I am an ISFP (Inria Starting Faculty Position) researcher in INRIA Nancy Grand-Est and LORIA, working in the project-team LARSEN. My research is focused on planning and control of generic robotic systems, with particular emphasis on underactuated multi-limbed robots with many degrees of freedom, such as humanoids. I am particularly interested in model-based optmization techniques and robotics-oriented software tools.
Before INRIA, I was a post-doc at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) in Genoa, Italy, in the Humanoids and Human Centered Mechatronics (HHCM) Research Line, with Nikos G. Tsagarakis, and the Advanced Robotics (ADVR) Department, with Prof. Darwin G. Caldwell. I obtained my Ph.D. at IIT and University of Genoa in 2016. I also have experience in the industry, having worked as a senior researcher in humanoid robotics at PAL Robotics in Barcelona, Spain, and later as the Principal Investigator (PI) of the Unmanned Systems and Robotics group at Leonardo S.p.A. in Genoa, Italy.
I have been serving as Associate Editor of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (2021 – …) and the SAGE International Journal of Robotics Research (2023 – …). I am serving as Main Co-Chair and representative for the primary region of Europe for the IEEE Technical Committee on Whole-Body Control from 2021. I am the Local Chair of IEEE-RAS HUMANOIDS 2024.
In 2015 I partecipated to the DARPA Robotics Challenge finals within the WALK-MAN Team being responsible of the whole-body control and simulation of the humanoid robot WALK-MAN.
Actual projects:
- euRobin: The European Excellence Network on AI-Powered Robotics
Past projects:
- EUROBENCH: EUropean ROBotics framework for bipedal locomotion bENCHmarking
- ROBOT TELEOPERATIVO
- CogIMon: Cognitive Interaction in Motion
- CENTAURO: Robust Mobility and Dexterous Manipulation in Disaster Response by Fullbody Telepresence in a Centaur-like Robot
- WALK-MAN: Whole-body Adaptive Locomotion and Manipulation