Hi! Welcome to my personal page at UC3M’s RoboticsLab group where I hope you can find useful information about me. I am a PhD student advised by Prof. Miguel Ángel Salichs in the field of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) and my work focuses on robotic personal companions for people with special needs.

Bio

I’m from Cáceres, a small town in the west part of Spain, but I moved to Madrid in 2004 to study Telecommunications Engineering at this university (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid). In 2008 I obtained an Erasmus grant which allowed me to stay at DTU (Danmarks Tekniske Universitet) for a semester; this was one of the best experiences in my life! I obtained my degree in 2011 with a final project about virtual worlds in education, which aroused my curiosity for learning about artificial intelligence. During the final stages of my degree, in 2011, I also did an internship at EADS Astrium. Although I enjoyed my work there, an opportunity to apply for an internship in the Department of Computer Science came up and I decided to pursue my studies with a Master in Computer Science and Technology (2011-2012), during which time I also worked as a teaching assistant. Then, in September 2012 I got a grant to do a PhD in the Department of Systems and Automation, where I am currently working in my doctoral thesis and also as a teaching assistant in the subject Control Engineering.

Research Interests

My research fields are human-robot interaction and socially assistive robotics. I’m specially interested in studying expressiveness and liveliness in social robots. Currently I’m involved in two projects: RobAlz is a project born from the collaboration between the Spanish Alzheimer Foundation and the RoboticsLab. The aim is to develop robots that assist Alzheimer’s patients and their caregivers in their daily tasks. MOnarCH (Multi-Robot Cognitive Systems Operating in Hospitals) is a European Union FP7 project that aims the development of a network of heterogeneous robots and sensors, in the pediatric area of an oncological hospital.