Laboratorium@DIST

Dr. Eng. Renato Zaccaria is Full Professor in Computer Science at the Department of Communication, Computer and System Sciences (DIST), University of Genova, Italy. He teaches the courses "Computer Science Basics" at the Faculty of Humanities, "Operating Systems" (bachelor) and "Mobile Robotics" (master) at the Faculty of Engineering where he is also the local Coordinator of EMARO, European Master on Advanced Robotics (joint master with Ecole Centrale of Nantes and Warsaw University of Technology). He leads the Mobile Robotics & Ambient Intelligence Research Group in the lab called Laboratorium. He started working on Robotics in one of the very early Italian interdisciplinary research groups, which grew up to the actual cluster of robotic laboratories at University of Genova - one of the biggest in Italy. His scientific work is still characterised by the multi-disciplinar approach, including AI, Computer Science, Bioengineering, Philosophy, Automatic Control. He has been researcher and project leader in many national and European projects in Autonomous Robotics, and responsible of many industrial contracts as well.

His present activity regards mainly Service Robotics and Ambient Intelligence. In order to purposively carry out technology transfer, in 2000 he founded one of the Department's spin-off companies, Genova Robot, whose present R&D activity is strongly linked to academic research.

He is author/coauthor of more than 140 international scientific papers, of two textbooks, and of two international patents in Robotics (guidance of autonomous mobile robots).

He has been in charge of several academic tasks; he is Vice Dean of his Department, member of the board of the PhD school "Sc & Tech of Information and Knowledge", member of the scientific board of Liguria Scientific and Technological District, and formerly Dean of the Computer Engineering tracks (bachelor and master levels).

Presently, he is responsible of the European Master on Advanced Robotics EMARO, coordinator of the Robotics Engineering Master Track, and head of the Commission for the Study Programmes at the Faculty of Engineering.

He was born in 1949. He has been awarded the title Commendatore della Repubblica because of his activity in technology transfer in Robotics.

Antonio Sgorbissa is Assistant Professor at University of Genova since December 2005, where he teaches the courses Ambient Intelligence in and, Real Time Operating Systems at the Faculty of Engineering, as well as Geographical Information Systems, and Computer Science basics at the Faculty of Humanities. He is a teacher in the European Master in Robotics EMARO.

He took his Ph.D. in Robotics at University of Genova in 2001, with the dissertation: “Towards a multi-ethnic community of Robots, Humans, and Intelligent Devices”. The ETHNOS multi-agent architecture, developed in the course of his PhD studies, has become known at National level during RoboCup in 1998, 1999, and 2000 (the soccer world championship for autonomous robots). In this context, it has been selected by the Italian ART Team, and contributed to winning the second prize in Stockholm 1999 and Amsterdam 2000. ETHNOS, “borrowed” from the opposite team Golem Team, won the second prize in Melbourne 2000.

In 2000 he has been project leader in the development of the service mobile robot Staffetta, that has been presented at the Gaslini Hospital of Genova in a public meeting with National relevance. As a follow up to the project, three Professors of DIST have been awarded the title of “Commendatore della Repubblica Italiana”.

In 2001 he has been research assistant at the Mobile Robot Lab directed by Prof. Ronald Arkin. After coming back to Italy, he has been researcher at DII – Department of Computer Science of Università di Parma (Via Università 12, I-43100 Parma, Italy) and later at DIST, Department of Communication, Computers and System Science of Università di Genova.

In the latter years, he has been project leader and/or member of the research team in many projects at national and EU level, among which (i) “An autonomous mobile robot for patrol rounds in airports and wide areas” (with the partnership of Albenga Airport); (ii) the FP6 STREP “ROBOSwarm”, a 30 months project started in 2006; (iii)“A smart house providing support for daily life activities to elderly and disables” (with the partnership of the assisted living facility Istituto delle Figlie di Nostra Signora della Misericordia).

His research interests include, in addition to autonomous mobile robotics, multi-agent architectures and real-time operating systems, Ambient Intelligence (with a specific focus on context awareness and multi-sensor fusion).

Since 2000 he collaborates with Genova Robot srl, a university spin-off company working in mobile robotics.

He is inventor in two patents for mobile robot guidance and localization.

Fulvio Mastrogiovanni is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Communication, Computer and System Sciences (DIST), Faculty of Engineering, University of Genoa, Italy.

Currently, his research is focused on AI-related techniques for Ambient Intelligence, and specifically on context awareness, distributed situation assessment and dependable systems. In particular, he is working on Ubiquitous Robotics applications, where mobile robots interact and cooperate with intelligent environments. However, his main research interests are rapidly evolving towards self-aware systems and humanoid robots.

Fulvio received a 5-year Engineering Laurea degree in Computer Science in 2003, with a Thesis about task planning in Service Robotics. In 2003, he joined the Laboratorium group at DIST. In 2008, he received the Ph.D. degree in Robotics from University of Genoa, with the Dissertation Context Awareness: Another Step Towards Ubiquitous Robotics.

During the Ph.D. studies he pursued active research in various sectors of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence, specifically focusing on distributed knowledge representation, action planning, information fusion, self-localization and navigation.