Daniel Honerkamp

	PhD Student
	Postal address:	Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg Technische Fakultät Robot Learning Lab Georges-Köhler-Allee 080 D-79110 Freiburg i. Br., Germany
	Office:	Building 80, 01-23
	Email:	honerkamp@cs.uni-freiburg.de
	Google Scholar
	Personal Website

About me

I am a PhD student in the Robot Learning Lab at the University of Freiburg in Germany.

My research aims to address the challenges in applying reinforcement learning to real world systems. This includes work around learning skills, representation learning, sample efficiency and self-supervision. I am also very interested in multi-disciplinary connections, such as with mechanism design and multi-agent systems.

Background

05/2020 - 04/2025: Ph.D. Student in the Robot Learning Lab, University of Freiburg
10/2018 - 04/2020: Machine Learning Engineer at Fetch.ai, Cambridge UK
10/2017 - 09/2018: M.Sc. Computational Statistics and Machine Learning, University College London
10/2013 - 07/2016: B.A. Economics, University of Zurich

Research Interests

Reinforcement Learning
Embodied AI
Mobile Manipulation

Current Research Projects

OpenDR - Open Deep learning toolkit for Robotics

Publications

Raphael Schneider*, Daniel Honerkamp*, Tim Welschehold, Abhinav Valada,
Task-Driven Co-Design of Mobile Manipulators
arXiv preprint arXiv:2409.15095, 2024.
Download Website BibTeX

@article{honerkamp24moma-codesign,
      title={Task-Driven Co-Design of Mobile Manipulators},
      author={Schneider, Raphael and Honerkamp, Daniel and Welschehold, Tim and Valada, Abhinav},
      journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2412.16635},
      year={2024}
}

Daniel Honerkamp*, Harsh Mahesheka*, Jan Ole von Hartz, Tim Welschehold, Abhinav Valada,
Whole-Body Teleoperation for Mobile Manipulation at Zero Added Cost
IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 2025.
Download Video Website BibTeX

@article{honerkamp24moma-teleop,
      title={Whole-Body Teleoperation for Mobile Manipulation at Zero Added Cost},
      author={Honerkamp, Daniel and Mahesheka, Harsh and von Hartz, Jan Ole and Welschehold, Tim and Valada, Abhinav},
      journal={IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters},
      year={2025}
}

Sai Prasanna*, Daniel Honerkamp*, Kshitij Sirohi*, Tim Welschehold, Wolfram Burgard, Abhinav Valada,
Perception Matters: Enhancing Embodied AI with Uncertainty-Aware Semantic Segmentation
Proceedings of the International Symposium on Robotics Research (ISRR), 2024.
Download Website BibTeX

@article{honerkamp24searchsim,
      title={Perception Matters: Enhancing Embodied AI with Uncertainty-Aware Semantic Segmentation},
      author={Prasanna, Sai and Honerkamp, Daniel and Sirohi, Kshitij and Welschehold, Tim and Burgard, Wolfram and Valada, Abhinav},
      journal={Proceedings of the International Symposium on Robotics Research (ISRR)},
      year={2024}
}

Stephan Lochner, Daniel Honerkamp, Abhinav Valada, Andrew D. Straw,
Recent Trends in Insect and Robot Navigation through the Lens of Reinforcement Learning
Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience, 2024.
Download BibTeX

@article{lochner24nav,
  title={Recent Trends in Insect and Robot Navigation through the Lens of Reinforcement Learning},
  author={Lochner, Stephan and Honerkamp, Daniel and Valada, Abhinav and D. Straw, Andrew},
  journal={Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience},
  year={2024}
}

Daniel Honerkamp*, Martin Büchner*, Fabien Despinoy, Tim Welschehold, Abhinav Valada,
Language-Grounded Dynamic Scene Graphs for Interactive Object Search with Mobile Manipulation
IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 2024.
>> Spotlight talk (top 15%, 6/47), ICRA 2024 Vision-Language Models for Navigation and Manipulation (VLMNM).
>> Spotlight talk (top 15%, 4/27), RSS 2024 1st Workshop on Semantic Reasoning and Goal Understanding in Robotics (SemRob).
Download Website BibTeX
```
@article{honerkamp24momallm,
      title={Language-Grounded Dynamic Scene Graphs for Interactive Object Search with Mobile Manipulation},
      author={Honerkamp, Daniel and Büchner, Martin and Despinoy, Fabien and Welschehold, Tim and Valada, Abhinav},
      journal={IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters},
      year={2024}
}
    
```

Fabian Schmalstieg*, Daniel Honerkamp*, Tim Welschehold, Abhinav Valada,
Learning Hierarchical Interactive Multi-Object Search for Mobile Manipulation
IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 2023.
Download, Publisher page, Website BibTeX

@article{honerkamp23himos,
      title={Learning Hierarchical Interactive Multi-Object Search for Mobile Manipulation},
      author={Schmalstieg, Fabian and Honerkamp, Daniel and Welschehold, Tim and Valada, Abhinav},
      journal={IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters}, 
      year={2023}
}

Daniel Honerkamp, Tim Welschehold, Abhinav Valada,
N2M2:Learning Navigation for Arbitrary Mobile Manipulation Motions in Unseen and Dynamic Environments
IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO), 2023.
>> Best Paper Award, IROS 2022 Workshop on Mobile Manipulation and Embodied Intelligence.
Download, Publisher page, Video Demo BibTeX

@article{honerkamp22n2m2,
        title={N2M2:Learning Navigation for Arbitrary Mobile Manipulation Motions in Unseen and Dynamic Environments},
         author={Honerkamp, Daniel and Welschehold, Tim and Valada, Abhinav},
         journal={IEEE Transactions on Robotics}, 
         title={N$^{2}$M$^{2}$: Learning Navigation for Arbitrary Mobile Manipulation Motions in Unseen and Dynamic Environments}, 
          year={2023},
          doi={10.1109/TRO.2023.3284346}}

Daniel Honerkamp, Suresh Guttikonda, Abhinav Valada,
Active Particle Filter Networks: Efficient Active Localization in Continuous Action Spaces and Large Maps
IROS 2022 Workshop Probabilistic Robotics in the Age of Deep Learning, 2022.
Download Video Demo BibTeX

@inproceedings{
honerkamp2022active,
title={Active Particle Filter Networks: Efficient Active Localization in Continuous Action Spaces and Large Maps},
author={Daniel Honerkamp and Suresh Guttikonda and Abhinav Valada},
booktitle={IROS 2022 Workshop Probabilistic Robotics in the Age of Deep Learning},
year={2022},
url={https://openreview.net/forum?id=AFjkc6mikXM}
}

Abdelrahman Younes*, Daniel Honerkamp*, Tim Welschehold, Abhinav Valada,
SoundSpaces Challenge 2022 - 2nd Place
Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) Embodied AI Workshop, 2022.
Video Challenge

Fabian Schmalstieg*, Daniel Honerkamp*, Tim Welschehold, Abhinav Valada,
Learning Long-Horizon Robot Exploration Strategies for Multi-Object Search in Continuous Action Spaces
Proceedings of the International Symposium on Robotics Research (ISRR), 2022.
Download Demo BibTeX
@article{fabian22exploration, title={Learning Long-Horizon Robot Exploration Strategies for Multi-Object Search in Continuous Action Spaces}, author={Schmalstieg, Fabian and Honerkamp, Daniel and Welschehold, Tim and Valada, Abhinav}, journal={Proceedings of the International Symposium on Robotics Research (ISRR)}, year={2022} }

Abdelrahman Younes*, Daniel Honerkamp*, Tim Welschehold, Abhinav Valada,
Catch Me If You Hear Me: Audio-Visual Navigation in Complex Unmapped Environments with Moving Sounds
IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 2022.
Download BibTeX

@article{younes2023catch,
  author={Younes, Abdelrahman and Honerkamp, Daniel and Welschehold, Tim and Valada, Abhinav},
  journal={IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters}, 
  title={Catch Me if You Hear Me: Audio-Visual Navigation in Complex Unmapped Environments With Moving Sounds}, 
  year={2023},
  volume={8},
  number={2},
  pages={928-935},
  doi={10.1109/LRA.2023.3234766}}

Abdelrahman Younes*, Daniel Honerkamp*, Tim Welschehold, Abhinav Valada,
SoundSpaces Challenge 2021 - 1st Place
Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) Embodied AI Workshop, 2021.
Video Challenge

Daniel Honerkamp, Tim Welschehold, Abhinav Valada,
Learning Kinematic Feasibility for Mobile Manipulation through Deep Reinforcement Learning
IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 2021.
Download Video Demo BibTeX

@article{honerkamp2021learning,
  title={Learning Kinematic Feasibility for Mobile Manipulation through Deep Reinforcement Learning},
  author={Honerkamp, Daniel and Welschehold, Tim and Valada, Abhinav},
  journal={IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L)},
  year={2021}
}

Marcin Abram, Daniel Honerkamp Jonathan Ward, Jin-Mann Wong
Democratising blockchain: A minimal agency consensus model
International Conference on Blockchain Economics, Security and Protocols (Tokenomics), Paris, 2019.
Download BibTeX

@misc{abram2020democratising,
      title={Democratising blockchain: A minimal agency consensus model}, 
      author={Marcin Abram and David Galindo and Daniel Honerkamp and Jonathan Ward and Jin-Mann Wong},
      year={2020},
      eprint={2006.05390},
      archivePrefix={arXiv},
      primaryClass={cs.CR}
}

Presentations

Learning for Mobile Manipulation, 2022 IROS Tutorial: Open and Trustworthy Deep Learning for Robotics”
Learning for Mobile Manipulation, 2022 Summer School “Continuous Engineering and Deep Learning for Trustworthy Autonomous Systems”
Learning Kinematic Feasibility for Mobile Manipulation, 2022 MoveIt Community Meeting

Awards

3rd place Futureprice (”Zukunftspreis”), Ewald Marquardt Foundation, 5,000 EUR, 2023. For progress and innovation in the generation and coordination of mobile manipulation motions.
Best Paper Award, IROS 2022 Workshop on Mobile Manipulation and Embodied Intelligence, 2022.
2nd Place SoundSpaces Challenge, CVPR Embodied AI Workshop, 2022
1st Place SoundSpaces Challenge, CVPR Embodied AI Workshop, 2021

Teaching

Seminars

Co-organizer, Learning with Limited Supervision Seminar, University of Freiburg, SS 2022
Co-organizer, Robot Learning Seminar, University of Freiburg, WS 2021/22
Co-organizer, Learning with Limited Supervision Seminar, University of Freiburg, SS 2021
Co-organizer, Robot Learning Proseminar, University of Freiburg, SS 2021
Co-organizer, Deep Learning Lab, University of Freiburg, SS 2021
Co-organizer, Deep Learning for Autonomous Systems Seminar, University of Freiburg, WS 2020/21
Co-organizer, Self-Supervised Learning Seminar, University of Freiburg, SS 2020
Co-organizer, Deep Learning Lab, University of Freiburg, SS 2020
Co-organizer, Autonomy for manipulation reading group, University of Freiburg

Supervised Students

Open-Vocabulary Audio-Visual Navigation in Realistic Environments, 2024, R. Schneider, Master Thesis
3D Scene Graph Filtering for Robotic Planning Using Graph Neural Networks, 2024, R. Verma, Master Thesis
Task‑driven Co‑Design of optimal Mobile Manipulator Platforms, , R. Schneider, Master Project
Uncertainty-aware semantic mapping for object search using reinforcement learning, 2024, S. Prassanna, Master Project
Hierarchical interactive multi-object-search, 2023, F. Schmalstieg, Master Thesis
Representation learning and sensor fusion for arm collision avoidance in mobile manipulation via reinforcement learning, 2023, A. Khalid Master Thesis
Model-Free RL for Robot Manipulation: Avoiding Configuration Jumps and Overestimation, 2022, A. Khalid, Master Project
Reinforcement Learning for Indoor Multi-Object Exploration, 2022, F. Schmalstieg, Master Project
Dynamical Audio-Visual Navigation: Catching Unheard Moving Sound Sources in Unmapped 3D Environments, 2021, Abdelrahman Younes, Master Thesis
Deep active localization in continuous action spaces and realistic scenes, 2021, Suresh Guttikonda, Master Project