Ander Aramburu

Papers

Total Citations

H-Index

About

Ander Aramburu is a robotics researcher whose work sits at the critical intersection of physical human-robot interaction (pHRI) and embodied artificial intelligence. His primary research areas focus on enabling safe, intuitive collaboration between humans and robotic manipulators, with a specific emphasis on proximity sensing and whole-body artificial skin. Aramburu’s most influential contribution is his framework for "Contact Anticipation," which unifies obstacle avoidance with deliberate physical interaction—a paradigm shift from traditional collision avoidance that acknowledges human-robot contact as both inevitable and necessary in shared workspaces. This work, published in 2021 and garnering 31 citations, is foundational for developing robots that can work alongside people without sacrificing safety or efficiency. Complementing this, his self-contained kinematic calibration algorithm for whole-body artificial skin (11 citations) solves a critical hardware challenge: accurately estimating the pose of distributed sensor units across a robot’s body using accelerometers. This innovation is fully compatible with standard Denavit-Hartenberg kinematic models, making it broadly applicable. Aramburu’s contributions are particularly notable for their practical, deployment-ready approach, directly addressing the sensor and control challenges that have historically limited the adoption of collaborative robots in real-world environments.