Staffan Ekvall

About

Staffan Ekvall is a robotics researcher whose work sits at the intersection of robot learning, manipulation, and autonomous perception. His most significant contributions center on programming by demonstration — a paradigm that enables robots to acquire complex skills by observing human actions rather than relying on explicit preprogramming. Ekvall's foundational papers on grasp recognition and interactive grasp learning, together accumulating nearly 250 citations, introduced methods using hidden Markov models and human-guided demonstrations to teach robots dexterous manipulation. His 2007 work on automatic grasp generation further advanced the field by combining experiential learning with geometric shape primitives, earning over 110 citations. Beyond manipulation, Ekvall made notable strides in mobile robotics, developing approaches that integrate object recognition with simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), enabling service robots to reason semantically about their environments. His task-level planning research addressed real-world challenges like domestic robot deployment, where rigid preprogramming falls short. Across ten highly cited publications spanning 2004–2008, his work collectively reflects a sustained effort to make robots more adaptable, perceptive, and capable of learning naturally from human partners — contributions that remain influential in human-robot interaction and cognitive robotics research.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   Grasp Recognition for Programming by Demonstration

   124 citations · 2006
2. 2
   Interactive grasp learning based on human demonstration

   122 citations · 2004
3. 3
   Learning and Evaluation of the Approach Vector for Automatic Grasp Generation and Planning

   112 citations · 2007
4. 4
   Robot Learning from Demonstration: A Task-level Planning Approach

   104 citations · 2008
5. 5
   Adaptive Virtual Fixtures for Machine-Assisted Teleoperation Tasks

   95 citations · 2006
6. 6
   Object detection and mapping for service robot tasks

   92 citations · 2007
7. 7
   Learning Task Models from Multiple Human Demonstrations

   67 citations · 2006
8. 8
   Integrating Active Mobile Robot Object Recognition and SLAM in Natural Environments

   67 citations · 2006
9. 9
   Demonstration-based learning and control for automatic grasping

   64 citations · 2008
10. 10
    Object recognition and pose estimation using color cooccurrence histograms and geometric modeling

    55 citations · 2005

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links