::: Cristina Homepage :::

Area of Scientific Activity

The main interests lie on the nonlinear dynamical systems approach to the behavior generation in the
robotics domain. Using the same framework other interests are: trajectory generation for robotic arms
and autonomous wheeled vehicles, coordination of several degrees of freedom, interaction of perception
and action, using nonlinear dynamical systems as a theoretical framework and design tool to achive
temporal coordination and represent the activity among the robot and its environment.

Present research interests

The present research studies focus on the extension of the use of the dynamical systems theory to the
achievement of more complex behavior; to incorporate the ability of using learning by
imitation or reinforcement learning and to the animation of animal-like models. Specifically, in the domain
of temporal coordination of degrees-of-freedom to achieve living-like tasks such as locomotion, facial
gesture, etc, the theoretical framework appears to have the autonomy and flexibility required to help to
reduce the amount of programmer effort to generate scenes and
provide for user interactivity. It is also one of the interests to endow the developed timing architecture
during the doctoral thesis with cognitive capabilities, such that the system may
behave autonomously even in response to environmental constraints not directly related to online
sensory information. This architecture may also be directed towards the achievement of
cooperativity among multi-robots. The areronatuics and the control of aeronautics devices is another
research interest which is currently being addressed.