Profile Description

I specialize in cognitive developmental learning, reinforcement learning, imitation learning, automatic curriculum learning for robots : I develop algorithms for robots to learn multi-task controls by designing themselves their curriculum and by active imitation learning. I received my PhD from Inria in 2013 in computer science, for machine learning algorithms combining reinforcement learning and active imitation learning for interactive and multi-task learning. I hold an Engineer degree from Ecole Polytechnique, France and a master's degree in adaptive machine systems from Osaka University, Japan. I have coordinated project KERAAL to enable a robot to coach physical rehabilitation. I have participated in project AMUSAAL, for analysing human activities of daily living, and CPER VITAAL for developing assistive technologies for the elderly and disabled. I am currently an assistant professor at Ensta IP Paris, France and was previously with IMT Atlantique. I also act as an associate editor of the journal IEEE TCDS and the co-chair of the Task force "Action and Perception" of the IEEE Technical Committee on Cognitive and Developmental Systems.

Interested in robotics, artificial intelligence and cognitive science, I try to bridge these 3 aspects in my work, and started working in cognitive developmental robotics. I have special interest in linking research of machine learning, robotic embodiment, child development psychology and neuroscience. I also explore possibilities to make robots adapt to their physical and social environments.
This is why I strive to answer the questions: Can a robot learn like a child? How do children learn? How do human beings or other species learn? Can a robot learn through social interaction with humans?

Old updates up to 2019

• 2019/05/09: I am invited to give a plenary talk and participate in a panel discussion for the seminar on A.I. and IoT : New Horizon, organised by ESATIC under the patronage of the minister of Digital Economy and the Post of Ivory Coast, Claude Isaac De.
• 2019/03/20: Our Team IHSEV is on TV on the French chanel Tebeo
• I am now associate editor of the journal IEEE TCDS
• I am organising with for the journal IEEE TCDS a special issue on Continual Unsupervised Sensorimotor Learning
• Our latest article Duminy et al, 2019, Frontiers in Neurorobotics+ has just been published
• 2018/12/18: Nicolas Duminy received his PhD
• I am member of the program committee of the conference IEEE IRC
• 2018/12/04: I will be presenting at the event EURÊKA, la journée inspirante du Village by CA - "Entreprendre en s'inspirant de la Nature"
• 2018/11/28: I will be presenting at The panel discussion on intelligent robots at the event 360 possibles
• 2018/09/17: I am co-organiser of the Workshop on Continual Unsupervised Sensorimotor Learning at IEEE ICDL-Epirob 2018
• 2018/09/18: Maxime Devanne will present at the EECV workshop Task-cv (Transferring and Adapting Source Knowledge in Computer Vision and VisDA Challenge) Devanne et al, 2018, EECV 2018 Workshops +
• 2018/10/07: Nicolas Duminy will present at IEEE SMC the poster Duminy et al, 2018, IEEE SMC+
• 2017/11/17: Maxime Devanne presented Devanne and Nguyen, 2017, Humanoids on Friday 17th November at Humanoids 2017. +
• 2017/11/04: Maxime Devanne presented our project KERAAL to Sophie CLUZEL, Secretary of State in charge of People with Disabilities, and Julien DENORMANDIE, secretary of state attached to the Minister of Territorial Cohesion, during the inauguration of the research chair Maintien@Domicile
• 2017/02/06: Telecom Bretagne has changed names to "Institut Mines Telecom Atlantique Bretagne-Pays de la Loire"
• 2016/10/01: I am coordinator of EU-funded KERAAL project which proposes a robot coach for physical rehabilitation. See the presentation video
• 2014/10/01: I have moved to Telecom Bretagne, in team IHSEV as an associate professor. I am also researcher at the IHSEV team of the CNRS laboratory LabSTICC The content of this website does not include my research projects there yet.
• 2014/07/28: I added the source code of SGIM for download from the Publications page code.
• 2014/02/02: A new journal article has now been published: Clement Moulin-Frier, Sao Mai Nguyen, and Pierre-Yves Oudeyer (2014), Self-organization of early vocal development in infants and machines: The role of intrinsic motivation. Frontiers in Psychology (Cognitive Science), 4(1006).