PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Ioannis Havoutis

Ioannis Havoutis is a robotics researcher who combines machine learning with motion planning and control for legged robots and loco-manipulation. He earned degrees in Athens and Edinburgh, then worked on quadruped locomotion at the Italian Institute of Technology and robot learning at Idiap. At Oxford, he moved from Departmental Lecturer to Associate Professor and coauthored research on learning from demonstration, constrained quadruped control, and vision-language-action fine-tuning. A legged-robot path-planning paper he coauthored received the CLAWAR Best Technical Paper Award in 2015. As of October 2026, he is an Associate Professor in Engineering Science and leads AI-stack development for a multi-robot scouting project.

Timeline

  1. 2005

    A computer science degree

    He earns a Ptychion (BSc) in Computer Science at the Department of Informatics of the Technological Educational Institute of Athens in 2005.

  2. 2007–2011

    An MSc and PhD at Edinburgh

    He earns an MSc with distinction in Artificial Intelligence at the University of Edinburgh in 2007, with Sebastian Bitzer and Sethu Vijayakumar supervising his thesis on low-dimensional movement representation. He completes a PhD in Informatics in 2011 through the Robust Autonomy and Decisions Group, with Subramanian Ramamoorthy and Sethu Vijayakumar, on motion planning and reactive control on learned skill manifolds.

  3. 2011–2015

    Head of locomotion at IIT

    He joins the Dynamic Legged Systems Lab at the Italian Institute of Technology as a postdoctoral researcher in 2011 and becomes a senior postdoctoral researcher in 2013, leading the Locomotion Group within the HyQ team. His work focuses on dynamic motion planning and control for legged robots.

  4. 2015

    A CLAWAR paper award

    In 2015, he coauthors “Lidar-based navigation-level path planning for field-capable legged robots” with D. Caldwell and C. Semini for the International Conference on Climbing and Walking Robots. The paper receives the CLAWAR 2015 Best Technical Paper Award.

  5. 2015–2017

    Robot learning at Idiap

    He joins the Robot Learning & Interaction Group at Idiap as a postdoctoral researcher in 2015. His work focuses on skill representation, online Bayesian nonparametric learning, Riemannian manifold methods, and optimal control for motion generation.

  6. 2017–2022

    Departmental Lecturer at Oxford

    He joins the Oxford Robotics Institute as a Departmental Lecturer in 2017 and becomes Associate Professor in Robotics in 2022.

  7. 2018

    Learning for teleoperation

    In 2018, he coauthors “Learning from demonstration for semi-autonomous teleoperation” with Sylvain Calinon and publishes it in Autonomous Robots.

  8. 2020

    Constrained quadruped locomotion

    He coauthors “Guided Constrained Policy Optimization for Dynamic Quadrupedal Robot Locomotion” in 2020. The method introduces reinforcement learning with explicit constraints and tests it on a real ANYmal quadruped.

  9. 2026

    Distance-based VLA fine-tuning

    In 2026, he coauthors DistAL with Reece O'Mahoney to fine-tune vision-language-action models using embedding-space distance as a reward. The authors test it in simulation and on real hardware for dexterous bimanual manipulation.

  10. As of October 2026

    Associate Professor at Oxford

    As of October 2026, he is an Associate Professor in Engineering Science at the Oxford Robotics Institute and principal investigator of the ML & Articulated Robots Group. In October 2026, he leads AI-stack development for a multi-robot scouting project that supports exploration, mapping, and inspection of critical infrastructure. The group works on robot learning, dynamic whole-body motion planning and control, legged locomotion, and loco-manipulation for quadrupeds and humanoids.

Career

  1. Since 2022University of OxfordAssociate Professor in Engineering Science
  2. NowOxford Robotics InstitutePrincipal Investigator
  3. 2015–2017Idiap Research InstitutePostdoctoral Researcher
  4. 2011–2015Italian Institute of TechnologyPostdoctoral Researcher, Senior Postdoctoral Researcher

Education

  1. 2011University of EdinburghPhD in Informatics
  2. 2007University of EdinburghMSc in Artificial Intelligence
  3. 2005Technological Educational Institute of AthensPtychion (BSc) in Computer Science

From the biography.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

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  1. About me · Ioannis Havoutis ihavoutis.github.io. Checked 27 October 2026.
  2. Oxford Robotics Institute | People - Ioannis Havoutis ori.ox.ac.uk. Checked 27 October 2026.
  3. Publications · ML & Articulated Robots Group articulated.robots.ox.ac.uk. Checked 27 October 2026.
  4. Guided Constrained Policy Optimization for Dynamic Quadrupedal Robot Locomotion arxiv.org. Checked 27 October 2026.
  5. DistAL: Distance-based Advantage Learning for VLA Fine-Tuning arxiv.org. Checked 27 October 2026.
  6. Oxford Robotics Institute and Autodiscovery partner in European Space Agency-funded project on multi-robot scouting eng.ox.ac.uk. Checked 27 October 2026.
  7. People · ML & Articulated Robots Group articulated.robots.ox.ac.uk. Checked 27 October 2026.