Rania Rayyes today successfully defended her dissertation on Efficient and Stable Online Learning for Developmental Robots. In her thesis, Rania proposes novel methods to integrate intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, exploration by Goal Babbling, and a novel online learning method to make exploration of body coordination of developmental robots more data efficient and stable to a degree that real robotic experiments become feasible. The committee with Prof. Ina Schäfer at the helm, reviewers Prof. J. Tani from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology and Prof. J. Triesch from the Frankfurt Institute of Advanced Studies, and the superviser J. Steil awarded the PhD based on these contributions. Rania, the first Syrian femal graduate of mechatronics, conducted her studies supported by a DAAD PhD grant and through an internship at Sony Reseach in Tokio.

The IRP congratulates our new PhD !