Marques, Hugo Gravato, Dr.

ETH Zürich
Dr. Hugo Gravato Marques
Institut für Robotik und Intelligente Systeme
TAN C 4
Leonhardstrasse 27
8092 Zürich
SCHWEIZ

Phone: +41 44 632 43 24
Fax: +41 44 632 14 68
E-Mail: 

Interests

My current interests lie on the kind of self-organization processes that can give rise to coordinated motor activity and appropriate decision making. More specifically i'm interested in understanding general self-organization principles in mammals, with especial focus on the sensorimotor development of the spinal cord, and how these principles can contribute to the construction of more advanced (open-ended) robotic systems.

Short CV

Education

• 2010: PhD, University of Essex, UK; Architectures for functional embodied imagination
• 2003: Licenciatura, University of Porto; Portugal; Portuguese 5-year degree

Professional experience

• 2012: Postdoc researcher, ETH, Switzerland
• 2009: Postodoc researcher, University of Zurich, Switzerland
• 2004: Graduate researcher, University of Aveiro, Portugal
• 2003: Undergraduate researcher Imperial College, UK; Final year project: 3D Vision using Neural Networks
• 2003: Undergraduate researcher, University of Porto, Portugal

Publications

Journal

• Blumberg, M.S., Marques, H.G., and Iida, F. (2013). Pups and bots: How twitching during sleep propels sensorimotor development. Current Biology. Accepted
• Marques, H.G., Imitiaz, F., Iida, F., and Pfeifer, R. (2013). Self-organisation of reflexive behaviour from spontaneous motor activity. Biological Cybernetics 107(1):25-37.
• Holland, O., Diamond, A., Marques, H.G., Mitra, B., and Devereux, D. (2013). Real and apparent biological inspiration in cognitive architectures. Brain Inspired Cognitive Architectures 3:105–16.
• Wittmeier, S., Alessandro, C., Bascarevic, N., Dalamagkidis, K., Diamond, A., Jäntsch, M., Jovanovic, K., Knight, R., Marques H.G., Milosavljevic, P., Svetozarevic, B., Potkonjak, V., Pfeifer, R., Knoll, A., and Holland, O. (2013). Towards Anthropomimetic Robotics. Artificial Life 19(1):171-93.
• Hoffmann, M., Marques, H., Arieta, A., Sumioka, H., Lungarella, M. and Rolf Pfeifer (2010). Body schema in robotics: a review. IEEE Transactions on Autonomous Mental Development, 2(4):304-24.
• Holland, O. and Marques, H. (2010). Functional Embodied Imagination and Episodic Memory. International Journal of Machine Consciousness 2(2):245-59.
• Marques, H. and Holland, O. (2009). Architectures for Functional Imagination. Neurocomputing, 72:743-59.

Conferences

• Koeth, F., Marques, H.G. and Delbruck, T. (2013). Self-organisation of motion features with a temporal asynchronous dynamic vision sensor. In Proceedings of BICA 2013. in press
• Mutti, F., Marques, H.G, and Gini, G. (2012). A model of the visual dorsal pathway for computing coordinate transformations: an unsupervised approach. In Proceedings of BICA 2012, Palermo, Italy.
• Marques, H.G., Völk, K., König, S., and Iida, F. (2012). Self-organization of spinal reflexes involving homonymous, antagonist and synergistic interactions. In Proceedings of SAB 2012, 27-31 August, Odense, Denmark.
• Marques, H.G., Schaffner, P., and Kuppuswamy, N. (2012). Unsupervised learning of a reduced dimensional controller for a tendon driven robot platform. In Proceedings of SAB 2012, 27-31 August 2012, Odense, Denmark.
• Kuppuswamy, N., Marques, H.G., and Hauser, H. (2012). Synthesising a motor-primitive inspired control architecture for redundant compliant robots. In Proceedings of SAB 2012, 27-31 August, Odense, Denmark.
• Marques, H.G., Völk, K., König, S. and Iida, F. Self-organization of spinal reflexes through soft musculoskeletal interactions. In Proceedings of BioRob 2012, 24-27 June, Rome, Italy.
• Diamond, A., Holland, O., Marques, H.G (2011). The role of the predicted present in artificial and
  natural cognitive systems. In Proceedings of BICA 2011, Virginia, USA.
• Wittmeier, S., Jäntsch, M., Dalamagkidis, K., Rickert, M., Marques, H.G., Knoll, A. (2011). CALIPER: A universal robot simulation framework for tendon-driven robots. In Proceedings of IROS 2011, 25-30 September, San Francisco, US.
• Marques, H., Jäntsch, M., Wittmeier, S., Alessandro, C., Lungarella, M., Knight, R. and Holland, O (2010). ECCE1: the first of a series of anthropomimetic musculoskelal upper torsos. In Proceedings of Humanoids 2010, 6-9 December, Nashville, US.
• Holland, O. and Marques, H. (2009). Functional embodied imagination and episodic memory. AAAI Technical Report FS-09-01 from BICA 2009, 4-7 November, Arlington, US.
• Marques, H.; Newcombe, R.; and Holland, O. (2008). A Modelling Framework for Functional Imagination. In Proceedings of AISB 2008, 1-4 April, Aberdeen, Scotland.
• Marques, H.; Newcombe, R.; and Holland, O. (2007). Controlling and Anthropomimetic Robot: A preliminary investigation. In Proceedings of ECAL 2007, 10-14 September, Lisbon, Portugal.
• Togelius, J.; De Nardi, R.; Marques, H.; Newcombe, R.; Lucas, S.M. and Holland, O. (2007). Nonlinear Dynamics Modelling for Controller Evolution. In Proceedings of GECCO 2007, 7-11 July, London, UK.
• Marques, H.; Togelius, J., Kogutowska M.; Holland, O. and Lucas, S.M. (2007). Sensorless but not Senseless: Prediction in Evolutionary Car Racing. In Proceedings of IEEE ALife 2007, 1-5 April 1-5, Honolulu, US.
• Marques, H. and Holland, O. (2006). Minimal Architectures for Embodied Imagination. In Proceedings of BICS 2006, 10-12 October, Lesvos, Grece.
• Marques, H. and Oliveira, E. (2004). Stereoscopic Depth: A Biological Inspired Judgement. In Proceedings of BICS 2004, 29-1 August-September, Stirling, UK.

Students

PhD (co-supervision): Cristiano Alessandro, Naveen Kuppuswamy

Master: Simon GAY, Farhan Imitiaz, Konstantin Zerebcov, Igor Sokolovski, Christian Hückstädt, Stefan König, Kristin Völk, Stefano Toxiri, Arjun Bharadwaj, Christoph Bolliger, Michael Ackermann, Tobias Klauser

Bachelor: Christian Brändli, Fabian Koeth, Mathias Weyland, Philip Shaffner, Aditya Pralhad Patil, Cordt Voigt, Mathias Wild, Imanol Studer

Robots (under construction)

Simulations (under construction)

Videos (to be moved)

Reflex Learning and Jumping in Simulated Leg Model (2012)

In this video we use a simulated leg model with 6 muscles to test our reflex learning framework. The framework is capable of identifying automatically the connectivity of the Myotatic and Inhibition reflexes. Once the reflexes have been learned, the sensory stimulation induced by the falling leg is enough to make the leg jump.
References: Marques, H.G., Völk, K., König, S., and Iida, F. (2012). Self-organization of spinal reflexes involving homonymous, antagonist and synergistic interactions. In Proceedings of SAB 2012, 27-31 August, Odense, Denmark.

Reflex Learning in Tendon-Driven Robot (2011)

In this video we use agonist-antagonist pair of artificial muscles to test our reflex learning framework in a tendon-driven peundulum robot. With our framework we have self-organized 4 spinal reflexes -- the Myotatic, the Reciprocal Inhibition, the Reverse Myotatic and the Withdrawal reflex -- in three different sensor modalities: muscle length, muscle force and tactile. The pendulum is immersed in water to simulate the viscuosity of uterus environment.
The video shows first the process of single muscle twitches used for learning the reflexes, and after the testing of the each of the reflexes:
(1) The Myotatic and Reciprocal Inhibition reflexes are tested by stretching one of the muscles; the length increase in one muscle causes the muscle to contract and the antagonist to relax.
(2) The Reverse Myotatic reflex is tested by setting a constant muscle activity to which the activity produced by the reflex circuit is added. The increase in muscle tension reduces the motor activity and prevents the muscle from reaching excessive forces.
(3) The Withdrawal reflex is tested by poking one of the tactile sensors. The tactile activity produced in one tactile sensor leads the contralateral muscle to contract and inhibits the ipsilateral muscle. This activity results in a withdrawal of the limb from the contact area.
References:: in preparation