Louis Le Lay

Projects

Things I've built, contributed to, broken, and occasionally got working on real robots.

Featured Work

RL Locomotion for Kangaroo Humanoid

Current Role

PAL Robotics · July 2025 – Present

Leading the reinforcement learning locomotion stack for PAL's Kangaroo humanoid robot. Replacing legacy Zero Moment Point (ZMP) walking with RL-based policies trained in Isaac Lab and mjlab, deployed via ROS/ROS 2.

Results
  • Successful sim-to-real transfer for RL-based locomotion
  • Integrated PAL's humanoid and mobile manipulator robots into Isaac Lab and mjlab for training
  • Built ROS package for seamless policy deployment from simulation to hardware
Isaac Lab mjlab PyTorch ROS 2 Python

mjlab

1200+ ⭐

Open Source · Led by Kevin Zakka

Early contributor and collaborator to mjlab, an Isaac Lab-style RL framework built on MuJoCo Warp. Contributed to APIs, task implementations, and documentation. But most importantly a daily user/tester!

Results
  • 2× faster performance than Isaac Lab in object-rich environments
  • Deployed sim-to-real policies with zero domain randomization
  • Acknowledged in the project's citation file
MuJoCo Warp Python PyTorch

Open Source · Personal Project

End-to-end pipeline for training RL manipulation policies in Isaac Lab and deploying them on a real Kinova Gen3 arm via ROS 2. Created as the missing "Hello World → Real Robot" bridge for Isaac Lab users.

Results
  • 156k+ social impressions (LinkedIn, X, Reddit)
  • Adopted by INIT Lab (ÉTS Montréal) and researchers in Europe and Japan
  • Includes docs, tutorials, and pre-trained weights
Isaac Lab ROS 2 PyTorch Python

Semantic Sensor Fusion for Unitree Go1

University of Tokyo · June – Sept 2024

Built a ROS pipeline fusing Velodyne LiDAR with RealSense D455 for semantic navigation on a quadruped platform. Enabled object-centric SLAM and person-following for Jiaxu Wu's PhD research.

Results
  • Live colored point-cloud at 10 Hz with YOLO object labels
  • Became the lab's reference template for LiDAR-camera fusion
  • Resolved ARM-Docker issues on Jetson Xavier for edge deployment
ROS C++ YOLO CLIP Docker
Other Projects

Open Source · Collaboration

RL-based manipulation tasks for SO-ARM100/101 robots using Isaac Lab. Presented at ROSCon España (Nov 2025).

Isaac Lab PyTorch ROS 2

Wheeled Biped Prototype

Personal Project · ROS 2

Designed, 3D-printed, and brought up a 6-DOF wheeled biped robot. Wrote custom controllers and RViz visualization to validate stability and zero-cantilever design.

ROS 2 SolidWorks Python

NAO Walking Control

Naova RoboCup Team · Nov 2024 – April 2025

Enhanced NAO biped walking stability by ~15% by converting discrete to continuous control signals. Also developed a neural network for automatic referee signal interpretation.

Python PyTorch Control