Antonio Bicchi | |
---|---|
Born | June 1, 1959 Pontremoli, Italy |
Nationality | Italian |
Alma mater | University of Pisa University of Bologna |
Awards | IEEE Fellow (2005) IEEE RAS Saridis Leadership Award (2018) University of Pisa "Ordine del Cherubino” (2019) |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Robotics Haptics Automatic Control |
Institutions | Massachusetts Institute of Technology University of Pisa Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia Arizona State University |
Antonio Bicchi is an Italian scientist interested in robotics and intelligent machines. He is professor at the University of Pisa and senior researcher at Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia in Genoa. He is an adjunct professor at the School of Biological and Health Systems Engineering of Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona, US.
He is the editor in chief of The International Journal of Robotics Research , the first scholarly publication on robotics research. He is a co-founder and current president of the Italian Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Machines.
He is a Fellow of IEEE since 2005, [1] and received the IEEE Saridis Leadership Award [2] and the “Ordine del Cherubino” from University of Pisa in 2019. [3]
After obtaining a Laurea (magna cum laude) from the University of Pisa in 1984 and a Ph.D. from University of Bologna in 1988, Bicchi was with the Artificial Intelligence Lab of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA, USA. [4]
From 1990s to 2012 he directed the Research Center “E. Piaggio” at the University of Pisa where he was also chairman of the Robotics in the Department of Information Engineering. [5] During his direction, the Center grew in size and in scientific prestige, leading it to count more than 100 researchers and manage over 60 fundamental and applied research projects.
In 2009 he was appointed as senior scientist by the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia in Genoa, where he created and leads the research line on Soft Robotics for Human Cooperation and Rehabilitation. [3] [6]
Since 2013 he serves as an adjunct professor of the School of Biological and Health Systems Engineering, Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona, where he collaborates with Marco Santello and other colleagues in NSF and DARPA rehabilitation-oriented projects. [3]
Bicchi has contributed to the fields of automatic control (the science and engineering of systems), to haptics (the science and technology for the sense of touch), and to robotics, especially focusing on artificial hands and variable stiffness articulated soft robotics.
The August 2024 update of the Stanford/Elsevier's “Top 2% Scientists of All Times” [7] ranks Bicchi's scientific work impact at no. 8819 in all disciplines (top 0.08%), no. 304 in Information and Communication Processing, no. 253 in Engineering, no. 153 in Artificial Intelligence & Image Processing, no. 69 in Industrial Engineering & Automation worldwide.
He has coordinated several important research projects funded by the EU in the FP7 and H2020 programmes, including CHAT (on the scalability, reconfigurability and security of distributed control for heterogeneous cyberphysical systems), PHRIENDS (on dependability and safety of physical human-robot interaction), [8] THE Hand Embodied (on natural and artificial hands), and SoftPro (on the theory and open-source technologies for upper limb prosthetics and rehabilitation). He was scientific co-coordinator of several others, including TOUCH-HAPSYS (on haptics science and interfaces), [9] WALK-MAN [10] (on humanoid robots for disaster intervention), and SOMA (on soft manipulation systems). [11]
His 2012-17 ERC AG project SoftHands used neuroscience and soft robotics technologies to develop a new generation of artificial hands. [12] Two subsequent ERC PoC projects (SoftHands Pro-H and SoftHandler) explored the translation of these concepts in real-world products for prosthetics and industrial applications, respectively. [13] [14]
The ERC Synergy 2019 project “Natural BionicS” is producing the first completely integrated bionic limb system with direct spinal interfacing, through the cooperation of three groups at Imperial College (led by D. Farina), University Hospital Wien (O. Aszmann) and IIT (A. Bicchi). [15]
Bicchi was president of the Italian Society of Automatic Control, twice vice-president of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, [16] and collaborates with major centers for technology transfer in the Italian and European industry. He is a consultant for the European Commission, the Italian Ministry of Education and Research (MIUR) and agencies in many countries in Europe, America and Asia for the scientific evaluation and accreditation of research centers and universities, research projects, and researchers' careers.
In 2005 he founded the WorldHaptics Conference, since then the largest biennial research meeting in the sciences of touch. [3] In 2011 he started the series of conferences Automatica which is the main Italian event in the field of Automatic Controls. [3] In 2015 he founded and was subsequently editor-in-chief of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters magazine, which in just two years has become the largest scientific journal in the entire field. [17] In 2019 he co-founded the Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Machines (I-RIM), the association of researchers and industrialists in the field whose motto is "AI, fleshed out." [18] Since January, 2023, he is the editor in chief of The International Journal of Robotics Research .
The European Research Council (ERC) granted his research on human and robot hands with an Advanced Grant in 2012, a Synergy Grant in 2019, and three Proof-of-Concept grants.
He created and coordinates scientifically the JOiiNT Lab, an advanced tech transfer lab with leading-edge industries in the Kilometro Rosso Technology District in Bergamo, Italy.
Bicchi is a prolific and successful educator, with some 80 Ph.D.s awarded under his guidance. More than 20 former students hold now professorships in many universities and research institutions worldwide. Six were finalists, and three won the prestigious ``G. Giralt Award'' for Best Ph.D. thesis in Robotics in 2013, 2019, and 2020. Two won the EuroHaptics Best Ph.D. Thesis award in 2015 and 2023. The prestigious IEEE RAS Early Career Award was awarded to two of his former students in 2021 and in 2023.
Biorobotics is an interdisciplinary science that combines the fields of biomedical engineering, cybernetics, and robotics to develop new technologies that integrate biology with mechanical systems to develop more efficient communication, alter genetic information, and create machines that imitate biological systems.
Dario Floreano is a Swiss-Italian roboticist and engineer. He is Director of the Laboratory of Intelligent System (LIS) at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland and was the founding director of the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) Robotics.
Marco Dorigo is a research director for the Belgian Funds for Scientific Research and a co-director of IRIDIA, the artificial intelligence lab of the Université Libre de Bruxelles. He received a PhD in System and Information Engineering in 1992 from the Polytechnic University of Milan with a thesis titled Optimization, learning, and natural algorithms. He is the leading proponent of the ant colony optimization metaheuristic, and one of the founders of the swarm intelligence research field. Recently he got involved with research in swarm robotics: he is the coordinator of Swarm-bots: Swarms of self-assembling artifacts and of Swarmanoid: Towards humanoid robotic swarms, two swarm robotics projects funded by the Future and Emerging Technologies Program of the European Commission. He is also the founding editor and editor in chief of Swarm Intelligence, the principal peer-reviewed publication dedicated to reporting research and new developments in this multidisciplinary field.
Robot ethics, sometimes known as "roboethics", concerns ethical problems that occur with robots, such as whether robots pose a threat to humans in the long or short run, whether some uses of robots are problematic, and how robots should be designed such that they act 'ethically'. Alternatively, roboethics refers specifically to the ethics of human behavior towards robots, as robots become increasingly advanced. Robot ethics is a sub-field of ethics of technology, specifically information technology, and it has close links to legal as well as socio-economic concerns. Researchers from diverse areas are beginning to tackle ethical questions about creating robotic technology and implementing it in societies, in a way that will still ensure the safety of the human race.
The IEEE Robotics and Automation Society is a professional society of the IEEE that supports the development and the exchange of scientific knowledge in the fields of robotics and automation, including applied and theoretical issues.
John Matthew Hollerbach is a professor of computer science and research professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Utah. He is the editor of The International Journal of Robotics Research, a Senior Editor of Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments, and a Governing Board member of the electronic journal Haptics-e.
Oussama Khatib is a roboticist and a professor of computer science at Stanford University, and a Fellow of the IEEE. He is credited with seminal work in areas ranging from robot motion planning and control, human-friendly robot design, to haptic interaction and human motion synthesis. His work's emphasis has been to develop theories, algorithms, and technologies, that control robot systems by using models of their physical dynamics. These dynamic models are used to derive optimal controllers for complex robots that interact with the environment in real-time.
Robotics in Italy is a high technology area where Italy hosts numerous research centers.
Bradley James Nelson is an American roboticist and entrepreneur. He has been the Professor of Robotics and Intelligent Systems at ETH Zurich since 2002 and is known for his research in microrobotics, nanorobotics, and medical robotics.
Stefano Stramigioli is a scientist and engineer born in Italy and now living since 1992 in the Netherlands and holding both the Italian and Dutch nationality. He is affiliated with the University of Twente where he leads the Robotics And Mechatronics (RAM) Lab.
Domenico Prattichizzo is an Italian scientist with a strong and international recognized expertise in the fields of Haptics, Robotics and, Wearable technology. His researches find their main applications in virtual and augmented reality scenarios and in the rehabilitation of people with upper and lower limbs, visual and cognitive impairments.
Bruno Siciliano is an Italian engineer, academic and scientific popularizer. He is professor of Control and Robotics at the University of Naples Federico II, Chair of the Scientific Council of the ICAROS Center, and Coordinator of the PRISMA Lab at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology. He is also Honorary Professor at the university of Óbuda where he holds the Rudolf Kálmán chair.
John Kenneth Salisbury, Jr. is an American Roboticist and Research Professor Emeritus at Stanford University’s Computer Science Department and Stanford School of Medicine’s Department of Surgery. Salisbury is a researcher in the fields of robotics, haptics, and medical robotics. Widely known as the father of haptics, he is an inventor of over 50 patents and recipient of the 2011 IEEE Inaba Award for "Commercialization of Products in Medical Robotics, Robotics, and Haptics".
Alois Christian Knoll is German computer scientist and professor at the TUM School of Computation, Information and Technology at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). He is head of the Chair of Robotics, Artificial Intelligence and Embedded Systems.
Antonio Lieto is an Italian cognitive scientist and computer scientist at the University of Salerno and a Research Associate at the Institute of High Performance Computing of the Italian National Research Council focusing on cognitive architectures and computational models of cognition, commonsense reasoning and models of mental representation, and persuasive technologies. He teaches Artificial Intelligence and "Design and Evaluation of Cognitive Artificial Systems" at the Department of Computer Science of the University of Turin.
Allison Mariko Okamura is an American mechanical engineer and roboticist whose research concerns haptic technology, teleoperation, remote surgery, and robot-assisted surgery. She is the Richard W. Weiland Professor in the School of Engineering and a professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford University, where she directs the Collaborative Haptics and Robotics in Medicine (CHARM) laboratory and maintains a courtesy appointment as professor of computer science.
Lynette Anne Jones is a New Zealand mechanical engineer whose research concerns haptic technology, haptic perception, thermal output devices, microsurgery, and the function and mechanics of the human hand and skin. She is a senior research scientist in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and editor-in-chief of the journal IEEE Transactions on Haptics.
Álvaro Ríos Poveda is a Colombian electronic engineer, university professor, and researcher who specializes in biomedical engineering and mechatronics. He has performed research on myoelectric prostheses, sensory feedback, and bionic vision technologies.
Aadeel Akhtar is a neuroscientist and electrical engineer. He is CEO and founder of the bionics company PSYONIC. In 2021, he was named one of MIT Technology Review’s 35 Innovators Under 35 and was featured in Newsweek’s “America's 50 Greatest Disruptors: Visionaries Who Are Changing the World.”
Elliott J Rouse is an American mechanical engineer, roboticist, and academic. He is an associate professor in the Departments of Robotics and Mechanical Engineering and Director of the Neurobionics Lab at the University of Michigan.
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