Consultancy & advisory

Robots that work outside the lab

I help companies, investors and public bodies get legged robots, mobile manipulators and their perception stacks from demo to deployment. Fifteen years of hands-on work on humanoids, quadrupeds and mobile manipulators, at UCL, IIT and the DARPA Robotics Challenge, combined with a research group that ships methods on real hardware every week. I also lead UCL Computer Science's Intelligent Robotics Group, so I can broker collaborations well beyond my own lab.

Looking for a PhD or postdoc position instead? See the RPL Lab website.

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What I can help with

Legged locomotion & navigation

Locomotion controllers, gait learning, traversability estimation and path planning for quadrupeds and humanoids in rough, cluttered or outdoor environments; autonomous inspection and security patrolling.

Perception, mapping & localisation

Sensor selection, SLAM and metric-semantic mapping, visual localisation, 3D perception pipelines that run in real time on embedded compute.

Manipulation & loco-manipulation

Grasp and affordance detection, RL/IL policies, mobile manipulation for logistics, recycling and field tasks.

Robot learning & sim-to-real

Reinforcement and imitation learning, world models, diffusion planners, simulator design and sim-to-real transfer strategy.

Technical due diligence & strategy

Independent assessment of robotics technology, teams and roadmaps for investors, corporates and funding bodies. Expert evaluator for EU and UKRI programmes.

Training & workshops

Bespoke courses on robot perception, legged robotics and robot learning for engineering teams; keynotes and executive briefings.

Track record

2025 – present
Consultant, ESA Security Solutions — security robots for autonomous site inspection and patrolling.
2024 – present
Scientific Advisor, Laelaps AI (London) — robot locomotion.
2021 – 2022
Scientific Advisor, OpenArms (London) — robotic manipulation with reinforcement learning.
2020 – 2021
Scientific Advisor, ZOA Robotics (London) — quadrupedal locomotion control, planning and perception.
2021
DASA / Dstl TeLeMan — teleoperated legged manipulator for explosive-ordnance disposal (with Univ. of Leeds).
2014 – 2015
Perception Team Leader, IIT WALK-MAN — DARPA Robotics Challenge finals, Pomona, CA.
Ongoing
Expert evaluator & reviewer — EU EIC Pathfinder, EPSRC/UKRI; Associate Editor for ICRA/IROS (Outstanding Associate Editor, ICRA 2022).

How an engagement works

Advisory: Retained scientific-advisor role: regular calls, roadmap and hiring input, paper/patent review.
Project: Scoped feasibility study, prototype or evaluation delivered by me and/or my group, typically 1–6 months.
Collaboration: Joint R&D, Innovate UK / EU proposals, PhD studentships and Knowledge Transfer Partnerships through UCL.
Training: One-day to one-week courses on site or at UCL, with hands-on sessions on our quadruped and humanoid platforms.
Contracting: Via UCL Consultants or directly, depending on scope. NDAs welcome.

Platforms in the lab

Boston Dynamics Spot · ANYmal · Unitree Go1, Go2, B1 + Z1, G1 · Jueying · Summit-XLS and AgileX mobile manipulators · motion-capture and VR teleoperation rigs.

Start a conversation

Send a few lines about your robot, your problem and your timeline. I reply to every serious enquiry within a few working days.

Email d.kanoulas [at] ucl.ac.uk