Journal articles
Leveraging Nonlinear Oscillations for Natural Quadruped Gaits Annika Schmidt, Florian Loeffl, Davide Calzolari, Daniel Seidel, Milan Herrmann, Robert Burger, Thomas Gumpert, Antonin Raffin, Arne Sachtler, Tristan Ehlert, David Wandinger, Florian Schmidt, Jinoh Lee, Manuel Keppler , Alin Albu-Schäffer Nature Machine Intelligence, accepted 2026 neoDavid: A Humanoid Robot with Variable-Stiffness Actuation and Dexterous Manipulation Skills Sebastian Wolf, Thomas Bahls, Bastian Deutschmann, Alexander Dietrich, Marie Harder, Hannes Höppner, Cynthia Hofmann, Ana Huezo Martin, Manuel Keppler , Leonard Klüpfel, Henry Maurenbrecher, Xuming Meng, Anne E. Reichert, Manuel Stoiber, Markus Bihler, Maxime Chalon, Oliver Eiberger, Werner Friedl, Markus Grebenstein, Maged Iskandar, Viktor Langofer, Martin Pfanne, Antonin Raffin, Jens Reinecke, Tilo Wüsthoff, Alin Albu-Schäffer IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine, 2026 Cover article Finger Flow: Reactive Reach-while-Grasp Generation for Robotic Arms with Multi-Fingered Hands Xuming Meng, Henry Maurenbrecher, Alin Albu-Schäffer, Manuel Keppler Robotics and Autonomous Systems 195:105222, 2025 A Visco-Elastic Actuator with Linear Gas Spring and Variable Damping Florian C. Loeffl, Fabian Beck, Jinoh Lee, MinJun Kim, Manuel Keppler Mechatronics 109:103334, 2025 Impact Robustness Versus Torque Bandwidth: A Design Guide for Differential Elastic Actuators Anton Shu, Clara Raschel, Manuel Keppler , Armin Wedler, Martin Görner IEEE Transactions on Robotics 40:3657–3675, 2024 Robust Elastic Structure Preserving Control for High Impedance Rendering of Series Elastic Actuator Hyunwook Lee, Jinoh Lee, Manuel Keppler , Sehoon Oh IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters 9(4):3601–3608, 2024 Passivity-Based Motion and Force Tracking Control for Constrained Elastic Joint Robots Xuming Meng, Manuel Keppler , Christian Ott IEEE Control Systems Letters 7:217–222, 2023 From Underactuation to Quasi-Full Actuation: Aiming at a Unifying Control Framework for Articulated Soft Robots Manuel Keppler , Christian Ott, Alin Albu-SchäfferInternational Journal of Robust and Nonlinear Control 32(9):5453–5484, 2022 Robust Stabilization of Elastic Joint Robots by ESP and PID Control: Theory and Experiments Manuel Keppler , Clara Raschel, David Wandinger, Andreas Stemmer, Christian OttIEEE Robotics and Automation Letters 7(3):8283–8290, 2022 Simultaneous Motion Tracking and Joint Stiffness Control of Bidirectional Antagonistic Variable-Stiffness Actuators Marie Harder, Manuel Keppler , Xuming Meng, Christian Ott, Hannes Höppner, Alexander Dietrich IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters 7(3):6614–6621, 2022 RA-L Best Paper Award 2022, Honorable Mention Analyzing the Performance Limits of Articulated Soft Robots Based on the ESPi Framework: Applications to Damping and Impedance Control Manuel Keppler , Florian Loeffl, David Wandinger, Clara Raschel, Christian OttIEEE Robotics and Automation Letters 6(4):7121–7128, 2021 Speed Gain in Elastic Joint Robots: An Energy Conversion-Based Approach Nico Mansfeld, Manuel Keppler , Sami Haddadin IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters 6(3):4600–4607, 2021 Elastic Structure Preserving Impedance Control for Nonlinearly Coupled Tendon-Driven Systems George Jose Pollayil, Xuming Meng, Manuel Keppler , Martin Pfanne, Antonio Bicchi, Christian Ott IEEE Control Systems Letters 6:1982–1987, 2021 Elastic Structure Preserving Control for Compliant Robots Driven by Agonistic-Antagonistic Actuators (ESPaa) Riccardo Mengacci, Manuel Keppler , Martin Pfanne, Antonio Bicchi, Christian Ott IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters 6(2):879–886, 2021 Adaptive Air Density Estimation for Precise Tracking Control and Accurate External Wrench Observation for Flying Robots Moritz Maier, Manuel Keppler , Christian Ott, Alin Albu-Schäffer IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters 5(2):1445–1452, 2020 Elastic Structure Preserving (ESP) Control for Compliantly Actuated Robots Manuel Keppler , Dominic Lakatos, Christian Ott, Alin Albu-SchäfferIEEE Transactions on Robotics 34(2):317–335, 2018
Conference papers
Tele-Running: Trajectory Generation for Monopod Robots by Teleoperation David Wandinger, Annika Schmidt, Antonin Raffin, Alin Albu-Schäffer, Manuel Keppler IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC), pp. 273–278, 2024 Comparison of Control Strategies to Excite Intrinsic Oscillations in a SEA-Driven Robotic Joint Annika Schmidt, Filip Pasic, Davide Calzolari, Arne Sachtler, Thomas Gumpert, Manuel Keppler , Alin Albu-Schäffer European Control Conference (ECC), pp. 2194–2199, 2024 An Experimental Study on MPC Based Joint Torque Control for Flexible Joint Robots Christian Ott, Fabian Beck, Manuel Keppler IFAC-PapersOnLine 55(38):113–119, 2022 Elastic Structure Preserving Impedance Control of Bidirectional Antagonistic Variable Stiffness Actuation Xuming Meng, Manuel Keppler , Christian Ott European Control Conference (ECC), pp. 263–269, 2021 On Time-Optimal Control of Elastic Joints under Input Constraints Manuel Keppler , Alessandro De LucaIEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), pp. 4149–4156, 2020 Talk recording Joint-Level Control of the DLR Lightweight Robot SARA Maged Iskandar, Christian Ott, Oliver Eiberger, Manuel Keppler , Alin Albu-Schäffer, Alexander Dietrich IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), pp. 8903–8910, 2020 Visco-Elastic Structure Preserving Impedance (VESπ) Control for Compliantly Actuated Robots Manuel Keppler , Dominic Lakatos, Alexander Werner, Florian Loeffl, Christian Ott, Alin Albu-SchäfferEuropean Control Conference (ECC), pp. 255–260, 2018 Elastic Structure Preserving Impedance (ESπ) Control for Compliantly Actuated Robots Manuel Keppler , Dominic Lakatos, Christian Ott, Alin Albu-SchäfferIEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), pp. 5861–5868, 2018 Structure Preserving Multi-Contact Balance Control for Series-Elastic and Visco-Elastic Humanoid Robots Alexander Werner, Bernd Henze, Manuel Keppler , Florian Loeffl, Sigrid Leyendecker, Christian Ott IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), pp. 1233–1240, 2018 A Passivity-Based Controller for Motion Tracking and Damping Assignment for Compliantly Actuated Robots Manuel Keppler , Dominic Lakatos, Christian Ott, Alin Albu-SchäfferIEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), pp. 1521–1528, 2016 A Passivity-Based Approach for Trajectory Tracking and Link-Side Damping of Compliantly Actuated Robots Manuel Keppler , Dominic Lakatos, Christian Ott, Alin Albu-SchäfferIEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pp. 1079–1086, 2016 ICRA 2016 Best Automation Paper Award, Finalist
Other
Robot Control [TC Spotlight] Cosimo Della Santina, Sylvia Herbert, Manuel Keppler , Kaoru Yamamoto IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine 32(2):197–198, 2025 Unifying the Control of Rigid Robots and Articulated Soft Robots Manuel Keppler Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS) Pioneers Workshop, 2023 System Identification, Design and Flight Testing H∞ Controllers for Heave Dynamics of RUAV Manuel Keppler Master's thesis, TU Wien, 2014