Alex Caldas

Head of the « Biomechanical and Medical Robotics » Master Program, Assistant Professor in Mechatronics, and Scientific Advisor of the « Mechatronics and embedded Electronic » group
ESME

Overview of research area

Multifingered hands, dexterous manipulation, grasping, human-robot collision detection, robust control, LMI/BMI-based control, optimization

Short biography

I received the M.Sc. degree in mechatronics from ESME, Ivry-sur-Seine, France, and the M.Sc. degree in control design from Supélec, Gif-sur-Yvette, France, in 2010 and 2012 respectively, and I received the Ph.D. degree in robotics from Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, in 2016. I am currently at the head of the « Biomechanical and Medical Robotics » Master Program and Assistant Professor in robotics at ESME. My research interests include dexterous manipulation for multifingered robotic hands and collision detection for robot manipulators.

Collaborations in progress

• Co-supervision of a postdoc with the L2S (Laboratoire des Signaux et Systèmes, CentraleSupelec).

Publications

• B. Altiner, A. Saoud, A. Caldas, and M. Makarov, Scenario Convex Programs for Dexterous Manipulation under Modeling Uncertainties, 2024 IEEE 20th International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering (IEEE CASE 2024), Bari, Italy, August 2024.
• A. Caldas, M. Grossard, M. Makarov, and P. Rodriguez-Ayerbe, Task-level Dexterous Manipulation with Multifingered Hand Under Modeling Uncertainties, Journal of Dynamic Systems, Measurement, and Control, 2021.
• U. Vollhardt, M. Makarov, A. Caldas, M. Grossard, and P. Rodriguez-Ayerbe, Influence of the object stiffness on the grasp stability with compliant hand based on energetic approach, 21st IFAC World Congress, pp.9905-9911, Berlin, Germany, July 2020.
• A. Caldas, M. Makarov, M. Grossard, and P. Rodriguez-Ayerbe, LPV Modeling and Control for Dexterous Manipulation with a Multifingered Hand under Geometric Uncertainties, 2019 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM), pp. 826-832, Hong Kong, China, 2019.
• U. Vollhardt, M. Makarov, A. Caldas, M. Grossard, and P. Rodriguez-Ayerbe, Energy-based stability analysis for robust grasp selection with compliant multi-fingered hands, 2019 18th European Control Conference (ECC), pp.1592-1597, Naples, Italy, June 2019.
• A. Caldas, A. Micaelli, M. Grossard, M. Makarov, and P. Rodriguez-Ayerbe, Commande robuste aux incertitudes de contact appliquée à la manipulation dextre, Jeunes Chercheurs en Génie Électrique (JCGE), Arras, France, June 2017.
• A. Caldas, A. Micaelli, M. Grossard, M. Makarov, P. Rodriguez-Ayerbe, and D. Dumur, On task-decoupling by robust eigenstructure assignment for dexterous manipulation, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2015), pp.5654-5661, Hamburg, Germany, October 2015.
• A. Caldas, A. Micaelli, M. Grossard, M. Makarov, P. Rodriguez-Ayerbe, and D. Dumur, Object-level impedance control for dexterous manipulation with contact uncertainties using an LMI-based approach, 2015 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pp. 3668-3674, Seattle, WA, USA, May 2015.
• M. Makarov, A. Caldas, M. Grossard, P. Rodríguez-Ayerbe, and D. Dumur, Adaptive Filtering for Robust Proprioceptive Robot Impact Detection Under Model Uncertainties, IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, Vol. 19, No. 6, pp. 1917-1928, December 2014.
• A. Caldas, A. Micaelli, M. Grossard, M. Makarov, P. Rodriguez-Ayerbe, and D. Dumur, New metric for wrench space reachability of multifingered hand with contact uncertainties, 2014 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics, pp. 1236-1242, Besançon, France, July 2014.
• A. Caldas, M. Makarov, M. Grossard, P. Rodriguez-Ayerbe, and D. Dumur, Adaptive residual filtering for safe human-robot collision detection under modeling uncertainties, IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics, pp. 722-727, Wollongong, NSW, Australia, July 2013.

PhD

• 2013-2016

  PhD

  Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France
• 2010-2012

  Master in control theory

  Supélec, Gif-sur-Yvette, France
• 2005-2010

  Master in mechatronics

  ESME Sudria, Ivry-sur-Seine, France

Head of the « Biomechanical and Medical Robotics » Master Program, Assistant Professor in Mechatronics, and Scientific Advisor of the « Mechatronics and embedded Electronic » group

• Since 2023

  Scientific Advisor of the « Mechatronics and embedded Electronic » group

  ESME, Ivry-sur-Seine, France
• Since 2018

  Head of the « Biomechanical and Medical Robotics » Master Program

  ESME, Ivry-sur-Seine, France
• Since 2016

  Assistant Professor in Mechatronics

  ESME, Ivry-sur-Seine, France

Awards and Prizes

• 2013

  Nominated to the Best Student paper at IEEE/ASME AIM 2013