement learning brain machine interface driven by a simulated motor cortex
Aditya Tarigoppula, Nick Rotella, Joseph T. Francis. Proceedings of the International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), 2012. [link] [pdf]
Journal Papers:
Momentum control with hierarchical inverse dynamics on a torque-controlled humanoid
Alexander Herzog, Nicholas Rotella, Sean Mason, Felix Grimminger, Stefan Schaal, Ludovic Righetti. In Autonomous Robots, 2015. [link] [pdf]
Conference Posters and Talks:
IMU-based joint state estimation for humanoid control
Nicholas Rotella, Sean Mason, Stefan Schaal, Ludovic Righetti. Proceedings of the Dynamic Walking Conference, 2016. [abstract] [poster]
Inertial sensor-based humanoid joint state estimation
Nicholas Rotella, Sean Mason, Stefan Schaal, Ludovic Righetti. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2016. [poster] [talk]
Humanoid momentum estimation using sensed contact wrenches
Nicholas Rotella, Alexander Herzog, Stefan Schaal, Ludovic Righetti. Proceedings of the IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids), 2015. [talk]
Momentum estimation, planning and control for force-centric bipedal locomotion
Nicholas Rotella, Alexander Herzog, Stefan Schaal, Ludovic Righetti. In Proceedings of the Dynamic Walking Conference, 2015. [abstract] [poster] [talk]
State estimation for a humanoid Robot
Nicholas Rotella, Michael Bloesch, Ludovic Righetti, Stefan Schaal. In Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2014. [poster] [talk]
State estimation for walking humanoids on unknown terrain
Nicholas Rotella, Michael Bloesch, Ludovic Righetti, Stefan Schaal. In Proceedings of the Dynamic Walking Conference, 2014. [abstract] [poster]
