My principal research interests lie in the field of robotics and cognitive sciences. I am specially interested in using complex and dynamic robots as a means to investigate and build hypothesis on human-related phenomena. I'm also interested in the topics of machine learning and probabilistic robotics.

In my PhD (which I have been about to finish for 3 months already!) I investigated architectures for embodied imagination. In one of my experiments I investigated the possibility of using a physics-based simulator SIMNOS as the internal model of an anthropomimetic robot, CRONOS, for predicting the outcomes of real world interactions and bias the action selection towards the most rewarding actions.  Bellow you can find a picture of my experiment; click on it to see the video. More details about the experiment can be found in my thesis, which I'll make public as soon as I finish it; alternatively you can drop me an email if you are interested. This experiment was made in the context of the Marchine Consciousness project led by Owen Holland.

While working with CRONOS and SIMNOS, it was clear for me that  their bodies have some properties that differ fundamentally from typical humanoid robots. They are elastic and compliant  which affords them a more natural and safer way of interacting with dynamical and often hostile environments like owr own. In addition, this type of robots presented control challenges which are difficult to tackle using standard control engineering techniques.

These are the main reasons why I joined the ECCEROBOT project at the AI Lab. This project, which can be seen as the continuation of the previous CRONOS project, has one main goal: to find suitable control strategies for providing complex and dynamic robots, such as CRONOS, with the capability to produce meaningful behaviours (e.g. simple sneory-motor reflexes, reaching, grasping, etc). More specifically, here at the AI Lab, we want to use the ideas of development and embodiment (i.e. the coupling between sensory and motor information) to investigate ways of allowing the robot to acquire its own control strategies automatically.

journal papers

2010

• Hoffmann, M., Marques, H., Arieta, A., Sumioka, H., Lungarella, M. and Rolf Pfeifer (2010). Body schema in robotics: a review. IEEE Transactions on Autonomous Mental Development, in press.
• Holland, O. and Marques, H. (2010). Functional Embodied Imagination and Episodic Memory. International Journal of Machine Consciousness 2 (2).

2009

• Marques, H. and Holland, O. (2009). Architectures for Functional Imagination. In Neurocomputing 72, p.743-759.

conference papers

2010

• Marques, H., Jäntsch, M., Wittmeier, S., Alessandro, C., Lungarella, M., Knight, R. and Holland, O (2010). ECCE1: the first of a series of anthropomimetic musculoskelal upper torsos. Humanoids2010, in press.

2009

• Holland, O. and Marques, H. (2009). Functional embodied imagination and episodic memory. AAAI Fall Symposium 2009, Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures-II  AAAI, Tech Rep FS-09-01.

2008

• Marques, H.; Newcombe, R.; and Holland, O. (2008). A Modelling Framework for Functional Imagination. In AISB2008, Aberdeen, Scotland. pdf

2007

• Marques, H.; Newcombe, R.; and Holland, O. (2007). Controlling and Anthropomimetic Robot: A preliminary investigation. In ECAL2007. Springer Verlag, Lisbon. pdf
• Togelius, J.; De Nardi, R.; Marques, H.; Newcombe, R.; Lucas, S.M. and Holland, O. (2007). Nonlinear Dynamics Modelling for Controller Evolution. In GECCO2007, London. pdf
• Marques, H.; Togelius, J., Kogutowska M.; Holland, O. and Lucas, S.M. (2007). Sensorless but not Senseless: Prediction in Evolutionary Car Racing. In IEEE ALife 2007, Hawaii. pdf

2006

• Marques, H. and Holland, O. (2006). Minimal Architectures for Embodied Imagination. In BICS2006, Lesvos, Grece. pdf

2005

• Marques, H.; Lau, N. and Reis, L.P. (2005). Architecture and Basic Skills of the FC Portugal 3D Simulation Team. In Revista do Departamento de Electrónica e Telecomunicações da Universidade de Aveiro, vol 4(4), pp. 478-85. Aveiro. pdf

2004

• Marques, H. and Oliveira, E. (2004). Stereoscopic Depth: A Biological Inspired Judgement. In BICS2004, Stirling. pdf
• Marques, H.; Lau, N. and Reis, L.P. (2004) . FC Portugal 2D Simulation Team: Arquitecture, Low-Level Skills and Team Behaviour Optimized for the New Robocup 3D Simulator. In Proceedings of Robótica 2004, Porto. pdf

abstracts

2008

• Marques, H.G. and Holland, O., Knight, R. and Newcombe, R. (2008). Towards mental life as it could be: a robot with imagination. In ALife XI, Winchester, UK..

2007

• Marques, H. and Holland, O (2007). Architectures for functional imagination. In ECAP07, Enschede, Holland. pdf

phd thesis

Architectures for Functional Embodied Imagination, 2009. pdf

final year project report

3D Vision Using Neural Networks. pdf