Research Associate
Frans Anton (Twan) Koolen was born and raised in Gouda, the Netherlands. He received his MSc in Mechanical Engineering from Delft University of Technology in 2011, specializing in biorobotics at the Delft Biorobotics Laboratory. During his studies, Twan was an active member of the RoboCup team Dutch Robotics.
In 2008, Twan visited IHMC on a three-month internship, working for Jerry Pratt and Peter Neuhaus in the robot lab. His main contribution was to improve the push recovery abilities of the force controllable 3D bipedal robot M2V2 by implementing key control algorithms.
After nearly two years back in the Netherlands, Twan rejoined IHMC in 2010 as a research associate. He is currently developing bipedal locomotion algorithms for the NASA Robonaut project, as well as control algorithms that exploit upper body motions to improve balance for the bipedal robot Atlas, which is currently being developed at Boston Dynamics.
Twan's main research interest is to develop force control algorithms that increase the versatility and robustness of robots, and hence their applicability outside of the lab. He is interested in nonlinear model-based control of underactuated systems (e.g. inverse dynamics based control algorithms), viability and capturability of dynamic systems, and the use of screw theory in robot kinematics and dynamics. Twan enjoys working in the intersection of control theory, mechanics, and computer science.
In his free time, Twan likes to run, read and play basketball.
Recent publications
T. Koolen, T. De Boer, J. Rebula, A. Goswami, and J. Pratt, “Capturability-Based Analysis and Control of Legged Locomotion, Part 1: Theory and Application to Three Simple Gait Models,” International Journal of Robotics Research, Submitted, 2012. [PDF preprint]
J. Pratt, T. Koolen, T. De Boer, J. Rebula, S. Cotton, J. Carff, M. Johnson and P. Neuhaus, “Capturability-Based Analysis and Control of Legged Locomotion , Part 2: Application to M2V2 , a Lower Body Humanoid,” International Journal of Robotics Research, Submitted, 2012. [PDF preprint]