I'm Louis Le Lay. I make humanoid robots walk. At UMA I lead locomotion and simulation, taking a humanoid built from zero to walking and whole-body control: Version 0, unveiled at the MACHINA Summit — and deploying the same stack on platforms like the G1 and the X2.
Before that, at PAL Robotics, my policy was the first RL controller to ever walk the Kangaroo humanoid — an alternative to 20 years of MPC — live-demoed at VivaTech 2026 and open source.
Along the way, I helped create mjlab and contribute to Isaac Lab, the two main simulation ecosystems in robot learning.
All of it toward one goal: humanoid robots that move through the real world with the agility and robustness of humans.
Experience
Own locomotion and simulation for a new in-house humanoid — bare hardware to walking and whole-body control, presented as Version 0 at the MACHINA Summit — plus locomotion and whole-body control on the G1 and the X2.
Built the full RL sim-to-real locomotion pipeline for the Kangaroo humanoid, replacing the legacy MPC-based walker.
Publications
For a complete and up-to-date list, see my Google Scholar.
Software
Press & Mentions
- BFM Business — Les Experts de l'IA — Cited by Olivier Stasse (Research Director, LAAS-CNRS) as an example of the rapid progress in humanoid robotics. Jun 2026. [ video ]
- VivaTech 2026 — Live Demo with PAL Robotics × LAAS — Referenced by Olivier Stasse (Research Director, LAAS-CNRS) for my work on Kangaroo's RL locomotion. Jun 2026. [ video ]
Talks
- From Arms to Humanoids: an RL Journey — Invited talk at INIT Robots Lab, Apr 2026.
- Teaching a Full-Size Humanoid to Walk with RL, from Scratch — Master's thesis defense, Sorbonne University, Apr 2026.
- Training and Deploying RL Agents for Manipulation on the SO-ARM — Talk at ROSCon España, Nov 2025.
Education
- Sorbonne University · Master of Engineering, Robotics — 2022 – 2026
- ÉTS Montréal · Master of Engineering, Information Technology — 2024 – 2026