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Assistant Professor, Durham Space Research Centre, Department of Computer Science, Durham University, UK

Short Bio

From September 2024, I will be joining Durham University and the newly established Space Research Centre as an Assistant Professor. I am currently an Assistant Professor in Space Engineering, at the School of Metallurgy and Materials, University of Birmingham, UK. My research interests include vision-based robotic grasping and manipulation, and applications in space robotics. I was a JPL Postdoctoral Fellow at the Mobility and Robotics Section (347) at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, working on machine vision and pose estimation for the Mars Sample Return Mission. I was also a Research Fellow at the School of Electronic Engineering, University of York, UK, working on evolultionary robotics and evolvable gripper morphologies for robotic grasping. I was also a Research Fellow at Surrey Space Centre, University of Surrey, UK, researching visually-guided grasp synthesis for orbital robotics.

Publications

Book Chapters

  • N. Mavrakis, Y. Gao, “Autonomous Robotic Grasping in Orbital Environment”, in Space Robotics and Autonomous Systems: Technolo- gies, Advances and Applications, IET, 2021.

Peer-reviewed Journals

  • M. Farell, N.Mavrakis, A. Ferrando, C. Dixon, Y. Gao. ”Formal Modelling and Runtime Verification of Autonomous Grasping for Active Debris Removal”, Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 8, 2021
  • N. Mavrakis, Z. Hao, Y. Gao. On-Orbit Robotic Grasping of a Spent Rocket Stage: Grasp Stability Analysis and Experimental Results, Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 8(183), 2021
  • N. Mavrakis, R. Stolkin, ”Estimation and exploitation of objects’ inertial parameters in robotic grasping and manipulation: A survey” Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 124, p.103374., 2020
  • L. Baronti, M. Alston, N. Mavrakis, A. M. Ghalamzan E, M. Castellani, ”Primitive Shape Fitting in Point Clouds Using the Bees Algorithm”, Applied Sciences, 9(23), p.5198., 2019

Conferences

  • N. Mavrakis, T-H. Pham, P. Bailey. ”Pose Estimation for Rover-to-Lander Tube Transfer for Mars Sample Return”, IEEE Aerospace Con- ference, 2023.
  • M. Farrell, N. Mavrakis, A. Ferrando, C. Dixon, Y. Gao. ”Journal-First: Formal Modelling and Runtime Verification of Autonomous Grasping for Active Debris Removal”, Integrated Formal Methods: 17th International Conference, 2022.
  • N. Mavrakis, Y. Gao. ”Stable Robotic Grasp Synthesis on an Upper-Stage Nozzle for On-Orbit Capturing”, International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Automation in Space (i-SAIRAS), 2020.
  • M. Farrell, N. Mavrakis, C. Dixon, Y. Gao. ”Formal Verification of an Autonomous Grasping Algorithm”, International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Automation in Space (i-SAIRAS), 2020.
  • N. Mavrakis, A. M. Ghalamzan E. and R. Stolkin ”Estimating An Object’s Inertial Parameters By Robotic Pushing: A Data-Driven Approach”, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2020.
  • Z. Hao, N. Mavrakis, P. Proenca, R. Gillham Darnley, S. Fallah, M. Sweeting, Y. Gao. ”Ground-Based High-DOF AI And Robotics Demonstrator For In-Orbit Space Optical Telescope Assembly”, International Astronautical Congress, 2019.
  • N. Mavrakis, Y. Gao. ”Visually Guided Robot Grasping of a Spacecraft’s Apogee Kick Motor”, ESA Symposium on Advanced Space Technologies in Robotics and Automation (ASTRA), Noordwijk, 2019. N. Mavrakis, A.M. Ghalamzan E., R. Stolkin. ”Minimum Object-Internal-Force Trajectory Optimization For On-Orbit Dual-Arm Space Robots”, International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Automation in Space (i-SAIRAS), 2018.
  • A. M. Ghalamzan E., N. Mavrakis, and R. Stolkin, ”Grasp that optimises objectives along post-grasp trajectories,” RSI International Conference on Robotics and Mechatronics (ICRoM), 2017.
  • N. Mavrakis, A. M. Ghalamzan E. and R. Stolkin, ”Safe robotic grasping: Minimum impact-force grasp selection,” IEEE/RSJ International Confer- ence on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Vancouver, BC, 2017,
  • N. Mavrakis, A. M. Ghalamzan E., R. Stolkin, L. Baronti, M. Kopicki and M. Castellani, ”Analysis of the inertia and dynamics of grasped objects, for choosing optimal grasps to enable torque-efficient post-grasp manipulations,” IEEE-RAS 16th International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids), Cancun, 2016
  • A. M. Ghalamzan E., N. Mavrakis, and R. Stolkin, ”Task-relevant grasp selection: A joint solution to planning grasps and manipulative motion trajectories, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2016