About Me
Tomáš Votroubek
Hello, I am a PhD student and junior researcher at the Artificial Intelligence Center in Prague, working on game theory and global optimization. Alongside research, I build reliable software systems ranging from optimization tooling and scientific infrastructure to embedded and cross-platform applications.
Interests
I am interested in the optimality, efficiency, and minimalism of computer programs. This includes everything from designing specialized solvers and algorithms, to writing toy path-tracers for fun, to programming embedded hardware with limited computing power.
I am a big fan of Mark Seemann’s ideas on Poka-yoke design and his development practices in general. I’ve had good experiences with functional design; software built that way doesn’t fail once out in the wild. For related reasons, I currently give regular lectures on functional programming at the Czech Technical University in Prague.
Research
My current research focuses on practical algorithms for solving continuous general-sum multiplayer games. Although such games are known to have equilibria, actually computing them is challenging. Nevertheless, we have successfully used Lasserre hierarchies, iterative methods, reformulation techniques, and spatial branch-and-bound in developing scalable solvers for a large set of such games.
In my thesis, I demonstrate the practicality of our recent Multiple Oracle method with a proof-of-concept implementation, by successfully solving games compiled from both recent and classical literature, which we have published as a dataset. We have also applied the same powerful optimization techniques in robotics, resulting in our follow-up paper on globally optimal inverse kinematics, where we demonstrated that an earlier technique could be extended from 7 to 10 degrees of freedom.
My long-term interest lies in developing practical algorithms for non-convex optimization, especially a specialized semidefinite solver that exploits the structure of matrices in Lasserre hierarchies. I believe that the general-purpose nature of current semidefinite solvers is a major bottleneck in Moment-SOS hierarchies today. While exploiting the structure and sparsity of the input polynomials is an area of active research and projects such as TSSOS, the pre-solved problems should be solved by solvers that are efficient themselves. If semidefinite solvers are too niche for the industry, I would be interested in developing the next generation myself.
Experience
I have shipped software for Linux, Windows, and Android, written in C++, Java, JavaScript, and Python, along with the obvious host of other supporting tools such as Bash, SQLite, etc. In my current job, I mainly write Julia and Python, with occasional Haskell and Scheme, but I know others and am willing to learn.
Other languages
People have technically also paid me to write in C, C#, F#, and Matlab, but those projects were either too small or one-time use. I have completed a Prolog course too, and if even that is not enough, I am willing to learn any language you need (except for PHP, which I swore never to write again).
From a Sketch to Shipped Products
I have experience in software development from initial problem analysis through design and development, including hardware selection (during the difficult times of Raspberry Pi shortages), UI/UX, prototypes, feedback, translations, and all the way to release and updates.
I created software for the detection and visualization of plagiarism in university homework submissions based on gSAIS; several dashboards and displays for monitoring and data collection of laboratory humidity, freezer temperatures, and alarm states based on SNMP and MQTT; and Android to Windows software for scanning etched DataMatrix labels using the Scandit SDK and sending them to MS Excel over Bluetooth with 32feet.NET.
Networking, Graphics and Design
Outside of programming and research, I semi-professionally manage the local-area network and website for a small inn, I know the basics of CAD, Fused Filament Fabrication, laser engraving, and graphical 3D modeling for product and architectural design; I can even clean up your logo for laser-cutting…
