Carme Torras

About

Carme Torras is a prominent robotics researcher whose work spans human-robot interaction, robot learning, cloth manipulation, and the ethics of assistive robotics. Based at the Institut de Robòtica i Informàtica Industrial (CSIC-UPC) in Barcelona, she has made foundational contributions to how robots perceive, learn, and collaborate with humans in real-world environments. Torras's most cited contribution — a comprehensive survey on lock-in Time-of-Flight cameras (629 citations) — established a critical reference point for depth-sensing technology widely used in robotics and computer vision. Her influential work on learning collaborative robot behaviors from human demonstrations (311 citations) helped define how robots can safely assist humans in physical tasks, a challenge central to care, manufacturing, and rehabilitation settings. Alongside related research on impedance-based learning and force estimation, she has shaped the foundations of compliant, human-aware robot control. Her work on garment manipulation — teaching robots to grasp and recognize highly wrinkled clothing using depth sensing and deep learning — addresses deformable object handling, one of robotics' most persistent open problems. More recently, her critical review of ethical issues in social assistive robotics (144 citations) demonstrates a rare and commendable commitment to interrogating the societal implications of the very technologies she helps develop.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   Lock-in Time-of-Flight (ToF) Cameras: A Survey

   629 citations · 2011
2. 2
   Learning Physical Collaborative Robot Behaviors From Human Demonstrations

   311 citations · 2016
3. 3
   Learning Collaborative Impedance-Based Robot Behaviors

   151 citations · 2013
4. 4
   The ethical issues of social assistive robotics: A critical literature review

   144 citations · 2021
5. 5
   Closed-Loop Inverse Kinematics for Redundant Robots: Comparative Assessment and Two Enhancements

   136 citations · 2014
6. 6
   A robot learning from demonstration framework to perform force-based manipulation tasks

   133 citations · 2013
7. 7
   Using depth and appearance features for informed robot grasping of highly wrinkled clothes

   131 citations · 2012
8. 8
   External force estimation during compliant robot manipulation

   100 citations · 2013
9. 9
   3D modelling of leaves from color and ToF data for robotized plant measuring

   96 citations · 2011
10. 10
    Active garment recognition and target grasping point detection using deep learning

    90 citations · 2017

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links