Manuel Keppler honoured with the Georges Giralt PhD Award for excellence in robotics
The dissertation "From Underactuation to Quasi-Full Actuation: A Unifying Control Framework for Rigid and Elastic Joint Robot" by Manuel Keppler at the Technical University of Munich enables significant progress in motion control for elastic robots such as the humanoid robot David.
Manuel Keppler received the prestigious Georges Giralt PhD Award for the best doctoral thesis in robotics in Europe on 14 March 2024. The dissertation entitled "From Underactuation to Quasi-Full Actuation: A Unifying Control Framework for Rigid and Elastic Joint Robot" was developed in the Analysis and Control Department at the Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics and successfully defended at the Technical University of Munich. The findings of the doctoral thesis resulted in a comprehensive framework for motion control for a new generation of elastic robots, such as the humanoid robot David. This framework enables elastic robot systems to perform powerful tasks such as hammer drilling or delicate tasks such as putting away a dishwasher, and is therefore a further step towards commercial application.
The Georges Giralt PhD Award is a European dissertation prize awarded for outstanding achievements in the field of robotics. It is awarded annually to one or two doctoral students at the European Robotics Forum by the Brussels-based non-profit organisation euRobotics AISBL. The prizewinner's dissertation is published in the Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics book series.
With around 280 member organisations, the awarding institution euRobotics AISBL represents both the academic and industrial sectors of European robotics. In addition, euRobotics AISBL acts as the official interface between the European Commission and European academic and industrial robotics. The Georges Giralt PhD Award is open to all doctoral candidates whose dissertation in the field of robotics was successfully defended at a European university in the year of the competition.
This is the tenth time that researchers from the Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics have received this international award. RM award winners in previous years were:
2023: Ribin Balachandran (mit der TU München) 2021: Bernd Henze (mit der TU München) 2020: Cosimo Della Santina (Postdoc an der TUM, Lehrstuhl Prof. Albu-Schäffer und Gastwissenschaftler im DLR) 2019: Teodor Tomić (mit der Univ. Hannover) 2018: Daniel Leidner (mit der Univ. Bremen) 2017: Johannes Englsberger (mit der TU München) 2016: Alexander Dietrich (mit der TU München)
Among other things, the euRobotics Technology Transfer Award 2024 was presented as part of the ERF. The spin-off Kinetic Space received 3rd place in the Renault Champion Entrepreneurship Award of euRobotics. The award honours outstanding examples of technology transfer in robotics and automation that have emerged from collaboration between research and industry.
