PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Hervé Audren

Hervé Audren is a software engineer at Woven by Toyota whose robotics work spans humanoid control in multiple contact and better training data for pose estimation networks. After a 2013 master's degree from Mines ParisTech, he did his PhD at the French-Japanese Joint Robotics Laboratory (JRL) in Tsukuba, coauthoring work on ladder climbing with the HRP-2 humanoid and on stability polyhedrons, and defended his thesis in November 2017. As a research engineer at Ascent Robotics in Tokyo, he focused on using AI to make robots smarter, and he was among the SciPy 1.0 Contributors credited on the 2020 Nature Methods paper describing the Python library. In 2022, with the robotics team of Woven Planet, he coauthored a sim-to-real style transfer method that improves synthetic images for training 6D pose estimation networks. He is a confirmed speaker at NAVER LABS Europe's human-robot interaction symposium in Grenoble in November 2026.

Timeline

  1. 2013

    A master's from Mines ParisTech

    He earns a master's degree in Science and Executive Engineering from Mines ParisTech in 2013. He then starts a PhD with the Université de Montpellier 2, doing his research at the French-Japanese Joint Robotics Laboratory (JRL) in Tsukuba.

  2. 2014–2016

    Ladder climbing with HRP-2

    In 2014, he is first author of an IROS paper on model preview control in multi-contact motion for a humanoid robot, with coauthors including Joris Vaillant and Abderrahmane Kheddar. He also coauthors their work on vertical ladder climbing by the HRP-2 humanoid, which appears at the 2014 IEEE-RAS Humanoids conference and in the journal Autonomous Robots in 2016.

  3. 2016–2018

    Stability polyhedrons and StabiliPy

    With Abderrahmane Kheddar, he studies stability regions for humanoids in multiple contact: a 2016 Humanoids paper reshapes and morphs stability polygons for smooth multi-contact transitions and force control, and a 2017 paper bases model-predictive control on stability polyhedrons. Their paper “3-D Robust Stability Polyhedron in Multicontact” appears in IEEE Transactions on Robotics in 2018. His public GitHub project StabiliPy computes stability polyhedrons via recursive projection and cone programming.

  4. November 2017

    A thesis on reduced models

    He defends his PhD thesis, “On multi-contact dynamic motion using reduced models”, in November 2017. His doctoral research centers on multi-contact optimal control.

  5. 2020

    Ascent Robotics and SciPy 1.0

    As a research engineer at Ascent Robotics in Tokyo, he focuses on using AI to make robots smarter. In February 2020, Nature Methods publishes “SciPy 1.0: fundamental algorithms for scientific computing in Python”, crediting him among the SciPy 1.0 Contributors with an Ascent Robotics affiliation. His first SciPy patch lands in the 0.17.0 release, and he appears again among the authors of SciPy 0.19.0.

  6. 2022

    Sim2Real style transfer at Woven Planet

    In 2022, as a senior engineer in the Robotics Team of the Woven City Management Team at Woven Planet, he coauthors “Sim2Real Instance-Level Style Transfer for 6D Pose Estimation” with Takuya Ikeda, Koichi Nishiwaki and colleagues. The method transfers the style of target objects from synthetic to real images without human intervention, which improves synthetic data for training pose estimation networks. The team presents it at IROS 2022 in Kyoto.

  7. As of October 2026

    Software engineer at Woven by Toyota

    Woven Planet becomes Woven by Toyota in April 2023, and he works there as a software engineer. He is a confirmed speaker at NAVER LABS Europe's third Humans at the Centre of HRI symposium, a human-robot interaction event in Grenoble in November 2026.

  1. Google had the most people shaping AI every year from 2014 to 2025Our estimates of which organizations employed the most people shaping AI from 1961 to 2025, with a year-by-year chart.
  2. The United States employs an estimated 53% of people in our data with a known employment countryOur estimates of where AI careers are concentrated now and how countries’ shares of dated positions changed over time.
  3. 46% of living people in our data with known birth and employment countries work outside their birth countryOur estimate of cross-border careers in AI, from country of birth and the country of each current organization.
  4. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionOur estimates of where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led, from education records in cited biographies.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Hervé Audren yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. CNRS-AIST JRL(Joint Robotics Laboratory), IRL3218 – Hervé Audren unit.aist.go.jp. Checked 19 October 2026.
  2. Hervé Audren - About Me haudren.github.io. Checked 19 October 2026.
  3. Hervé Audren - Publications haudren.github.io. Checked 19 October 2026.
  4. haudren (Hervé Audren) · GitHub github.com. Checked 19 October 2026.
  5. SciPy 1.0: fundamental algorithms for scientific computing in Python | Nature Methods nature.com. Checked 19 October 2026.
  6. SciPy 0.17.0 Release Notes — SciPy Manual docs.scipy.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  7. SciPy 0.19.0 Release Notes — SciPy Manual docs.scipy.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  8. How to Bridge the Fidelity Gap Between Simulation and Reality, Especially for Object Pose Estimation | Woven by Toyota woven.toyota. Checked 19 October 2026.
  9. [2203.02069] Sim2Real Instance-Level Style Transfer for 6D Pose Estimation arxiv.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  10. HRI International Symposium - NAVER LABS Europe europe.naverlabs.com. Checked 19 October 2026.