antonio paolillo   

Antonio Paolillo

Senior Researcher

Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence (IDSIA) USI-SUPSI
Lugano, Switzerland

antonio [dot] paolillo [at] idsia.ch / supsi.ch

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I am a Senior Researcher at Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence (IDSIA), USI-SUPSI, in Lugano (Switzerland) and responsible for the activities in rehabilitation robotics and social human-robot interaction of the "Autonomous Robotics" research area at IDSIA.

I have been a Researcher at IDSIA from May 2020 to September 2024. Before joining IDSIA, I was a post-doc at EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland (from October 2019 to April 2020); Idiap Research Institute, Martigny, Switzerland (January 2018 - August 2019); CNRS-University of Montpellier, France (April 2015 - December 2017). From April to November 2015, I was a visiting researcher at the CNRS-AIST Joint Robotics Laboratory of Tsukuba, Japan. In June 2015, I participated in the DARPA Robotics Challenge as a member of the AIST-NEDO team. In March 2015, I received my Ph.D. in System Engineering from Sapienza University of Rome, Italy, and, in January 2011, my Master's degree in Electronic Engineering from the same University. From January to July 2014, I was a visiting scholar at CNRS-University of Montpellier, France, and from May to December 2010, a visiting student at Örebro University, Sweden.

From 2023, I am an Associate Editor for IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L). I have been an Associate Editor for the 21st International Conference on Ubiquitous Robots (UR 2024), and for the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) from 2021 to 2023. I am a work package leader of the European project SERMAS and involved in other Swiss projects. I am the Chair of the 17th International Workshop on Human-Friendly Robotics (HFR 2024).

My research aims at reducing the gap between people and robots. Given the level of ubiquity reached by today's robots, more and more non-technician users ask for easy-to-use, interactive, and adapting machines. To favor the democratization of robots, I deploy tools from the areas of robotic control, machine learning, and AI in general. My research interests include human-robot interaction, robotic perception, humanoid and mobile robotics, robotic manipulation, sensor-based control, and visual servoing.

News

Oct. 24 Elevation to the grade of IEEE Senior member.
Jun. 24 Italian National Scientific qualification as associate professor in the Italian higher education system for the disciplinary field of 09/G1 - System and control engineering, 09/H1 - Information processing systems, and 01/B1 - Informatics.
Jun. 24 The paper "A Service Robot in the Wild: Analysis of Users Intentions, Robot Behaviors, and Their Impact on the Interaction" by S. Arreghini, G. Abbate, A. Giusti, and myself has been accepted to IROS24 (check out my publications page).
May 24 We now accept submission for HFR 2024, see the call for papers!
Mar. 24 The paper "A Long-Range Mutual Gaze Detector for HRI" by S. Arreghini, G. Abbate, A. Giusti, has just been presented at HRI24 (check out my publications page).
Jan. 24 The paper "Predicting the Intention to Interact with a Service Robot: the Role of Gaze Cues" by S. Arreghini, G. Abbate, A. Giusti, and myself has been accepted to ICRA24 (check out my publications page).
Jan. 24 Read my interview on Ticino Scienza, an online newspaper created by the IBSA Foundation, about our activity on social human-robot interaction (the article is written in Italian).
Dec. 23 The article "A mirror therapy system using virtual reality and an actuated exoskeleton for the recovery of hand motor impairments: a study of acceptability, usability, and embodiment" has been published in Scientific Reports (check out my publications page)
Nov. 23 We have been awarded the "Quality of Life" label for our activity on our rehabilitation device! See the news on SUPSI and USI webpage
Oct. 23 The paper "Self-Supervised Prediction of the Intention to Interact with a Service Robot" has been published in Robotics and Autonomous Systems (check out my publications page)
Sep. 23 The next edition of the workshop "Human-Friendly Robotics" (HFR) will be in Lugano (and I will be the general chair)! Have a look at the presentation slide!
Sep. 23 The paper "Imitation Learning-based Visual Servoing for Tracking Moving Objects" has been presented at HFR23 in Munich (check out my publications page)
Jul. 23 My project titled "Visual Servoing for Embedded Nano-drone Systems" (ViSENSy), co-written with Dr. D. Palossi, has been granted by Hasler Foundation
Apr. 23 Our activities on the use of virtual reality and wearable robotics for hand rehabilitation featured on Swiss TV, Radiotelevisione Svizzera (RSI)! Watch the video!

Recent publications

For a full list of my publications, please go here.
  • S. Arreghini, G. Abbate, A. Giusti, A. Paolillo, "A Service Robot in the Wild: Analysis of Users Intentions, Robot Behaviors, and Their Impact on the Interaction," IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2024
  • S. Arreghini, G. Abbate, A. Giusti, A. Paolillo, "Predicting the Intention to Interact with a Service Robot: the Role of Gaze Cues," IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2024
  • S. Arreghini, G. Abbate, A. Giusti, A. Paolillo, "A Long-Range Mutual Gaze Detector for HRI," ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, 2024
  • G. Abbate, A. Giusti, V. Schmuck, O. Celiktutan, A. Paolillo, "Self-Supervised Prediction of the Intention to Interact with a Service Robot," Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 2024
  • G. Abbate, A. Giusti, L. Randazzo, A. Paolillo, "A mirror therapy system using virtual reality and an actuated exoskeleton for the recovery of hand motor impairments: a study of acceptability, usability, and embodiment," Scientific Reports, 2023
  • R. Felici, M. Saveriano, L. Roveda, A. Paolillo, "Imitation Learning-based Visual Servoing for Tracking Moving Objects," Human-Friendly Robotics, 2023
  • A. Paolillo, M. Forgione, D. Piga, E. Mingo Hoffman, "Fast predictive visual servoing: A reference governor-based approach," Control Engineering Practice, 2023
  • A. Paolillo, P. Robuffo Giordano, M. Saveriano, "Dynamical System-based Imitation Learning for Visual Servoing using the Large Projection Formulation," IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2023
  • A. Paolillo, M. Nava, D. Piga, A. Giusti, "Visual Servoing with Geometrically Interpretable Neural Perception," IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2022
  • A. Paolillo, G. Abbate, A. Giusti, S. Trakic, H. Dzafic, A. Fritz, J. Guzzi, "Towards the integration of a pointing-based human-machine interface in an industrial control system compliant with the IEC 61499 standard," Procedia CIRP, 2022
  • A. Paolillo, F. Colella, N. Nosengo, F. Schiano, W. Stewart, D. Zambrano, I. Chappuis, R. Lalive, D. Floreano, "How to compete with robots by assessing job automation risks and resilient alternatives, Science Robotics 7 (65), eabg5561, 2022