Diego Romeres
- Phone: 617-621-7561
- Email:
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Position:
Research / Technical Staff
Senior Principal Research Scientist,
Team Leader -
Education:
Ph.D., University of Padova, 2017 -
Research Areas:
External Links:
Diego's Quick Links
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Biography
Diego's research interests are in machine learning, system identification and robotic applications. At MERL he is currently working on applying nonparametric machine learning techniques for the control of robotic platforms. His Ph.D. thesis is about the combination of nonparametric data-driven models and physics-based models in gaussian processes for robot dynamics learning.
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Recent News & Events
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NEWS MERL contributes to ICRA 2025 Date: May 19, 2025 - May 23, 2025
Where: IEEE ICRA
MERL Contacts: Stefano Di Cairano; Jianlin Guo; Chiori Hori; Siddarth Jain; Devesh K. Jha; Toshiaki Koike-Akino; Philip V. Orlik; Arvind Raghunathan; Diego Romeres; Yuki Shirai; Abraham P. Vinod; Yebin Wang
Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Computer Vision, Control, Dynamical Systems, Machine Learning, Optimization, Robotics, Human-Computer InteractionBrief- MERL made significant contributions to both the organization and the technical program of the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2025, which was held in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, from May 19th to May 23rd.
MERL was a Bronze sponsor of the conference, and MERL researchers chaired four sessions in the areas of Manipulation Planning, Human-Robot Collaboration, Diffusion Policy, and Learning for Robot Control.
MERL researchers presented four papers in the main conference on the topics of contact-implicit trajectory optimization, proactive robotic assistance in human-robot collaboration, diffusion policy with human preferences, and dynamic and model learning of robotic manipulators. In addition, five more papers were presented in the workshops: “Structured Learning for Efficient, Reliable, and Transparent Robots,” “Safely Leveraging Vision-Language Foundation Models in Robotics: Challenges and Opportunities,” “Long-term Human Motion Prediction,” and “The Future of Intelligent Manufacturing: From Innovation to Implementation.”
MERL researcher Diego Romeres delivered an invited talk titled “Dexterous Robotics: From Multimodal Sensing to Real-World Physical Interactions.”
MERL also collaborated with the University of Padua on one of the conference’s challenges: the “3rd AI Olympics with RealAIGym” (https://ai-olympics.dfki-bremen.de).
During the conference, MERL researchers received the IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering Best New Application Paper Award for their paper titled “Smart Actuation for End-Edge Industrial Control Systems.”
About ICRA
The IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) is the flagship conference of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society and the world’s largest and most comprehensive technical conference focused on research advances and the latest technological developments in robotics. The event attracts over 7,000 participants, 143 partners and exhibitors, and receives more than 4,000 paper submissions.
- MERL made significant contributions to both the organization and the technical program of the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2025, which was held in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, from May 19th to May 23rd.
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EVENT MERL Contributes to ICASSP 2025 Date: Sunday, April 6, 2025 - Friday, April 11, 2025
Location: Hyderabad, India
MERL Contacts: Wael H. Ali; Petros T. Boufounos; Radu Corcodel; François Germain; Chiori Hori; Siddarth Jain; Devesh K. Jha; Toshiaki Koike-Akino; Jonathan Le Roux; Yanting Ma; Hassan Mansour; Yoshiki Masuyama; Joshua Rapp; Diego Romeres; Anthony Vetro; Pu (Perry) Wang; Gordon Wichern
Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Communications, Computational Sensing, Electronic and Photonic Devices, Machine Learning, Robotics, Signal Processing, Speech & AudioBrief- MERL has made numerous contributions to both the organization and technical program of ICASSP 2025, which is being held in Hyderabad, India from April 6-11, 2025.
Sponsorship
MERL is proud to be a Silver Patron of the conference and will participate in the student job fair on Thursday, April 10. Please join this session to learn more about employment opportunities at MERL, including openings for research scientists, post-docs, and interns.
MERL is pleased to be the sponsor of two IEEE Awards that will be presented at the conference. We congratulate Prof. Björn Erik Ottersten, the recipient of the 2025 IEEE Fourier Award for Signal Processing, and Prof. Shrikanth Narayanan, the recipient of the 2025 IEEE James L. Flanagan Speech and Audio Processing Award. Both awards will be presented in-person at ICASSP by Anthony Vetro, MERL President & CEO.
Technical Program
MERL is presenting 15 papers in the main conference on a wide range of topics including source separation, sound event detection, sound anomaly detection, speaker diarization, music generation, robot action generation from video, indoor airflow imaging, WiFi sensing, Doppler single-photon Lidar, optical coherence tomography, and radar imaging. Another paper on spatial audio will be presented at the Generative Data Augmentation for Real-World Signal Processing Applications (GenDA) Satellite Workshop.
MERL Researchers Petros Boufounos and Hassan Mansour will present a Tutorial on “Computational Methods in Radar Imaging” in the afternoon of Monday, April 7.
Petros Boufounos will also be giving an industry talk on Thursday April 10 at 12pm, on “A Physics-Informed Approach to Sensing".
About ICASSP
ICASSP is the flagship conference of the IEEE Signal Processing Society, and the world's largest and most comprehensive technical conference focused on the research advances and latest technological development in signal and information processing. The event has been attracting more than 4000 participants each year.
- MERL has made numerous contributions to both the organization and technical program of ICASSP 2025, which is being held in Hyderabad, India from April 6-11, 2025.
See All News & Events for Diego -
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Awards
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AWARD University of Padua and MERL team wins the AI Olympics with RealAIGym competition at IROS24 Date: October 17, 2024
Awarded to: Niccolò Turcato, Alberto Dalla Libera, Giulio Giacomuzzo, Ruggero Carli, Diego Romeres
MERL Contact: Diego Romeres
Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Dynamical Systems, Machine Learning, RoboticsBrief- The team composed of the control group at the University of Padua and MERL's Optimization and Robotic team ranked 1st out of the 4 finalist teams that arrived to the 2nd AI Olympics with RealAIGym competition at IROS 24, which focused on control of under-actuated robots. The team was composed by Niccolò Turcato, Alberto Dalla Libera, Giulio Giacomuzzo, Ruggero Carli and Diego Romeres. The competition was organized by the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Technical University of Darmstadt and Chalmers University of Technology.
The competition and award ceremony was hosted by IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) on October 17, 2024 in Abu Dhabi, UAE. Diego Romeres presented the team's method, based on a model-based reinforcement learning algorithm called MC-PILCO.
- The team composed of the control group at the University of Padua and MERL's Optimization and Robotic team ranked 1st out of the 4 finalist teams that arrived to the 2nd AI Olympics with RealAIGym competition at IROS 24, which focused on control of under-actuated robots. The team was composed by Niccolò Turcato, Alberto Dalla Libera, Giulio Giacomuzzo, Ruggero Carli and Diego Romeres. The competition was organized by the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Technical University of Darmstadt and Chalmers University of Technology.
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AWARD Honorable Mention Award at NeurIPS 23 Instruction Workshop Date: December 15, 2023
Awarded to: Lingfeng Sun, Devesh K. Jha, Chiori Hori, Siddharth Jain, Radu Corcodel, Xinghao Zhu, Masayoshi Tomizuka and Diego Romeres
MERL Contacts: Radu Corcodel; Chiori Hori; Siddarth Jain; Devesh K. Jha; Diego Romeres
Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, RoboticsBrief- MERL Researchers received an "Honorable Mention award" at the Workshop on Instruction Tuning and Instruction Following at the NeurIPS 2023 conference in New Orleans. The workshop was on the topic of instruction tuning and Instruction following for Large Language Models (LLMs). MERL researchers presented their work on interactive planning using LLMs for partially observable robotic tasks during the oral presentation session at the workshop.
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AWARD Joint University of Padua-MERL team wins Challenge 'AI Olympics With RealAIGym' Date: August 25, 2023
Awarded to: Alberto Dalla Libera, Niccolo' Turcato, Giulio Giacomuzzo, Ruggero Carli, Diego Romeres
MERL Contact: Diego Romeres
Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, RoboticsBrief- A joint team consisting of members of University of Padua and MERL ranked 1st in the IJCAI2023 Challenge "Al Olympics With RealAlGym: Is Al Ready for Athletic Intelligence in the Real World?". The team was composed by MERL researcher Diego Romeres and a team from University Padua (UniPD) consisting of Alberto Dalla Libera, Ph.D., Ph.D. Candidates: Niccolò Turcato, Giulio Giacomuzzo and Prof. Ruggero Carli from University of Padua.
The International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) is a premier gathering for AI researchers and organizes several competitions. This year the competition CC7 "AI Olympics With RealAIGym: Is AI Ready for Athletic Intelligence in the Real World?" consisted of two stages: simulation and real-robot experiments on two under-actuated robotic systems. The two robotics systems were treated as separate tracks and one final winner was selected for each track based on specific performance criteria in the control tasks.
The UniPD-MERL team competed and won in both tracks. The team's system made strong use of a Model-based Reinforcement Learning algorithm called (MC-PILCO) that we recently published in the journal IEEE Transaction on Robotics.
- A joint team consisting of members of University of Padua and MERL ranked 1st in the IJCAI2023 Challenge "Al Olympics With RealAlGym: Is Al Ready for Athletic Intelligence in the Real World?". The team was composed by MERL researcher Diego Romeres and a team from University Padua (UniPD) consisting of Alberto Dalla Libera, Ph.D., Ph.D. Candidates: Niccolò Turcato, Giulio Giacomuzzo and Prof. Ruggero Carli from University of Padua.
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MERL Publications
- , "Learning Positive Definite Inertia Matrices in Black-Box Inverse Dynamics Models via Gaussian Processes: a Constraint Learning Approach", European Control Conference (ECC), June 2025.BibTeX TR2025-090 PDF
- @inproceedings{Giacomuzzo2025jun,
- author = {Giacomuzzo, Giulio and Romeres, Diego and Carli, Ruggero and Dalla Libera, Alberto},
- title = {{Learning Positive Definite Inertia Matrices in Black-Box Inverse Dynamics Models via Gaussian Processes: a Constraint Learning Approach}},
- booktitle = {European Control Conference (ECC)},
- year = 2025,
- month = jun,
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2025-090}
- }
- , "RecoveryChaining: Learning Local Recovery Policies for Robust Manipulation", R3: Reasoning for Robust Robot Manipulation in the Open World Workshop at R:SS 2025, June 2025.BibTeX TR2025-091 PDF
- @inproceedings{Vats2025jun,
- author = {Vats, Shivam and Jha, Devesh K. and Likhachev, Maxim and Kroemer, Oliver and Romeres, Diego},
- title = {{RecoveryChaining: Learning Local Recovery Policies for Robust Manipulation}},
- booktitle = {R3: Reasoning for Robust Robot Manipulation in the Open World Workshop at R:SS 2025},
- year = 2025,
- month = jun,
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2025-091}
- }
- , "E-UHTP: An Extended Human-Aware Task Planner for Communication-Free Collaborative Assembly", IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) - Workshop on The Future of Intelligent Manufacturing: From innovation to implementation, May 2025.BibTeX TR2025-066 PDF
- @inproceedings{Giacomuzzo2025may,
- author = {Giacomuzzo, Giulio and Pegoraro, Giulia and Terreran, Matteo and Ghidoni, Stefano and Carli, Ruggero and Romeres, Diego},
- title = {{E-UHTP: An Extended Human-Aware Task Planner for Communication-Free Collaborative Assembly}},
- booktitle = {IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) - Workshop on The Future of Intelligent Manufacturing: From innovation to implementation},
- year = 2025,
- month = may,
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2025-066}
- }
- , "KitchenVLA: Iterative Vision-Language Corrections for Robotic Execution of Human Tasks", IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation Workshop on Safely Leveraging Vision-Language Foundation Models in Robotics (SafeLVMs@ICRA), May 2025.BibTeX TR2025-068 PDF
- @inproceedings{Lu2025may,
- author = {Lu, Kai and Ma, Chenyang and Hori, Chiori and Romeres, Diego},
- title = {{KitchenVLA: Iterative Vision-Language Corrections for Robotic Execution of Human Tasks}},
- booktitle = {IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation Workshop on Safely Leveraging Vision-Language Foundation Models in Robotics (SafeLVMs@ICRA)},
- year = 2025,
- month = may,
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2025-068}
- }
- , "Embedding Physical Consistency in Black-Box Inverse Dynamics Learning", IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) Workshop on Structured Learning for Efficient, Reliable, and Transparent Robots, May 2025.BibTeX
- @inproceedings{Giacomuzzo2025may2,
- author = {{{Giacomuzzo, Giulio and Romeres, Diego and Carli, Ruggero and Dalla Libera, Alberto}}},
- title = {{{Embedding Physical Consistency in Black-Box Inverse Dynamics Learning}}},
- booktitle = {IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) Workshop on Structured Learning for Efficient, Reliable, and Transparent Robots},
- year = 2025,
- month = may
- }
- , "Learning Positive Definite Inertia Matrices in Black-Box Inverse Dynamics Models via Gaussian Processes: a Constraint Learning Approach", European Control Conference (ECC), June 2025.
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Other Publications
- , "On-line bayesian system identification", Control Conference (ECC), 2016 European, 2016, pp. 1359-1364.BibTeX
- @Inproceedings{romeres2016line,
- author = {Romeres, Diego and Prando, Giulia and Pillonetto, Gianluigi and Chiuso, Alessandro},
- title = {On-line bayesian system identification},
- booktitle = {Control Conference (ECC), 2016 European},
- year = 2016,
- pages = {1359--1364},
- organization = {IEEE}
- }
- , "Online semi-parametric learning for inverse dynamics modeling", Decision and Control (CDC), 2016 IEEE 55th Conference on, 2016, pp. 2945-2950.BibTeX
- @Inproceedings{romeres2016online,
- author = {Romeres, Diego and Zorzi, Mattia and Camoriano, Raffaello and Chiuso, Alessandro},
- title = {Online semi-parametric learning for inverse dynamics modeling},
- booktitle = {Decision and Control (CDC), 2016 IEEE 55th Conference on},
- year = 2016,
- pages = {2945--2950},
- organization = {IEEE}
- }
- , "Online semi-parametric learning for inverse dynamics modeling", Decision and Control (CDC), 2016 IEEE 55th Conference on, 2016, pp. 2945-2950.BibTeX
- @Inproceedings{romeres2016onlinesemiparametric,
- author = {Romeres, Diego and Zorzi, Mattia and Camoriano, Raffaello and Chiuso, Alessandro},
- title = {Online semi-parametric learning for inverse dynamics modeling},
- booktitle = {Decision and Control (CDC), 2016 IEEE 55th Conference on},
- year = 2016,
- pages = {2945--2950},
- organization = {IEEE}
- }
- , "Classical vs. Bayesian methods for linear system identification: Point estimators and confidence sets", Control Conference (ECC), 2016 European, 2016, pp. 1365-1370.BibTeX
- @Inproceedings{tprando2016classical,
- author = {Prando, Giulia and Romeres, Diego and Pillonetto, Gianluigi and Chiuso, Alessandro},
- title = {Classical vs. Bayesian methods for linear system identification: Point estimators and confidence sets},
- booktitle = {Control Conference (ECC), 2016 European},
- year = 2016,
- pages = {1365--1370},
- organization = {IEEE}
- }
- , "Online identification of time-varying systems: A Bayesian approach", Decision and Control (CDC), 2016 IEEE 55th Conference on, 2016, pp. 3775-3780.BibTeX
- @Inproceedings{tprando2016online,
- author = {Prando, Giulia and Romeres, Diego and Chiuso, Alessandro},
- title = {Online identification of time-varying systems: A Bayesian approach},
- booktitle = {Decision and Control (CDC), 2016 IEEE 55th Conference on},
- year = 2016,
- pages = {3775--3780},
- organization = {IEEE}
- }
- , "Region of attraction of power systems", IFAC Proceedings Volumes, Vol. 46, No. 27, pp. 49-54, 2013.BibTeX
- @Article{munz2013region,
- author = {Muenz, Ulrich and Romeres, Diego},
- title = {Region of attraction of power systems},
- journal = {IFAC Proceedings Volumes},
- year = 2013,
- volume = 46,
- number = 27,
- pages = {49--54},
- publisher = {Elsevier}
- }
- , "Novel results on slow coherency in consensus and power networks", Control Conference (ECC), 2013 European, 2013, pp. 742-747.BibTeX
- @Inproceedings{romeres2013novel,
- author = {Romeres, Diego and Doerfler, Florian and Bullo, Francesco},
- title = {Novel results on slow coherency in consensus and power networks},
- booktitle = {Control Conference (ECC), 2013 European},
- year = 2013,
- pages = {742--747},
- organization = {IEEE}
- }
- , "Distributed multi-hop reactive power compensation in smart micro-grids subject to saturation constraints", Decision and Control (CDC), 2012 IEEE 51st Annual Conference on, 2012, pp. 1118-1123.BibTeX
- @Inproceedings{bolognani2012distributed,
- author = {Bolognani, Saverio and Carron, Andrea and Di Vittorio, Alberto and Romeres, Diego and Schenato, Luca and Zampieri, Sandro},
- title = {Distributed multi-hop reactive power compensation in smart micro-grids subject to saturation constraints},
- booktitle = {Decision and Control (CDC), 2012 IEEE 51st Annual Conference on},
- year = 2012,
- pages = {1118--1123},
- organization = {IEEE}
- }
- , "On-line bayesian system identification", Control Conference (ECC), 2016 European, 2016, pp. 1359-1364.
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Software & Data Downloads
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Videos
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MERL Issued Patents
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Title: "System and Method for Robust Robotic Manipulation using Chance Constrained Optimization"
Inventors: Jha, Devesh; Raghunathan, Arvind U.; Romeres, Diego
Patent No.: 12,049,007
Issue Date: Jul 30, 2024 -
Title: "OBJECT MANIPULATION WITH COLLISION AVOIDANCE USING COMPLEMENTARITY CONSTRAINTS"
Inventors: Raghunathan, Arvind U.; Jha, Devesh; Romeres, Diego
Patent No.: 11,883,962
Issue Date: Jan 30, 2024 -
Title: "System and Method for Robotic Assembly Based on Adaptive Compliance"
Inventors: Nikovski, Daniel N.; Romeres, Diego; Jha, Devesh; Yerazunis, William S.
Patent No.: 11,673,264
Issue Date: Jun 13, 2023 -
Title: "System and Method for Policy Optimization using Quasi-Newton Trust Region Method"
Inventors: Jha, Devesh; Raghunathan, Arvind U; Romeres, Diego
Patent No.: 11,650,551
Issue Date: May 16, 2023 -
Title: "Systems and Methods Automatic Anomaly Detection in Mixed Human-Robot Manufacturing Processes"
Inventors: Laftchiev, Emil; Romeres, Diego
Patent No.: 11,472,028
Issue Date: Oct 18, 2022 -
Title: "Systems and Methods for Advance Anomaly Detection in a Discrete Manufacturing Process with a Task Performed by a Human-Robot Team"
Inventors: Laftchiev, Emil; Romeres, Diego
Patent No.: 11,442,429
Issue Date: Sep 13, 2022 -
Title: "System and Design of Derivative-free Model Learning for Robotic Systems"
Inventors: Romeres, Diego; Libera, Alberto Dalla; Jha, Devesh; Nikovski, Daniel Nikolaev
Patent No.: 11,389,957
Issue Date: Jul 19, 2022 -
Title: "System and Method for Thermal Control Based on Invertible Causation Relationship"
Inventors: Laftchiev, Emil; Nikovski, Daniel N.; Romeres, Diego
Patent No.: 11,280,514
Issue Date: Mar 22, 2022 -
Title: "System and Method for Automatic Error Recovery in Robotic Assembly"
Inventors: Nikovski, Daniel Nikolaev; Jha, Devesh; Romeres, Diego
Patent No.: 11,161,244
Issue Date: Nov 2, 2021
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Title: "System and Method for Robust Robotic Manipulation using Chance Constrained Optimization"
