ROBOTICS
My main area of research is in control of humanoid systems. Humanoids are difficult systems to control because they need to coordinate many low-level behaviors to accomplish complex tasks while being responsive to the changing environment. During my thesis, I developed dynamic control structures that can simultaneously execute multiple motion, force, and potential field tasks associated with all aspects of the robot's motion while providing a prioritized layer to resolve potential conflicts between goals. I am now involved in the design of a realtime software control framework for the humanoid robot Asimo to implement the concepts me and my colleagues have developed. This framework will soon operate a research version of Asimo that takes torque inputs as control commands. I will keep this website updated with new results.
ROBOTICS
PUBLICATIONS
Luis Sentis, Jaeheung Park, Oussama Khatib,  Analysis and Control of Contact Centers of Pressure and Internal Forces in Humanoid Robots, IEEE Transactions on Robotics (TRO), (conditionally accepted, resubmitted for review on March 2009).

Roland Philippsen, Negin Nejati, Luis Sentis, Bridging the Gap Between Semantic Planning and Continuous Control for Mobile Manipulation Using a Graph-Based World Representation , The International Workshop on Hybrid Control of Autonomous Systems (HYCAS-09), (submitted on April 2009).

Luis Sentis, Jaeheung Park, Oussama Khatib, Modeling and Control of Multi-Contact Centers of Pressure and Internal Forces in Humanoid Robots, IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), (submitted on February 2009).

Oussama Khatib, Luis Sentis, and Jae-Heung Park, A Unified Framework for Whole-Body Humanoid Robot Control With Multiple Constraints and Contacts, Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics - STAR Series, European Robotics Symposium (EURON), Prague, Czech Republic, March 2008.

Luis Sentis, Synthesis and Control of Whole-Body Behaviors in Humanoid Systems, Ph.D. Thesis, Stanford University, July 2007, (7.4 MB).

Luis Sentis and Oussama Khatib, A Whole-Body Control Framework for Humanoids Operating in Human Environments, Proceedings of the IEEE Internactional Conference in Robotics and Automation, Orlando, USA, May 2006.

Luis Sentis and Oussama Khatib, Synthesis of whole-body behaviors through hierarchical control of behavioral primitives, International Journal of Humanoid Robotics, 2(4):505-518, December 2005.

Luis Sentis and Oussama Khatib, Control of Free-Floating Humanoid Robots Through Task Prioritization, Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference in Robotics and Automation, Barcelona, Spain, April 2005.

Luis Sentis and Oussama Khatib, Task-Oriented Control of Humanoid Robots Through Prioritization, IEEE-RAS/RSJ International Conference on Humanoid Robots, Santa Monica, USA, November 2004.

Oussama Khatib, Luis Sentis, Jae-Heung Park, James Warren, Whole Body Dynamic Behavior and Control of Human-Like Robots, International Journal of Humanoid Robotics, 1(1): 1-15, March 2004.


Unified multicontact behavior: the feet and right hand support the body while the left hand applies a normal force of 30N against the wall. The hand movement on tangential directions to the wall is interactive.
Adaptive contact behavior: the robot's body is supported by hands and feet. The table is interactively swung. Because the hands automatically regulate contact centers of pressure, the resulting behavior adapts to surface changes.