My name is David Blanco Mulero and I’m currently a Researcher at Institut de Robòtica i Informàtica Industrial (IRI-CSIC-UPC) at the Perception and Manipulation group lead by Prof. Carme Torras. I’m also about to defend my PhD Thesis at Aalto University Intelligent Robotics group supervised by Prof. Ville Kyrki.

My PhD Thesis “Towards Efficient Robotic Manipulation of Deformable Objects by Learning Dynamics Models and Adaptive Policies” focused on bridging the gap in the adaptive capabilities of robotic systems to manipulate deformable objects. My PhD Thesis combines techniques such as Reinforcement Learning, Graph Neural Networks and Gaussian Processes to develop methods that can learn to manipulate deformable objects in simulation and transfer the learnt skills to the real-world.

During my PhD I was part of multiple projects of the Academy of Finland: the AI Spider Silk Threading (ASSET) project and the B-REAL project, as well as the Business Finland project SANTTU. I also collaborated actively with industry with partners such as Cargotec or Sandvik.

During my PhD I received the Nokia PhD Scholarship grant (5000 Euros) to encourage the work carried out during my PhD thesis, and the Foundation for Aalto University Science and Technology Research Visit Travel Grant (3100 Eur) for doing a research visit at IRI-CSIC-UPC.

Before that, I received my MSc in Automation and Robotics at the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (Spain). I did my MSc Thesis at CERN (2016), where I worked developing a collision avoidance system for the robotic platform CERNTAURO.

After that, I worked at CERN as a Technical student (2017-2018) in the EN-STI-ECE group (currently EN-SMM-MRO). During that time I worked on SLAM techniques for performing visual inspection in the accelerators. I also worked on developing a new mobile robotic platform as well as performing interventions in the accelerators.

In 2018 I joined Dyson algorithm’s team. During my year at Dyson I continued working on topics related to autonomous navigation and mobile robotic platforms. That year Dyson released the Dyson 360 Heurist, which is one of the projects I worked on.

After my time in industry and working close to research, I decided to step up and move to Academia.

On my free time, aside of electronic and ML projects, I really enjoy climbing. I started bouldering on 2019 and doing lead climbing on 2022.

Here one of my photos doing a via ferrata :)