Prof. Javier Alonso-Mora
Full Professor | Since 2018
Prof. Javier Alonso-Mora is the director of the TU Delft Robotics Institute and a Full Professor at the Cognitive Robotics of the Delft University of Technology, where he leads the Autonomous Multi-robots Laboratory. He received his Ph.D. from ETH Zurich, in partnership with Disney Research Zurich, and was a Postdoctoral Associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He co‑chairs the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Technical Committee on Multi‑Robot Systems and serves as an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Autonomous Robots, as well as for several major robotics conferences. His main research interests are in navigation, motion planning, learning and control of autonomous mobile robots, and teams thereof, that interact with other robots and humans in dynamic and uncertain environments. Key application areas include mobile manipulation, autonomous vehicles, aerial drones, surface vessels and on‑demand mobility. His awards include an NWO VENI Talent Scheme Award (2017), the ICRA Best Paper Award on Multi‑Robot Systems (2019), an ERC Starting Grant (2021), the IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering Best Paper Award (2024), and the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Young Researcher Award (2025). His research on ride‑pooling has led to the creation of a commercial spin‑off company, The Routing Company.
Prof. Javier Alonso-Mora is the director of the TU Delft Robotics Institute and a Full Professor at the Cognitive Robotics department of the Delft University of Technology, where he leads the Autonomous Multi-robots Laboratory. Prior to joining TU Delft, Prof. Alonso-Mora was a Postdoctoral Associate at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He received his Ph.D. degree in robotics from ETH Zurich, where he worked in the Autonomous Systems Lab and in partnership with Disney Research Zurich. Dr. Alonso-Mora holds a Diploma in Engineering and a Diploma in Mathematics from the Technical University of Barcelona (UPC), where he was part of the Interdisciplinary Higher Education Centre (CFIS) and the Robotics Institute (IRI).
Prof. Alonso-Mora currently serves as associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Robotics, Springer Autonomous Robots, and several conferences. He co-chairs the IEEE RAS TC on Multi-Robot Systems and was a local co-organizer of RSS 2024. He was a Principal Investigator at the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS Institute) and his research on ride‑pooling has led to the creation of a commercial spin‑off company, The Routing Company.
His main research interests are in navigation, motion planning, learning and control of autonomous mobile robots, and teams thereof, that interact with other robots and humans in dynamic and uncertain environments. Key application areas include mobile manipulation, autonomous vehicles, aerial drones, surface vessels and on‑demand mobility. His awards include an NWO VENI Talent Scheme Award (2017), the ICRA Best Paper Award on Multi‑Robot Systems (2019), an ERC Starting Grant (2021), the IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering Best Paper Award (2024), and the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Young Researcher Award (2025).
Post-docs
Gang (Clarence) Chen
Post-Doctoral Researcher | Since 2023
My research focuses on semantic mapping in dynamic environments.
Sihao Sun
NWO-Veni researcher | Since 2024
PI of NWO-Veni project "Accurate Aerial Manipulation". His interests: Aerial manipulation, Multi-robot systems, Optimization-based control, Learning-based control.
Yanbo Wang
Post-Doctoral Researcher | Since 2026
Generalizable Scene Understanding, Motion Planning, and World Models with Genarative Models.
PhD candidates
Saray Bakker
PhD Candidate | Since 2022
Intuitive motion planning for mobile manipulators in multi-agent settings.
Khaled Mustafa
PhD Candidate | Since 2022
Risk-aware motion planning for autonomous driving in urban scenarios.
Andreu Matoses Gimenez
PhD Candidate | Since 2023
I research task and motion planning for multi-robot systems.
Björn Sygo
PhD Candidate | Since 2025
Task planning and execution for quadrupeds in the real world.
Henrique Barros Oliveira
PhD Candidate | Since 2026
Robotics for underwater biodiversity monitoring.
Jialu (Chloe) Zeng
PhD Candidate | Since 2026
Combinatorial optimization and machine learning for mixed transportation systems.
Past members
- Diego Martinez-Baselga 2025–2026 Post-Doctoral Researcher: Motion planning and scene understanding in crowded environments combining learning and control.Now: Assistant Professor at University of Zaragoza WebsiteGoogle Scholar
- Lasse Peters 2021–2026 PhD Candidate: Combining methods from optimal control, game theory, and reinforcement learning to design control strategies for multi-agent systems under uncertainty.Now: Postdoc at UC Berkeley ICON Lab. WebsiteGoogle ScholarLinkedIn
- Anna Mészáros 2022–2026 PhD Candidate: My research focuses on probabilistic predictions of traffic participants in an environment surrounding an autonomous agent. Contact
- Max Lodel 2020–2025 PhD Candidate: Human-in-the-loop and Multi-Robot Autonomous Exploration for Search and Rescue Scenarios. Google ScholarContact
- Ahmad Gazar 2024–2025 Postdoc Researcher: Trajectory optimization, adaptive control/reinforcement learning and optimal decision-making under uncertainty for autonomous robots.Now: NEURA Robotics GmbH Google ScholarContact
- Elia Trevisan 2020–2025 PhD Candidate: I have worked with Model Predictive Path Integral control (MPPI), a sampling-based MPC-like algorithm for motion planning. The focus of my project was on interaction- and rule-aware motion planning for autonomous vessels, but I have also worked with ground robots and mobile manipulators. WebsiteGoogle ScholarContact
- Luzia Knoedler 2021–2025 PhD Candidate: Safe and Interaction-Aware Local Motion Planning in Human-Centered Environments, utilizing learning-based methods, control barrier functions, model predictive control. Now a Postdoc at KTH, Sweden. Google ScholarorcidLinkedIn
- Dennis Benders 2021–2025 PhD Candidate: Robust motion planning and control for autonomous aerial vehicles (Main supervisor: L. Ferranti) Google ScholarContact
- Max Spahn 2020–2024 PhD Candidate: Mobile manipulation in dynamic environments, utilizing methods such as Optimization Fabrics and MPC for real-time trajectory generation. GitHubGoogle ScholarContact
- Nils Wilde 2021–2024 Post-Doctoral Researcher: Now Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Computer Science at Dalhousie University, Canada. Research topics: multi-robot coordination and task assignment, vehicle routing, human-robot interaction, preference learning, learning from human feedback, motion planning and multi-objective planning. WebsiteGoogle ScholarContact
- Álvaro Serra Gómez 2019–2024 PhD Candidate: Motion planning for multi-robot high-level scene reasoning. Now Postdoc at Leiden University. Google ScholarContact
- Oscar de Groot 2020–2024 PhD Candidate: Safe and efficient motion planning for autonomous vehicles in urban environments. Google ScholarLinkedIn
- Daniel Jarne 2023–2024 Post-Doctoral Researcher: Decision making under uncertainty, safety and interpretability in RL, multi-agent RL and information theory. Now at oxford. WebsiteGoogle ScholarContact
- Maximilian Kronmueller 2019–2024 PhD Candidate: Optimizing Routing and Fleet Sizing for Flash Delivery Operations WebsiteGoogle ScholarContact
- Andres Fielbaum 2019–2023 Post-Doctoral Student: Now a Lecturer at the School of Civil Engineering, University of Sydney WebsiteGoogle Scholar
- Bruno Brito 2017–2021 PhD Candidate: Now Researcher at NVIDIA LinkedIn
- Hai Zhu 2017–2021 PhD Candidate: Now Assistant Professor at DII. Google Scholar
- Laura Ferranti 2017–2019 Postdoctoral researcher: Distributed motion planning in urban environments [Co-supervised with Prof. R. Negenborn and Dr. T. Keviczky] & Motion planning in urban environments [Co-supervised with Dr. R. Happee.] Now Assistant Professor at Delft University of Technology. Website
- Jieting Luo 2018–2019 Postdoctoral researcher: Multi-robot Systems [Co-supervised with Dr. E. Steuer]. Google scholar
- Tobias Naegeli 2014–2018 Phd candidate: Aerial cinematography [ETH Zurich, main advisor: O. Hilliges]. Now Co-founder of Tinamu Labs. LinkedIn
- Michal Cap 2017–2018 Postdoctoral researcher: Now Director of Autonomy, ISEE, Cambridge, USA Website
Past visitors
- Tomas Merva 2024–2024 PhD visitor: Grasp and motion planning for mobile manipulators [TUKE, advisor: Prof. Ivan Virgala] LinkedIn
- Vít Krátký 2023–2023 PhD visitor: Cooperative Sensing with multiple UAVs [CTU Prague, advisor: Prof. Martin Saska]
- Diego Martinez-Baselga 2023–2023 PhD visitor: Navigation in Crowded Environments [U. Zaragoza, advisor: Prof. Luis Montano and Prof. Luis Riazuelo]
- Patrik Vacek 2022–2023 PhD visitor: Semantic Segmentation in Dynamic Environments [CTU Prague, advisor: Prof. Tomáš Svoboda]
- Sara Casao 2022–2022 PhD visitor: Scene Understanding with Multi-Camera Systems [U. Zaragoza, advisor: Prof. Eduardo Montijano and Prof. Ana C. Murillo]
- Maite Lorente 2018–2018 PhD visitor: Reactive collision avoidance for multi-robot teams [U. Zaragoza, advisor: Prof. Luis Montano]
- Isabelle 2018–2018 Bachelor Student: Shared mobility on demand
- David Fiedler 2018–2018 PhD visitor: Automated Mobility on Demand [CTU Prague]
- Hans Andersen 2017–2017 PhD visitor: Planning and decision making for autonomous driving [NUS/SMART, advisor: Prof. Marcelo Ang]
Past research engineers
- Thijs Niesten 2022–2024 Research Engineer (Drones): Efficient testing and reproducible modular software stacks for real robotics. Contact
- Robert Ruigrok 2018–2018 Research assistant: Automated Mobility on Demand