About

Yoan Mollard is a leading researcher at the intersection of intrinsically motivated learning, soft robotics, and human-robot collaboration. His most influential work, "Intrinsically Motivated Goal Exploration Processes with Automatic Curriculum Learning" (175 citations), pioneers autotelic learning—where robots self-generate and self-select goals to autonomously build skill repertoires, a cornerstone of developmental robotics. Mollard has also made transformative contributions to assistive soft robotics, notably developing a compliant manipulator for elderly personal care (110 citations), and to ergonomic human-robot interaction, where his postural optimization framework (80 citations) directly improves worker safety and comfort. His work on programming by demonstration and feedback (39 citations) advances intuitive robot instruction for assembly tasks, while his multiagent reinforcement learning approach (36 citations) enables precise control of high-dimensional soft manipulators for surgical and assistive applications. Mollard’s research is distinguished by its practical focus on safe, collaborative robots that learn from and adapt to humans, with notable achievements including open-source platforms like Poppy and Explauto for autonomous exploration. His work continues to shape how robots become intuitive, safe, and autonomous partners in real-world environments.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

8
H-Index
13
Papers
507
Total Citations
39
Avg Citations/Paper
🏆 Most Cited Paper
Intrinsically Motivated Goal Exploration Processes with Automatic Curriculum Learning
175 citations · 2017
📈 Most Prolific Year: 2017 (5 Papers)
🤝 Key Collaborators: 29
🏛 Institutions: Institut national de recherche en sciences et technologies du numérique, Centre Inria de l'université de Bordeaux

Top Papers

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Key Collaborators

Contact & Links

Available for collaboration
Content generated · 13 days ago