Manuel Keppler leads the Elastic Robot Control group at the German Aerospace Center’s (DLR) in the Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics. His team seeks to advance the foundations of robot control, planning, and design to empower elastic robots to achieve human-like motion performance and efficiency. He further directs the control development for DLR David, a humanoid robot equipped with variable stiffness actuators. Manuel received his PhD in computer science (Summa Cum Laude) from the Technical University of Munich, conducting research at DLR, advised by Alin Albu-Schäffer and Christian Ott. 

My group seeks to advance the foundations of robot control, planning, and design to empower compliant robots to attain human-like motion performance and efficiency. Our focus centers on enabling these robots to engage in a dynamic, precise, safe, and robust manner in diverse environments, including those that entail human interaction. [extended version]