Papers
30
Total Citations
1,272
H-Index
15
About
Ken Caluwaerts is a pioneering robotics researcher whose work bridges tensegrity structures, embodied intelligence, and machine learning-based locomotion control. He is perhaps best known for his foundational contributions to tensegrity robotics through his work with NASA Ames Research Center's Dynamic Tensegrity Robotics Lab, where he helped design, simulate, and physically validate compliant tensegrity robots for planetary exploration. His landmark papers on SUPERball — the Spherical Underactuated Planetary Exploration Robot — garnered over 400 combined citations and demonstrated that biologically inspired, shock-absorbing robot structures could serve as viable planetary rovers. His 2012 work on physical reservoir computing in tensegrity structures (137 citations) showed that robot bodies themselves could contribute meaningfully to computation, challenging conventional separations between hardware and control. Caluwaerts subsequently expanded into deep reinforcement learning and meta-learning for legged locomotion, producing influential work on hierarchical reinforcement learning and rapidly adaptable quadruped policies. His architecture for Policies Modulating Trajectory Generators further demonstrated his talent for elegant, generalizable control frameworks. Spanning biologically inspired navigation systems to cutting-edge learning algorithms, his research has profoundly shaped how roboticists think about compliant, adaptive, and intelligent robotic systems.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1
- 2System design and locomotion of SUPERball, an untethered tensegrity robot183 citations · 2015
- 3
- 4Deep reinforcement learning for tensegrity robot locomotion92 citations · 2017
- 5Design and evolution of a modular tensegrity robot platform83 citations · 2014
- 6
- 7Rapidly Adaptable Legged Robots via Evolutionary Meta-Learning60 citations · 2020
- 8Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning for Quadruped Locomotion49 citations · 2019
- 9SUPERball: Exploring Tensegrities for Planetary Probes42 citations · 2014
- 10Policies Modulating Trajectory Generators38 citations · 2019