Stéphane Caron

Stéphane Caron is a French robotics researcher working on robot learning and perceptive legged locomotion, now at the CNRS/Sorbonne Institute for Intelligent Systems and Robotics (ISIR) in Paris. He did his Ph.D. in robotics at the University of Tokyo and an M.Sc. in computer science at ENS-PSL, where he received his habilitation in 2024. He led the locomotion team at ANYbotics AG and worked on humanoid locomotion at LIRMM before joining ISIR in April 2026. He is the creator of the open-hardware Upkie wheeled bipeds and of the LIPM walking controller that made HRP-4 humanoids climb stairs, and he is an active open-source and open-access advocate. As a high-school student he represented France at the International Olympiad in Informatics, winning a bronze medal at IOI 2005.

Signal

Posts primarily on his own site and Mastodon (@locoscaron@fosstodon.org), where the recurring theme is open-source robotics and open science: publicizing paper acceptances (CoRL 2026), open-source robot hardware, and his opposition to paywalled publishing. He documents talks (FOSDEM 2026, Harada Lab 2025) and academic service rather than personal content, consistent with a research-first public voice.

Notes6

• Joined the Institute for Intelligent Systems and Robotics (ISIR, a CNRS/Sorbonne joint lab) in April 2026, moving from LIRMM — a shift from a Montpellier lab back to Paris.Apr 1, 2026
• Won a bronze medal for France at IOI 2005 (rank 137, score 275/600), then returned as a France finalist at IOI 2006 — a two-year competitive-programming peak that predates and foreshadows his later academic CS path.Aug 25, 2005
• His 'Koopman DCM' paper was accepted at CoRL 2026, learning balance representations directly from real-robot data — current research is moving toward data-driven control.Sep 5, 2026
• Received his habilitation (HDR) from ENS-PSL in 2024, the credential that qualifies him to supervise doctoral research in France — signals seniority beyond a standard postdoc track.2024
• Was locomotion team lead at ANYbotics AG (the ANYmal quadruped company) before returning to academia, so his profile bridges industrial robotics and academic research.
• Started Upkie, an open-hardware wheeled-biped robot with a fully open stack from Python down to motor-controller firmware — the anchor of his current open-source robotics agenda.
• Made HRP-4 humanoid robots climb stairs at the Airbus Saint-Nazaire factory, a rare industrial deployment of a humanoid walking controller in a real factory setting.
• Serving as Associate Editor for Humanoids 2026 and co-organizer of WAFR 2026 in Oulu, Finland, placing him in the organizing core of the robotics community.Aug 4, 2026
• Did his Ph.D. in robotics at the University of Tokyo and his M.Sc. in computer science at ENS-PSL, an unusually international training path for a French robotics researcher.
• Gave a FOSDEM 2026 talk on open-source robotics using Upkie as the case study, extending his open-source advocacy to a FOSS-developer audience.Jan 31, 2026
• Champions open access and overlay journals, framing publishers as 'rent-seeking gatekeepers' — a values signal relevant to how he chooses where to publish.
• Communicates on Mastodon (@locoscaron@fosstodon.org) and hosts his own site rather than using mainstream social platforms — reach him there or by site contact, not on X/LinkedIn.