Hi, I am a Research Scientist at Helsing AI (formerly Keybotic) in Barcelona, where I work on deep reinforcement learning for robotic locomotion. Previously, I was a Postdoctoral Researcher in Robotics at New York University (NYU) in the Machines in Motion Laboratory, supervised by Prof. Ludovic Righetti. My research interests include locomotion, task and motion planning, control, and deep learning for robotics. I received my PhD in Robotics from TU Berlin, supervised by Prof. Marc Toussaint.
Last updated: September 2026.
Email: quimortiz21 (at) gmail (dot) com
News
2026
- 07/2026 Back from ICRA Vienna. Happy to have presented the poster of my paper "World Planner", and to have shown the robot RX-1 at Helsing's stand, which received a lot of attention from our colleagues.
- 06/2026 We unveiled our quadruped robot RX-1, which will serve as a research platform for robotics in Europe. Check out the video and press release.
- 05/2026 Keybotic has been acquired by Helsing AI, a European technology and defense company. I am working as an AI Research Scientist, developing the next-generation robots with the former Keybotic team.
- 01/2026 Yes, you can plan with Visual World Models! New paper accepted to ICRA. Joint co-authorship with R. Khorrambakht. Happy to share the main project from my postdoc at New York University.
2025
- 12/2025 Journal paper published at IEEE Transactions on Robotics (TRO)! db-ECBS: Interaction-Aware Multirobot Kinodynamic Motion Planning.
- 01/2025 I joined Keybotic, a robotics startup in Barcelona. Now I work on reinforcement learning for robot locomotion in a small, interdisciplinary team.
2024
- 05/2024 Three papers presented at ICRA 2024 in Japan! Mulit-robot motion planning, Effort Level Search and Solving Manipulation Puzzles.
- 02/2024 Moved to New York to work as a postdoc researcher in the Machines in Motion Laboratory at New York University, led by Professor Ludovic Righetti.
- 01/2024 I successfully defended my PhD and obtained the maximum qualification! Big thanks to my supervisor Marc Toussaint (TU Berlin) and the doctoral committee: Tomas Lozano-Perez (MIT), and Georg Martius (Uni Tübingen). Check out my thesis and the slides.
2023
- 11/2023 New journal submission! Fast and optimal kinodynamic motion planning with iterative search and trajectory optimization. Preprint , video, and code.
- 05/2023 Heading to ICRA 2023 to present our latest work in robotic manipulation planning!
- 01/2023 I presented my research at the robotics/AI seminars of IRI and UPF (Barcelona). Thanks to my former supervisors Gergely Neu and Joan Sola for the opportunity!
2022
- 11/2022 I spent one month visiting Erez Karpas at Technion (Israel). I gave a talk in the robotics seminar and met fellow robotics PhD students and faculty.
- 10/2022 4 Papers presented at IROS, thanks to all students and collaborators!
- 06/2022 Journal Paper accepted at IEEE-RAL. Check the project website.
- 02/2022 Conference Paper accepted at ICAPS. Great opportunity to learn classical AI Planning with Erez Karpas and Michael Katz.
2021
- 10/2021 Attending CoRL, my first in-person conference! Check out our paper.
- 10/2021 Talk in the Robotics Seminar of Gepetto team at LAAS-CNRS. Thanks to my Msc Supervisor Nicolas Mansard for the invitation!
- 01/2021 First Paper accepted. I will present at ICRA 2022.
2019
- 09/2019 I have started a PhD in robotics at Uni-Stuttgart and IMPRS-IS, under the supervision of Marc Toussaint. Update - together with my advisor, we moved to TU-Berlin on March 2020.
- 07/2019 I spent 5 months doing research about Optimal Transport and convex optimization, UPF (Barcelona).
- 02/2019 Master of Mathematics at FME UPC (Barcelona).
- 02/2019 Master thesis about numerical optimal control for legged robots, LAAS-CNRS (Toulouse).
2018
- 07/2018 I spent the last 6 months working in the startup Scaled Robotics.
2017
- 06/2017 Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering at ETSEIB UPC (Barcelona), graduated with top-class honours.
- 06/2017 Bachelor thesis about SLAM with event based cameras, IRI (Barcelona).