Main Research Interests

The main focus of my research is designing innovative tools for robotics.

ARGoS: Simulating Large Heterogeneous Swarms of Robots

I designed and developed ARGoS ("Autonomous Robots Go Swarming"), a state-of-the-art multi-robot multi-engine simulator. ARGoS is designed to be both scalable and flexible. It can simulate thousands of robots in real-time on an average computer. Its architecture is multi-threaded and completely modular. Among its unique features, in ARGoS it is possible to partition the virtual space in regions managed by different physics engines running in parallel. ARGoS is open source software and can be downloaded here.

Play the video

Boolean Networks Robotics

I am cooperating in the development of boolean networks robotics, whose aim is studying how to use boolean networks as robot control code.

The following video shows a behavior in which a robot performs phototaxis and switches to antiphototaxis as soon at it senses a hand-clap. This work is part of a Master thesis I co-advised and that won the 2011 AI*IA award (best thesis on artificial intelligence in Italy).

Projects

(since 10/2010) ASCENS
The aim of the ASCENS project is to lay the foundations of engineering and formal methods for ensembles of self-aware, self-adaptive and self-expressive autonomic components. My contribution to the project is to apply the concepts and methods elaborated in the project on state-of-the-art swarm robotics scenarios.
(10/2006 - 10/2010) Swarmanoid
The Swarmanoid project was aimed at studying novel tools and control techniques for heterogeneous swarms of robots. My contribution to the project was the design and development of ARGoS and of several robot controllers.

I participated to the making of this video, that describes the project. It won the AAAI 2011 video competition:

(10/2007 - 01/2008) Evolving a Collective Consciousness for a Swarm of Pico Satellites
I worked in a project within the Ariadna program of the Advanced Concepts Team (ACT) of the European Space Agency (ESA). I applied concepts of swarm intelligence to tackle the problem of autonomously displacing swarms of satellites in a hexagonal formation in a scalable manner.
Play the video