LAB

Markus Giftthaler was a PhD student at ADRL from 2014 to 2018. In his PhD, he focused on Numerical Optimal Control for complex articulated robots with the application context robotic fabrication on building construction sites. He is one of the developers of the In situ Fabricator ( NCCR Digital Fabrication), a mobile construction robot employed for various building projects.

Open Source Software

The ADRL Control Toolbox is a C++ library for efficient modelling, control and estimation for robotics. The source code is available at https://github.com/ethz-adrl/control-toolbox , the documentation can be accessed at https://ethz-adrl.github.io/ct/

Publications

[1] Markus Giftthaler. “Towards a Unified Framework of Efficient Algorithms for Numerical Optimal Robot Control”. PhD thesis, ETH Zurich, 2018 ( ETH Research Collection).

[2] Markus Giftthaler, Michael Neunert, Markus Stäuble and Jonas Buchli. “The Control Toolbox - An Open-Source C++ Library for Robotics, Optimal and Model Predictive Control”. 2018 IEEE International Conference on Simulation, Modeling, and Programming for Autonomous Robots (SIMPAR).

[3] Markus Giftthaler, Michael Neunert, Markus Stäuble, Jonas Buchli and Moritz Diehl. “A Family of iterative Gauss-Newton Shooting Methods for Nonlinear Optimal Control”. Accepted for presentation at IROS 2018. arXiv-preprint

[4] Michael Neunert, Markus Stäuble, Markus Giftthaler, Dario Bellicoso, Jan Carius, Christian Gehring, Marco Hutter and Jonas Buchli. “Whole Body Model Predictive Control Through Contacts For Quadrupeds”. IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters. arXiv-preprint ( IEEE Xplore).

[5] Markus Giftthaler and Jonas Buchli. “A Projection Approach to Equality Constrained Iterative Linear Quadratic Optimal Control”. Accepted for publication at the 2017 IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots, November 15-17, Birmingham, UK. pdf

[6] Markus Giftthaler, Michael Neunert, Markus Stäuble, Marco Frigerio, Claudio Semini and Jonas Buchli. “Automatic Differentiation of Rigid Body Dynamics for Optimal Control and Estimation”, Advanced Robotics, November 2017, Taylor and Francis, DOI: 10.1080/01691864.2017.1395361 arXiv-preprint T&F

[7] Farbod Farshidian, Edo Jelavić, Asutosh Satapathy, Markus Giftthaler, Jonas Buchli. “Real-Time Motion Planning of Legged Robots: A Model Predictive Control Approach”. IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots, November 15-17, Birmingham, UK. arXiv-preprint

[8] Markus Giftthaler, Farbod Farshidian, Timothy Sandy, Lukas Stadelmann and Jonas Buchli. “Efficient Kinematic Planning for Mobile Manipulators with Non-holonomic Constraints Using Optimal Control”, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2017, Singapore. arXiv-preprint IEEE Xplore

[9] Markus Giftthaler, Timothy Sandy, Kathrin Dörfler, Ian Brooks, Mark Buckingham, Gonzalo Rey, Matthias Kohler, Fabio Gramazio and Jonas Buchli. “Mobile Robotic Fabrication at 1:1 scale: the In situ Fabricator”. Construction Robotics (2017), Springer International Publishing. arXiv-preprint Springer Link

[10] Michael Neunert, Markus Giftthaler, Marco Frigerio, Claudio Semini and Jonas Buchli. “Fast Derivatives of Rigid Body Dynamics for Control, Optimization and Estimation”, 2016 IEEE International Conference on Simulation, Modelling, and Programming for Autonomous Robots, San Francisco. (Best Paper Award). Preprint IEEE Xplore

[11] Timothy Sandy, Markus Giftthaler, Kathrin Dörfler, Matthias Kohler and Jonas Buchli. “Autonomous Repositioning and Localization of an In situ Fabricator”, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation 2016, Stockholm, Sweden. Preprint IEEE Xplore

[12] Kathrin Dörfler, Timothy Sandy, Markus Giftthaler, Fabio Gramazio, Matthias Kohler and Jonas Buchli. “Mobile Robotic Brickwork - Automation of a Discrete Robotic Fabrication Process Using an Autonomous Mobile Robot”, Robotic Fabrication in Architecture, Art and Design, 2016. Springer Link Google Books Preprint

[13] Markus Giftthaler, Thomas Wolf, Heiko K.F. Panzer and Boris Lohmann. “Parametric Model Order Reduction of Port-Hamiltonian Systems by Matrix Interpolation”, at - Automatisierungstechnik, 2014, 62(9): 619–628. pdf

[14] Markus Giftthaler and Katie Byl. “Increased Robustness of Humanoid Standing Balance in the Sagittal Plane through Adaptive Joint Torque Reduction”. IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Tokyo, 2013. pdf

[15] Markus Giftthaler. “Design, construction and resonance tracking of a laboratory-scale, loudspeaker-driven thermoacoustic cooler”, Master-Thesis, ETH-Zürich (2013). pdf

Workshop Talks

Markus Giftthaler, Michael Neunert and Jonas Buchli. “From UAVs to Quadrupeds: Efficient Numerical Optimal Robot Control Across Different Domains and Platforms”. IEEE RAS Conference on Humanoid Robots (HUMANOIDS), Workshop on “Locomotion and Manipulation: Unifying Solutions Across Aerial and Terrestrial Regimes”, 2017. abstract