MASTROGIOVANNI F.

In the context of culture-aware robotics, we propose a method for the explicit, on-line mapping between cultural variables and robot behaviour parameters which relies on the linguistic variable formalism, fuzzy clustering and the principles of fuzzy controllers. As a case study, we consider the adaptation of the Human-Robot conversational...

When manipulating objects, humans finely adapt their motions to the characteristics of what they are handling. Thus, an attentive observer can foresee hidden properties of the manipulated object, such as its weight, temperature, and even whether it requires special care in the manipulation. This study is a step towards endowing a humanoid robot...

As robots are being increasingly used in close proximity to humans and objects, it is imperative that robots operate safely and efficiently under real-world conditions. Yet, the environment is seldom known perfectly. Noisy sensors and actuation errors compound to the errors introduced while estimating features of the environment. We present a...

We present an integrated Task-Motion Planning (TMP) framework for navigation in large-scale environments. Of late, TMP for manipulation has attracted significant interest resulting in a proliferation of different approaches. In contrast, TMP for navigation has received considerably less attention. Autonomous robots operating in real-world...

Autonomous robots operating in large knowledge-intensive domains require planning in the discrete (task) space and the continuous (motion) space. In knowledge-intensive domains, on the one hand, robots have to reason at the highest-level, for example the regions to navigate to or objects to be picked up and their properties; on the other hand,...

The rapid growth of electronic waste (e-waste) highlights the need for effective recycling processes. Printed circuit boards (PCBs) are a significant component of e-waste, containing valuable materials and toxic elements. However, the recycling of PCBs faces challenges associated with their diverse materials and components, lack of...

In this work, we present a framework for human-robot collaboration allowing the human operator to alter the robot plan execution online. To achieve this goal, we introduce Branched AND/OR graphs, an extension to AND/OR graphs, to manage flexible and adaptable human-robot collaboration. In our study, the operator can alter the plan execution...

Computing collision-free trajectories is of prime importance for safe navigation. We present an approach for computing the collision probability under Gaussian distributed motion and sensing uncertainty with the robot and static obstacle shapes approximated as ellipsoids. The collision condition is formulated as the distance between ellipsoids...

When transporting an object, we unconsciously adapt our movement to its properties, for instance by slowing down when the item is fragile. The most relevant features of an object are immediately revealed to a human observer by the way the handling occurs, without any need for verbal description. It would greatly facilitate collaboration to...

Implicit communication plays such a crucial role during social exchanges that it must be considered for a good experience in human-robot interaction. This work addresses implicit communication associated with the detection of physical properties, transport, and manipulation of objects. We propose an ecological approach to infer object...

In this article, we propose FlexHRC+, a hierarchical human–robot cooperation architecture designed to provide collaborative robots with an extended degree of autonomy when supporting human operators in high-variability shop-floor tasks. The architecture encompasses three levels, namely for perception, representation, and action. Building up on...

Articulated and flexible objects constitute a challenge for robot manipulation tasks, but are present in different real-world settings, including home and industrial environments. Approaches to the manipulation of such objects employ ad hoc strategies to sequence and perform actions on them depending on their physical or geometrical features,...

Even though cobots have high potential in bringing several benefits in the manufacturing and logistic processes, their rapid (re-)deployment in changing environments is still limited. To enable fast adaptation to new product demands and to boost the fitness of the human workers to the allocated tasks, we propose a novel method that optimizes...

Tactile sensing is a key enabling technology to develop complex behaviours for robots interacting with humans or the environment. This paper discusses computational aspects playing a significant role when extracting information about contact events. Considering a large-scale, capacitance-based robot skin technology we developed in the past few...

In progress of technologies related to augmented reality and autonomous robot mobility, needs of registration techniques that use a pre-made global 3D point cloud as a map and presently-acquired local one for localization increases rapidly. However, in a warehouse of shops and restaurants, location of objects such as products and food materials...