Elle Miller

Hi there! I’m Elle, a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh. My goal is to develop intelligent robots that empower people and solve complex real-world problems.

My research lies at the intersection of reinforcement learning and robotic control, with a focus on contact-rich manipulation. My work leverages tactile sensing and self-supervision to help agents derive richer latent representations of their physical world. Currently, I am looking into longstanding challenges of RL for whole-body humanoid manipulation.

I am fortunate to be supervised by a great interdisciplinary team: Sethu Vijayakumar (UoE), Oisin Mac Aodha (UoE), Rika Antonova (University of Cambridge), and David Abel (UoE, DeepMind).

Before my doctorate, I researched robotic autonomy at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and assistive grasping at the DLR Institute for Mechatronics and Robotics. I also helped create EVA, a novel mobile humanoid. My journey began at the University of Sydney, where I graduated with First Class Honours in Mechatronic (Space) Engineering and Advanced Physics.

Along the way, I’ve understook internships with Max Planck Institute of Astronomy, Cochlear, Australian National University, and Saber Astronautics.

On a personal note, I enjoy tea, jazz music, cinema, and meeting people from around the world. Feel free to get in touch 💌

Meet AIREC (AI Robot for Embrace and Care). This robot was developed under the Japanese Moonshot Program. In this photo, AIREC had just picked me up from the chair!

NASA's Valkyrie, built in 2015. She was on lease to researchers at Uni of Edinburgh for 10 years.

DLR's EDAN. This is robotic wheelchair + arm designed to help people with motor impairments carry out everyday tasks.

SLMC's EVA. This is a hybrid mobile humanoid platform we made by integrating a Nextage robot (Kawada) with an omnidirectional base.

Meet "Rollin' Justin". DLR (German Aerospace Center) make their own robots from scratch, so each robot is a one-of-kind.

NASA's Perseverance & Ingenuity (just models, since they are on Mars! Each rover does have a twin though, that is used for debugging.)