Sensing and perception for humanoid robots

Presented by

Dr. Lorenzo Natale

Humanoid Sensing and Perception laboratory

Italian Institute of Technology

Genova, Italy

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Abstract

Robots can actively interact with the environment and humans using their sensory system to learn about objects and their properties. To extract structured information, however, the robot needs to be endowed with appropriate sensors, fast learning algorithms, and exploratory behavior that guide the interaction with the world.

In this talk I will revise the research activities of the Humanoid Sensing and Perception laboratory at the Italian Institute of Technology. I will briefly revise past work on the use of visual and tactile feedback to explore objects and control the interaction between the hand and the objects. I will then present our recent work on behavior modelling using behavior trees, and the study of fast algorithms for learning visual segmentation and object tracking.

Presenter biography

Lorenzo Natale is Tenured Senior Researcher at the Italian Institute of Technology and coordinator of the Center for Robotics and Intelligent Systems. He received his degree in Electronic Engineering (with honours) and Ph.D. in Robotics from the University of Genoa. He was later postdoctoral researcher at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He was invited professor at the University of Genova where he taught the courses of Natural and Artificial Systems and Antropomorphic Robotics for students of the Bioengineering curriculum. Since 2020 he is visiting Professor at the University of Manchester.

Lorenzo Natale has contributed to the development of various humanoid platforms. He was one of the main contributors to the design and development of the iCub platform and he has been leading the development of the iCub software architecture and the YARP middleware. His research interests range from vision and tactile sensing to software architectures for robotics.

He has been principal investigator and co-principal investigator in several EU funded projects. He was general chair of IEEE ARSO 2018 and served as Program Chair of ICDL-Epirob 2014 and HAI 2017. He is Specialty Chief Editor for the Humanoid Robotics Section of Frontiers in Robotics and AI, associate editor for IEEE-Transactions on Robotics and IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters. He is Ellis fellow and Core Faculty of the Ellis Genoa Unit.