Afonso Certo
Ph.D. Student in Electrical and Computer Engineering
Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon, Portugal
About Me:
I’m a Ph.D. student at Instituto Superior Técnico and a researcher at ISR/LARSyS, focusing on robot task planning with Large Language Models (LLMs). My research aims to enable robots to understand and act on natural language commands, making interactions between humans and robots more intuitive and flexible. This involves combining speech recognition, semantic mapping, and advanced planning techniques to build more capable robots for real-world applications.
I’m particularly interested in developing systems that allow robots to process and act on spoken language in a seamless way, as this is critical for robots to operate effectively in dynamic home environments. My current work focuses on leveraging LLMs for task planning, replacing traditional rule-based systems with more adaptive, context-aware models that can handle complex and ambiguous instructions.
Key Highlights:
- SocRob@Home Team Member, Instituto de Sistemas e Robótica (ISR-Lisboa)
- Developed a speech pipeline and semantic mapping module for general-purpose service robots.
- Contributed to the team’s 2nd place in RoboCup@Home 2023 and 3rd place in 2024.
- Focused on LLM-based task planning for my Master’s thesis.
- Publications
Large Language Model-Based Robot Task Planning from Voice Command Transcriptions- Under review for IROS 2025.
- Leadership & Outreach
- Mentored younger scouts in ESA’s “Mission Zero” program.
- Organized and facilitated workshops in programming and electronics.