Ignacio Cuiral-Zueco

Ignacio Cuiral-Zueco

Zaragoza, Spain

ignaciocuiral@unizar.es

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Paper presented at ERF 2026
I presented our paper "The Language of Deformation: Semantic Failure Analysis as a Prerequisite for Dexterous Manipulation of Deformable Objects" at ERF 2026 in Stavanger, Norway, coauthored with David Hardman, Michele Pierallini and Erfan Shahriari. We met last year as finalists for the Georges Giralt PhD Award, each from a different institution in Europe, and ended up writing a paper together. A great example of what conferences like ERF are for :)
This work was partly funded by the EU through the REMAIN SUDOE project.
ERF 2026 paper presentation
Paper presentation at ERF 2026
Stavanger street
Stavanger, Norway
🏆 Best Robotics PhD Thesis Award (2025), Spanish Committee of Automatic Control (CEA).
CEA Award
CEA Best Robotics PhD Thesis Award
🏆 Best Iberian Robotics PhD Thesis Award (2025), conferred by the Spanish Society for Research and Development in Robotics (SEIDROB) and the Portuguese Robotics Society (SPR).
🏆 Georges Giralt PhD Award Finalist (2025): finalist for Europe's most prestigious recognition for PhD excellence in robotics, selected among over 50 candidates and presented at the European Robotics Forum 2025.
Invited Visiting Scholar
Seminar on data-driven deformable object manipulation · Nov 2025
ELLIIT Focus Period Lund 2025
ELLIIT Focus Period · Lund University 2025

Highlighted Publications

I. Cuiral-Zueco and G. López-Nicolás, "Time Consistent Surface Mapping for Deformable Object Shape Control," IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, vol. 22, pp. 11099–11111, 2025, doi: 10.1109/TASE.2025.3529180.
Project Page Code
I. Cuiral-Zueco and G. López-Nicolás, "Multiscale Procrustes-Based 3-D Shape Control," IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, vol. 29, no. 3, pp. 1738-1748, June 2024, doi: 10.1109/TMECH.2023.3325934.
Project Page Code

CV ▼

Education

  • PhD (2019–2024): Systems Engineering and Computer Science, University of Zaragoza. Thesis: Shape Control of Deformable Objects (International Mention, Cum Laude). [Link]
  • MSc (2017–2019): Industrial Engineering, University of Zaragoza. Thesis: RGB-D Visual SLAM for Manipulator Control in Deformable Environments (Distinction).
  • BSc (2013–2017): Industrial Technologies Engineering, University of Zaragoza. Thesis: Stereo Visual SLAM for Medical Endoscopy (Distinction).

Academic Experience

  • 2025–Present: Postdoctoral Researcher, CA-INP Institut Pascal, France.
  • 2024–2025: Adjunct Professor, Systems Engineering and Automation, University of Zaragoza.
  • 2024–2025: Researcher N3, European Project DeFORMS, University of Zaragoza.
  • 2020–2024: Researcher N3, Project FROSCAT, University of Zaragoza.
  • 2019–2020: Researcher N4, European Project COMMANDIA, University of Zaragoza.

Awards & Honors

  • 🏆 Best Robotics PhD Thesis Award (2025), Spanish Committee of Automatic Control (CEA).
  • 🏆 Best Iberian Robotics PhD Thesis Award (2025), conferred by the Spanish Society for Research and Development in Robotics (SEIDROB) and the Portuguese Robotics Society (SPR).
  • 🏆 Georges Giralt PhD Award Finalist: finalist for Europe's most prestigious recognition for PhD excellence in robotics, selected among over 50 candidates and presented at the European Robotics Forum 2025.

Research Stays & Invited Talks

Projects, Service & Outreach

  • Project COMMANDIA: COllaborative robotic Mobile MANipulation of Deformable objects in Industrial Applications — SOE2/P1/F0638 (Interreg Sudoe Programme, ERDF). Project site.
  • Project REMAIN: robotic REMAnufacturing of deformable INdustrial products — S1/1.1/E0111 (Interreg Sudoe Programme, ERDF). Project site.
  • Project COUNTRYBOTS: Cooperative robots for monitorization and deformable goods transport in the countryside, PID2021-124137OB-I00. Project site.
  • Project DeFORMS: Deformation control of Flexible Objects with cooperative Robots in Manufacturing Sectors, TED2021-130224B-I00. Project site.
  • Mentoring: Supervised 1 MSc and 2 BSc theses; 150+ hours of extracurricular research internships.
  • Service: Organizing committee (XLIV Jornadas de Automática 2023, IEEE SWYP 2020).
  • Research Group: Member of ROPERT (Robotics, Computer Vision and AI).

Research ▼

I study how robots perceive, model, and control deformable objects. My work connects shape perception, mapping, and manipulation with a focus on robust, data-efficient methods and multi-robot coordination.

  • Main research line: Shape control.
  • Core topics: Shape control, deformable object manipulation, robot perception, and visual servoing.
  • Applications: Robotic manipulation, cooperative robotics, and manufacturing.
Shape control experiment
Example of the shape control of a foam piece with two ABB IRB120 robots (IEEE T-ASE 2025).

Interactive Demos: For a more accessible introduction to my research, check out the section with interactive visualizations designed for a general audience.

Dissemination ▼

A quick overview of my outreach work, including interactive research demos and educational robotics initiatives.

These interactive demos showcase my main research interests in shape perception, mapping, and control of deformable objects.

Shape Control of Deformable Objects

Related papers: RA-L 2023 · TMECH 2024

Shape Analysis and Comparison

Related papers: T-ASE (surface mapping) · RAS (elastic contour mapping)

Noctis and Aurel

Programming in a learning-friendly way:

Noctis programming with micro:bit

For my PhD thesis presentation, I created a flyer that summarizes the main contributions and findings of my research. Feel free to download and explore:

Publications ▼

Journals

  1. [J1] A. Caporali, I. Cuiral-Zueco, G. López-Nicolás and G. Palli, “Robotic perception and manipulation of deformable linear objects: A survey,” The International Journal of Robotics Research, 2026. doi: 10.1177/02783649261432253.
    Project Page
  2. [J2] I. Cuiral-Zueco and G. López-Nicolás, “Multi-scale elastic contour mapping for deformable object shape control,” Robotics and Autonomous Systems, vol. 194, p. 105134, 2025. doi: 10.1016/j.robot.2025.105134.
  3. [J3] M. Aranda, I. Cuiral-Zueco and G. López-Nicolás, “Distributed Control of Flexible Chained Multiagent Formations,” IEEE Control Systems Letters, vol. 9, pp. 2018–2023, 2025. doi: 10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3590428.
    Project Page
  4. [J4] I. Cuiral-Zueco and G. López-Nicolás, "Time Consistent Surface Mapping for Deformable Object Shape Control," IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, vol. 22, pp. 11099–11111, 2025. doi: 10.1109/TASE.2025.3529180.
    Project Page Code
  5. [J5] I. Cuiral-Zueco and G. López-Nicolás, "Taxonomy of Deformable Object Shape Control," IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 9, no. 10, pp. 9015–9022, 2024. doi: 10.1109/LRA.2024.3455770.
    Project Page Code
  6. [J6] I. Cuiral-Zueco and G. López-Nicolás, "Multiscale Procrustes-Based 3-D Shape Control," IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, vol. 29, no. 3, pp. 1738–1748, 2024. doi: 10.1109/TMECH.2023.3325934.
    Project Page Code
  7. [J7] I. Cuiral-Zueco, Y. Karayiannidis and G. López-Nicolás, "Contour Based Object-Compliant Shape Control," IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 8, no. 8, pp. 5164–5171, 2023. doi: 10.1109/LRA.2023.3292617.
    Project Page
  8. [J8] I. Cuiral-Zueco and G. López-Nicolás, “RGB-D Tracking and Optimal Perception of Deformable Objects,” IEEE Access, vol. 8, pp. 136884–136897, 2020. doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3012067.

Conferences

  1. [C1] I. Cuiral-Zueco, D. Hardman, M. Pierallini and E. Shahriari, "The Language of Deformation: Semantic Failure Analysis as a Prerequisite for Dexterous Manipulation of Deformable Objects," European Robotics Forum (ERF), Stavanger, Norway, 2026.
    Poster
  2. [C2] I. Cuiral-Zueco and G. López-Nicolás, "Elastic Contour Mapping for the Estimation of Abrupt Shape Deformations," Proc. Iberian Robotics Conf., pp. 400–408, 2023.
  3. [C3] I. Cuiral-Zueco, G. López-Nicolás and H. Araujo, "Gripper positioning for object deformation tasks," Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Robot. Autom. (ICRA), pp. 2403–2409, 2022. doi: 10.1109/ICRA46639.2022.9812304.
  4. [C4] I. Cuiral-Zueco and G. López-Nicolás, "Multi-scale Laplacian-based FMM for deformable object elastic shape estimation," Proc. IEEE/RSJ Int. Conf. Intell. Robots Syst. (IROS), pp. 1766–1772, 2021. doi: 10.1109/IROS51168.2021.9636857.
    Code
  5. [C5] I. Cuiral-Zueco and G. López-Nicolás, "Dynamic Occlusion Handling for Real Time Object Perception," Proc. Int. Conf. Robot. Autom. Eng. (ICRAE), pp. 66–70, 2020. doi: 10.1109/ICRAE50850.2020.9310850.