Welcome!
Optimization for Robotics Summer School will be held from July 14-18, 2025 at the University of Patras in Patras, Greece.
Register to attend (Early-bird until 1st April 2025)! See the Applicant Selection Procedure for details.
Optimization algorithms form the bedrock of much of robotics, from machine learning to control, state estimation, and simulation. However, the research literature on these topics is vast and different communities often use different notation and terminology to describe similar ideas, making it difficult to see the deep connections between these areas.
The overall goal is to provide roboticists with a deeper understanding of the connections between seemingly disparate topics and to motivate the cross-pollination of ideas across subfields. No specialized background in optimization is expected of attendees. All content will also be posted online and released as open-source after the summer school for the benefit of the robotics community.
The Optimization for Robotics Summer School will cover:
- A grounding in the fundamental mathematics and numerical algorithms of optimization.
- A selection of robotics topics, including learning, control, state estimation, and simulation, from a unified optimization perspective.
- Instructor-guided hands-on coding exercises to gain practical experience.
Targeted Attendance: 50-100 master students, PhD students or early career researchers/faculty
Attendee Cost:
- Registration without accommodation:
- Early-bird (until April 1st 2025): €350
- Standard: €450
- Late/On-site: €500
- Travel awards and/or fee waivers will be given to selected students
See the Applicant Selection Procedure for details.
Schedule
Each day will consist of a mix of background on key topics, hands-on examples both in software and with select hardware deployments, and research talks from leaders in the field.
Draft Schedule (Subject to Change)
| Day | Date | Topics | Speakers and Materials |
|---|---|---|---|
| Day 1 | Monday | Optimization Background Morning Introduction to Numerical Optimization Afternoon Introduction to Optimization Algorithms |
Konstantinos Chatzilygeroudis
of University of Patras
Shivesh Kumar
of Chalmers University and DFKI GmbH
|
| Day 2 | Tuesday | Optimal Control Morning Trajectory Optimization and Numerical Optimal Control Afternoon Real-Time Model-Predictive Control for Robotics |
Enrico Mingo Hoffman
of INRIA Nancy Grand-Est
Hae-Won Park
of Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology (KAIST)
|
| Day 3 | Wednesday | Reinforcement Learning and Simulation Morning From Optimal Control to Reinforcement Learning Afternoon Differentiable Simulation for Robotics |
Andrea Del Prete
of University of Trento
Yuval Tassa
of Google DeepMind
Tom Erez
of Google DeepMind
Konstantinos Chatzilygeroudis
of University of Patras
Zachary Manchester
of Carnegie Mellon University
|
| Day 4 | Thursday | State Estimation and SLAM Morning Algorithms for SLAM and Recursive Estimation Afternoon Factor Graphs and SLAM |
Kostas Alexis
of Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)
Konstantinos Chatzilygeroudis
of University of Patras
|
| Day 5 | Friday | Hardware Hackathon Morning Algorithm Implementation and Validation in Realistic Simulation Afternoon Deployment on Robots |
Serena Ivaldi
of INRIA Nancy Grand-Est
|
Questions?
Contact us at costashatz@upatras.gr with any questions regarding the summer school.
Supporters and Sponsors
We would like to thank IEEE RAS Technical Education Programs, euROBIN, the AI-Hub at the University of Patras, and Kotronis Packaging for their support to our summer school!
Want to become a sponsor? Check how to support our summer school here.
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