Sylvain Miossec

About

Sylvain Miossec’s research lies at the intersection of humanoid robotics, motion planning, and real-time collision avoidance. His most impactful work focuses on enabling humanoid robots to perform complex, whole-body tasks—such as lifting heavy objects or planning support contact points—while ensuring safety and stability. A standout contribution is his development of the sphere-tori-patches bounding volume (STP-BV), a strictly convex hull that guarantees continuous gradients for proximity distance computation. This innovation, detailed in a 2014 paper (55 citations), eliminates the gradient discontinuities that plague traditional collision avoidance methods, enabling smoother, more reliable robot motion. His 2008 paper on real-time self-collision avoidance (79 citations) applies this principle directly to the HRP-2 humanoid, demonstrating a velocity-domain controller that prevents collisions without jerky behavior. Miossec’s work on planning contact points (106 citations) and dynamic lifting (54 citations) further showcases his ability to combine theoretical rigor with practical implementation on real robots. His 2006 software for motion optimization (54 citations) has also been used to generate energy-efficient, stable motions like the HRP-2’s kick. With over 500 total citations, Miossec has shaped how researchers approach safe, whole-body humanoid control, making his contributions essential reading for anyone working on autonomous robots in physical environments.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   Planning contact points for humanoid robots

   106 citations · 2013
2. 2
   Real-time (self)-collision avoidance task on a hrp-2 humanoid robot

   79 citations · 2008
3. 3
   A Strictly Convex Hull for Computing Proximity Distances With Continuous Gradients

   55 citations · 2014
4. 4
   Dynamic lifting by whole body motion of humanoid robots

   54 citations · 2008
5. 5
   Development of a software for motion optimization of robots - Application to the kick motion of the HRP-2 robot

   54 citations · 2006
6. 6
   Human motion in cooperative tasks: Moving object case study

   51 citations · 2009
7. 7
   Planning support contact-points for humanoid robots and experiments on HRP-2

   48 citations · 2006
8. 8
   Planning Support Contact-Points for Acyclic Motions and Experiments on HRP-2

   41 citations · 2009
9. 9
   Fast C<sup>1</sup> proximity queries using support mapping of sphere-torus-patches bounding volumes

   28 citations · 2009
10. 10
    Optimization of tasks warping and scheduling for smooth sequencing of robotic actions

    19 citations · 2009

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links