Congratulations to Maximilian Mehl

Congratulations to Maximilian Mehl , Inria PhD in the Rainbow research team, who has received the Best Paper Award in the AI & Robotics track at the European Robotics Forum (ERF) 2025, held in Stuttgart 20 25-27 of march.

for the paper entitled ‘Model-Based Reinforcement Learning for Robust End-to-End UAV Control from Simulation to Real System Application’ by Maximilian Mehl, Inria PhD student, Marco Tognon, Inria researcher, both members of the Rainbow team, and Alberto Dalla Libera, Ruggero Carli (Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell'Informazione, Università degli Studi di Padova).

The paper, which focuses on AI and machine learning for aerial robotics, marks an excellent start to Maximilian's PhD and is great recognition of the research carried out within the Rainbow team and demonstrates how our detailed simulative frameworks for aerial robotics, combined with a novel model-based learning approach, enable zero-shot transfer of learning-based control policies to real aerial robots.

The European Robotics Forum is one of the most important annual events for the robotics community in Europe, bringing together industry, academia, and policy makers to discuss the latest advancements and strategic directions in robotics.