Yugo Kadowaki.

PhD Student · CREATE Lab, EPFL

Hi, I'm Yugo Kadowaki, a PhD student at the CREATE Lab at EPFL.

I work on growing robots and developmental learning: robots whose bodies change over time, and controllers that develop their policies as the body grows.

Animals don't learn their skills all at once with a fixed body. A tadpole, for example, first learns to swim; then, as its legs grow and its tail disappears, it has to learn to jump. I want robots to learn the same way: progressively, through developmental stages.

I believe that policies trained progressively throughout development generalize better, adapt more easily, and are more robust. Following this idea all the way leads to the motto I have always had: robots that could survive in the wilderness, even 100,000 years from now.