SAPHARI

The University of Pisa (UNIPI), founded 1343, is among the oldest and most prestigious universities in Europe, with alumni such as Galilei, Volterra and Fermi. The Interdepartmental Research Centre “Enrico Piaggio”, founded in 1962 organises interdisciplinary research among engineering, medicine, and biological scientists towards  applications in Bioengineering and Robotics. Centro E. Piaggio has a longstanding experience in managing contracts with international, EC, and industrial partners, and currently hires four professional project managers. The Robotics Group of the Interdepartmental Research Centre “Enrico Piaggio” focuses on robotics and embedded automation. The group is among the originators of the modern approach to physical human-robot interaction, where it has been advocating intrinsic safety via the co-design of mechanics and control, oriented towards performance maximisation within rigid safety constraints. The group is also known for the design of haptic interfaces and in the study of human factors in touch interaction between man and machines.

Key researchers

Antonio BICCHI (http://www.centropiaggio.unipi.it/index.php/people/77-bicchieng) main research interests are in robotics, haptics, and automatic control. He has published more than 250 fully reviewed papers (h=31). He is the Director of Centro Piaggio, and chaired or served in the editorial board for prestigious journals and conferences in robotics and control. He is a Fellow of IEEE, and the Chairman of the Conference Editorial Board of IEEE Robotics and Automation Society. He has served as Vice President of IEEE Robotics and Automation Society; Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, and in several other capacities.

Lucia PALLOTTINO (http://www.centropiaggio.unipi.it/index.php/people/81-lucia-pallottino) is Assistant Professor in Robotics and Automation at the University of Pisa. She received the Laurea degree in Mathematics and the Ph.D. degree in Robotics and Industrial Automation from the University of Pisa, Italy in 1997 and 2002 respectively. She is currently developing her research at the Interdepartmental Research Center “E. Piaggio”. Her main research interests within Robotics are in motion planning and control for nonholonomic vehicles, optimal control of constrained systems, distributed control of multi-robot vehicles and quantised control. She has published about 40 refereed papers.

Contributions to the research in specific topics will be provided by other Faculty members of Centro E. Piaggio, including Proff. Andrea Caiti, Alberto Landi, and Lorenzo Pollini (automatic control), Rocco Rizzo (electrical engineering), Massimo Guiggiani, Marco Gabiccini, Gualtiero Fantoni (mechanical engineering), Gianluca Dini (computer engineering), Pasquale Scilingo (Bioengineering). Other personnel involved in the project for dissemination activites are Laura Maley, Alessandra Parravicini, Andrea Goetz and Francesca Carlino.