Daniel M. Lofaro Ph.D is an Electrical Engineer and Roboticists at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in the Navy Center for Applied Research in Artificial Intelligence (NCARAI) within the Laboratory for Autonomous Systems Research (LASR). He also serves as an Office of Naval Research Global Science Director in Tokyo, Japan. Additionally, Lofaro is a professor at the University of Maryland, he owns and runs Lofaro Labs LLC, and is the director of interdisciplinary laboratory Lofaro Labs Robotics which is a part of the international laboratory group called the DASL Autonomous Systems Lab Group (DASL Group). He is also an affiliate professor in the School of Business and the Volgenau School of Engineering at George Mason University. An NSF-EAPSI and ONR-SFRP Fellow, he received his doctorate from the ECE Department at Drexel University in 2013 under the guidance of Dr. Paul Oh. He was the Research Lead of the DARPA Robotics Challenge team DRC-Hubo from 2012 to 2014. His research focus is in the overarching field of real-world robotics. Within this his research interests include Swarm Robotics, Emergent Behaviors, Robot Design, Real-World Human/Robot Interaction, Humanoid Robotics, Complex Control Systems, Secure Robotics, Cloud Robotics, Unique Musical Instrument Design, and Real-Time Systems. Lofaro's work and collaborative work has been featured in the Washington Post, NPR, IEEE Spectrum, Popular Science, and other prominent print, web, and TV news sources.
- Robotics
- Multirobot Systems
- Autonomous Systems
- Bio-Inspired Robotics
- Human Robot Interaction
- Swarms and Emergent Behavior
- Humanoid Robotics
[1] D. Lofaro, “Rapidly constructible lta3 platforms for emergent behavior development and swarming,” in Office of Naval Research (Code 34), 2020-2021
[2] D. Lofaro, “Doctoral consortium at the 2017 ieee/ras international conference on intelligent robotics and systems (iros) 2017,” in National Science Foundation (NSF), 2017-2018
[3] D. M. Lofaro, “Amazon robotics challenge - team gmu-bgu,” in Autonomous Robotic Manipulation and Stowing System for Warhorse Settings - Amazon Inc., 2017
[4] D. Lofaro, “Smart hive,” in Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), 2017
[5] D. M. Lofaro, “Instruments in the attic (collaborator),” in Potomac Arts Academy, 2014 - Ongoing
Total number of publications, 50+ (plus more in review). Lofaro has presented at nearly 50 invited talks/live demon-
strations, Five (5) robotics related museum installations/exhibition, four (4) international robotics competitions. A
technical tutorial website with over 10M hits. Additionally, Lofaro has been featured in 35+ external news reports
(print and TV).
Referred Journal Papers
[1] L. Calkins, J. Lingevitch, J. Coffin, L. McGuire, J. Geder, M. Kelly, M. Zavlanos, D. Sofge, and D. Lofaro, “Distance estimation using self-induced noise of an aerial vehicle,” in In IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 2021
[2] T. Haus, M. Orsag, A. P. Nunez, S. Bogdan, and D. Lofaro, “Centroid vectoring for attitude control of floating base robots: From maritime to aerial applications,” IEEE Access, vol. 7, pp. 16 021–16 031, 2019 - Impact Factor: 4.098
[3] J. Gibson, T. Schuler, D. Sofge, and D. Lofaro, “Swarm and multi-agent time-based path planning for lta3 systems,” in World Scientific: Unmanned Systems, 2019, pp. 1–8 – Impact Factor: 0.760 (page numbers TBD)
[4] D. Lofaro, M. Bugajska, and D. Sofge, “Extending the Life of Legacy Robots : MDS-Ach via x-Ach,” Advances
in Science, Technology and Engineering Systems Journal, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 50–72, 2019 - Impact Factor: 1.76
[5] C. Phillips-Grafflin, H. B. Suay, J. Mainprice, N. Alunni, D. Lofaro, D. Berenson, S. Chernova, R. W. Lindeman,
and P. Oh, “From autonomy to cooperative traded control of humanoid manipulation tasks with unreliable
communication,” Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems, vol. 82, no. 3, pp. 341–361, 2016 - Impact Factor:
2.020
[6] N. Dantam, D. Lofaro, A. Hereid, P. Oh, A. Ames, and M. Stilman, “The ach library: A new framework for
real-time communication,” Robotics Automation Magazine, IEEE, vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 76–85, 2015 - Impact
Factor: 4.816
Book Chapters
[1] E. Dessalene and D. Lofaro, “Complete robotic systems for the iros grasping and manipulation challenge,” in
Robotic Grasping and Manipulation. Springer, 2018, pp. 172–179
Referred Conference/Workshop Proceedings
[1] R. Hall, D. Sofge, and D. Lofaro, “Emergent behavior in swarms with on-board sensing,” in SSCI 2021 : IEEE
Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence, 2021
[2] A. Maxseiner, D. Lofaro, and D. Sofge, “Visible light communications with inherent agent localization and
simultaneous message receiving capabilities for robotic swarms,” in 18th International Conference on Ubiquitous
Robots (UR), 2021
[3] L. Calkins, J. Lingevitch, J. Coffin, L. McGuire, J. Geder, M. Kelly, M. Zavlanos, D. Sofge, and D. Lofaro,
“Distance estimation using self-induced noise of an aerial vehicle,” in In Proceedings of IEEE International
Conference on Robotics and Automation (IEEE-ICRA 2021), 2021
[4] C. Wu, D. Lofaro, and D. Sofge, “A learned encircling strategy for robot swarm pursuit-evasion against a
superior evader,” in The 15th International Symposium on Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems (DARS),
2021
[5] A. Sharma, W. Calkins, D. Lofaro, J. Lingevitch, J. Geder, M. Kelly, M. M. Zavlanos, A. Evans, and D. Sofge,
“Bat-inspired wall distance estimation from self-induced motor-propeller noise using deep convolutional net-
works,” in Fifth Annual Workshop on Naval Applications of Machine Learning (NAML 2021), 2021, 2021
[6] R. Hall, D. Sofge, and D. Lofaro, “Emergent behavior in swarms with on-board sensing using universal global
inputs,” in The 4th International Symposium on Swarm Behavior and Bio-Inspired Robotics (SWARM), 2021
[7] A. Maxseiner, D. Lofaro, and D. Sofge, “Visible light communication for robotic swarms,” in The 4th Interna-
tional Symposium on Swarm Behavior and Bio-Inspired Robotics (SWARM), 2021
[8] J. Kelly, D. Sofge, and D. Lofaro, “Persistent area coverage for swarms utilizing deployment entropy with
potential fields,” in 2020 17th International Conference on Ubiquitous Robots (UR), 2020, pp. 479–486
[9] G. Singh, D. Sofge, and D. Lofaro, “Tackling the pursuit-evasion problem with the actor-critic model-free multi-
agent deep deterministic policy gradient(maddpg) method on a decentralized robotic swarm in continuous state
space and action space via deep reinforcement learning,” in Fourth Annual NIWC Pacific Workshop on Naval
Applications of Machine Learning (NAML), 2020
[10] T. Lin, D. M. Lofaro, and D. A. Sofge, “Cooperative emergent swarming through deep reinforcement learning,”
in 2020 IEEE 16th International Conference on Control Automation (ICCA), 2020, pp. 1354–1359
[11] R. Kramer, J. Geder, J. Lingevitch, W. Calkins, D. Lofaro, M. Kelly, L. McGuire, A. Evans, and D. Sofge,
“Unsupervised explainable artificial intelligence architectures for acoustic sensing in micro-air vehicles,” in
Fourth Annual NIWC Pacific Workshop on Naval Applications of Machine Learning (NAML), 2020
[12] L. Calkins, J. Lingevitch, L. McGuire, J. Geder, M. Kelly, M. M. Zavlanos, D. Sofge, and D. M. Lofaro, “Bio-
inspired distance estimation using the self-induced acoustic signature of a motor-propeller system,” in 2020
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2020, pp. 5047–5053
[13] D. Srivastava, D. Lofaro, T. Schuler, and D. Sofge, “Hidden markov model trained gesture-based interfacefor
multiagent and swarm formation control,” in Fourth Annual NIWC Pacific Workshop on Naval Applications
of Machine Learning (NAML), 2020
[14] J. Gibson, T. Schuler, D. Sofge, and D. Lofaro, “Multi-agent time-based a* path planning on lighter-than-air
autonomous agents,” in IEEE International Conference on Cybernetics and Intelligent Systems, and Robotics,
Automation and Mechatronics (CIS-RAM), 2019, pp. 1–6 (actual page numbers TBD)
[15] C. Taylor, C. Ward, D. Sofge, and D. Lofaro, “Lps: A local positioning system for homogeneous and heteroge-
neous robot-robot teams, robot-human teams, and swarms,” in 2019 16th IEEE International Conference on
Ubiquitous Robots (UR), 2019, pp. 200–207
[16] D. Lofaro, D. Wallace, and D. Sofge, “Shibboleth-based trust enhancement between humans and humanoid
robots using gesture and contact focused dialog,” in Workshop on Symbiotic Human Robot Interaction at the
Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2018), 2018 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on, 2018, pp. 56–60,
(Acceptance Rate: 30%–40%)(#5 Robotics Conference rated by Google Scholar)
[17] D. Lofaro and D. Sofge, “Multimodal control of lighter-than-air agents,” in Proceedings of the 20th ACM
International Conference on Multimodal Interaction, ser. ACM-ICMI, 2018, pp. 555–565
[18] K. Nishimura, M. Bugajska, D. Sofge, P. Oh, and D. Lofaro, “On humanoid co-robot locomotion when me-
chanically coupled to a human partner,” in 2018 15th IEEE International Conference on Ubiquitous Robots
(UR), 2018, pp. 412–419
[19] A. Perez, M. Orsag, and D. Lofaro, “Design, implementation, and control of the underwater legged robot
aquashoko for low-signature underwater exploration,” in 2018 15th IEEE International Conference on Ubiqui-
tous Robots (UR), 2018, pp. 228–234
[20] E. Wiese, P. Weis, and D. Lofaro, “Embodied social robots trigger gaze following in real-time hri,” in 2018
15th IEEE International Conference on Ubiquitous Robots (UR), 2018, pp. 477–482
[21] A. Perez, G. Hernandez, N. Folta, R. Regalado, S. McElwain, and D. Lofaro, “Designing an autonomous vehicle
lean recovery system for motorcycles,” in 2018 15th IEEE International Conference on Ubiquitous Robots (UR),
2018, pp. 693–698
[22] E. Dessalene, C. Korpela, and D. Lofaro, “Push grasping with anthropomorphic hands,” in 2018 15th IEEE
International Conference on Ubiquitous Robots (UR), 2018, pp. 737–742
[23] D. Lofaro, C. Ward, M. Bugajska, and D. Sofge, “Extending the life of legacy robots: Mds-ach, a real-time,
process based, networked, secure middleware based on the x-ach methodology,” in 15th International Workshop
on Advanced Motion Control (IEEE-AMC), 2018, pp. 72–77
[24] D. Lofaro, F. Lee, E. Endress, and C. Park, “Augmented musical reality via smart connected pianos,” in
Workshop on Robotics in Virtual Reality at the Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2018 IEEE International
Conference on, 2018, pp. 1–5, (Acceptance Rate: 30%–40%)(#1 Robotics Conference rated by Google Scholar)
[25] E. Dessalene, G. Georgakis, M. Reza, Y. Li, Y. Ovcharik, A. Shapiro, J. Kosecka, and D. Lofaro, “A contact
exploitative approach to the amazon robotics challenge,” in 2017 IEEE International Conference on Robotics
and Automation (ICRA) - Warehouse Picking Automation Workshop, 2017, pp. 108–111, (Acceptance Rate:
30%–40%)(#1 Robotics Conference rated by Google Scholar)
[26] D. Lofaro, C. Taylor, R. Tse, and D. Sofge, “Wearable interactive display for the local positioning system (lps),”
in 19th ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction, 2017, pp. 522–523
[27] D. Lofaro, K. Nishimura, M. Bugajska, P. Oh, and D. Sofge, “Experimental setup and approach for co-robot
locomotion when mechanically coupled to a human partner,” in 2017 IEEE-RAS 17th International Conference
on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids), 2017, pp. 1–5, (#1 for Humanoid Robotics and #19 for all Robotics
Conference rated by Google Scholar)
[28] E. Wiese, T. Shaw, D. Lofaro, and C. Baldwin, “Designing artificial agents as social companions,” in Proceedings
of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, vol. 61, no. 1, 2017, pp. 1604–1608
[29] D. Lofaro, “The honey bee initiative - smart hive,” in 2017 14th International Conference on Ubiquitous Robots
and Ambient Intelligence (URAI), 2017, pp. 446–447
[30] D. Lofaro, “Utilizing the android robot controller for robots, wearable apps, and the hotel room of the future,” in
2017 14th International Conference on Ubiquitous Robots and Ambient Intelligence (URAI), 2017, pp. 570–575
[31] D. Lofaro, P. Weis, and E. Wiese, “Experiments confirming gaze triggered effects in embodied social robots,”
in 2017 IEEE-RAS 17th International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids), 2017, pp. 1–6, (#1 for
Humanoid Robotics and #19 for all Robotics Conference rated by Google Scholar)
[32] D. Lofaro and A. Asokan, “Low latency bounty hunting and geographically adjacent server configuration for
real-time cloud control,” in 2016 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2016,
pp. 5277–5282 (#1 Robotics Conference rated by Google Scholar)
[33] D. Lofaro, “Secure robotics,” in 2016 13th International Conference on Ubiquitous Robots and Ambient Intel-
ligence (URAI), 2016, pp. 311–313
[34] D. Lofaro, M. Bula, P. Early, E. Eide, and M. Javid, “Archr - apparatus for remote control of humanoid robots,”
in 2015 IEEE-RAS 15th International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids), 2015, pp. 229–236, (#1
for Humanoid Robotics and #19 for all Robotics Conference rated by Google Scholar)
[35] D. Lofaro, A. Asokan, and E. Roderik, “Feasibility of cloud enabled humanoid robots: Development of low
latency geographically adjacent real-time cloud control,” in Humanoid Robots (Humanoids), 2015 15th IEEE-
RAS International Conference on, 2015, pp. 519–526, (#1 for Humanoid Robotics and #19 for all Robotics
Conference rated by Google Scholar)
[36] W. Hilton, D. Lofaro, and Y. Kim, “A lightweight, cross-platform, multiuser robot visualization using the
cloud,” in Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2014), 2014 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on, 2014,
pp. 1570–1575 (#5 Robotics Conference rated by Google Scholar)
[37] J. Mainprice, C. Phillips-Grafflin, H. Suay, N. Alunni, D. Lofaro, D. Berenson, S. Chernova, R. Lindeman, and
P. Oh, “From autonomy to cooperative traded control of humanoid manipulation tasks with unreliable commu-
nication: System design and lessons learned,” in Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2014), 2014 IEEE/RSJ
International Conference on, 2014, pp. 3767–3774 (#5 Robotics Conference rated by Google Scholar)
[38] N. Alunni, H. Bener Suay, C. Phillips-Grafflin, J. Mainprice, D. Berenson, S. Chernova, R. Lindeman, D. Lofaro,
and P. Oh, “Darpa robotics challenge: Towards a user-guided manipulation framework for high-dof robots,” in
Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2014 IEEE International Conference on, 2014, pp. 2088–2088 (#1 Robotics
Conference rated by Google Scholar)
[39] N. Alunni, C. Phillips-Grafftin, H. Suay, D. Lofaro, D. Berenson, S. Chernova, R. Lindeman, and P. Oh, “Toward
a user-guided manipulation framework for high-dof robots with limited communication,” in Technologies for
Practical Robot Applications (TePRA), 2013 IEEE International Conference on, 2013, pp. 1–6
[40] M. Grey, N. Dantam, D. Lofaro, A. Bobick, M. Egerstedt, P. Oh, and M. Stilman, “Multi-process control soft-
ware for hubo2 plus robot,” in Technologies for Practical Robot Applications (TePRA), 2013 IEEE International
Conference on, 2013, pp. 1–6
[41] D. Lofaro, “Unified algorithmic framework for high degree of freedom complex systems and humanoid robots,”
in Ph.D. dissertation, Drexel University, College of Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering Depart-
ment, 2013, pp. 1–207
[42] D. Lofaro and P. Oh, “Humanoid throws inaugural pitch at major league baseball game: Challenges, approach,
implementation and lessons learned,” in Ubiquitous Robots and Ambient Intelligence (URAI), 2012 9th Inter-
national Conference on, 2012, pp. 153–157
[43] D. Lofaro, R. Ellenberg, P. Oh, and J. Oh, “Humanoid throwing: Design of collision-free trajectories with
sparse reachable maps,” in Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2012 IEEE/RSJ International Conference
on, 2012, pp. 1519–1524 (#5 Robotics Conference rated by Google Scholar)
[44] K. Lynch, D. Lofaro, and P. Oh, “A n-dimensional convex hull approach for fault detection and mitigation for
high degree of freedom robots humanoid robots,” in Control, Automation and Systems (ICCAS), 2012 12th
International Conference on, 2012, pp. 790–797
[45] D. Lofaro, C. Sun, and P. Oh, “Humanoid pitching at a major league baseball game: Challenges, approach,
implementation and lessons learned,” in Humanoid Robots (Humanoids), 2012 12th IEEE-RAS International
Conference on, 2012, pp. 423–428 (#1 for Humanoid Robotics and #19 for all Robotics Conference rated by
Google Scholar)
[46] D. Grunberg, D. Lofaro, P. Oh, and Y. Kim, “Robot audition and beat identification in noisy environments,”
in Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2011 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on, 2011, pp. 2916–2921
(#5 Robotics Conference rated by Google Scholar)
[47] Y. Kim, D. Grunberg, A. Batula, D. Lofaro, J. Oh, and P. Oh, “Enabling humanoid musical interaction and
performance,” in Collaboration Technologies and Systems (CTS), 2011 International Conference on, 2011, pp.
212–215
[48] D. Lofaro, R. Ellenberg, and P. Oh, “Interactive games with humanoids: Playing with jaemi hubo,” Humanoid
Robots (Humanoids), pp. 1–6 (#1 for Humanoid Robotics and #19 for all Robotics Conference rated by Google
Scholar), 2010
[49] D. Lofaro, P. Oh, J. Oh, and Y. Kim, “Interactive musical participation with humanoid robots through the
use of novel musical tempo and beat tracking techniques in the absence of auditory cues,” in Humanoid
Robots (Humanoids), 2010 10th IEEE-RAS International Conference on, 2010, pp. 436–441 (#1 for Humanoid
Robotics and #19 for all Robotics Conference rated by Google Scholar)
[50] D. Lofaro, T. Le, and P. Oh, “Mechatronics education: From paper design to product prototype using lego
nxt parts,” in Progress in Robotics: FIRA RoboWorld Congress 2009, Incheon, Korea, August 16-20, 2009.
Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2009, pp. 232–239
[51] D. Lofaro, “Control design to reduce the effects of torsional resonance in coupled systems,” in Masters Thesis,
Drexel University, College of Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, 2008, pp. 1–84
Other Publications: Website
[1] D. Lofaro and Various Students et. al., “Lofaro labs robotics wiki tutorial page,” in http://wiki.lofarolabs.com,
2014-2019 - Hits: 2.1M+
Other Publications: Museum Installations and Exhibitions
[1] D. Lofaro and E. Knox, “Synthetic human rules,” in Location: National Museum of Emerging Science and
Innovation - Miraikan, Tokyo, Japan, 2021-2022 - Duration: 4 Months (*Scheduled*)
[2] D. Lofaro and G. Biver, “The narrative machine: Poem-drum,” in Location: NIMBUS FUSE Ensemble, Wash-
ington DC, USA, 2019 - Duration: 2 days debut + ongoing
[3] D. Lofaro and E. Endress, “How can we access truth?: The narrative machine,” in Location: Inter-American
Development Bank (IDB), Washington DC, USA, 2018-2019 - Duration: 5 Months
[4] E. Endress and D. Lofaro, “Acts of storytelling,” in Location: Acts of Sensing & Hearing Exhibition in the
Marshall’s Visual Arts Center, Huntington, West Virginia, USA, 2018 - Duration: 3 Weeks
[5] D. Lofaro and E. Endress, “The narrative machine,” in Location: George Mason University Center for the Arts,
Fairfax, VA, USA, 2017-2018 - Duration: 6 Months