My Projects
WeTalkRobots
I am working on WeTalkRobots, my blog on Robotics and AI for robotics. In WeTalkRobots I’ll go through some of the latest advancements in the field of robotics, analysing latest developments and summirizing research papers. WeTalkRobots is both for more experienced researchers and engineers, but it also tries to reach out to less technical people…
Keep readingAI EMAIL: The AI Agent for Parsing Your Emails
I have recently released AI Email, an AI agent based on Chatgpt which is capable of connecting to yorìur GMAIl account and read your emails. You can find the codes on GitHub. The Web interafce is built using Gradio. How Does It Work? The Agent can be prompted with authors or topics of interest, and…
Keep readingPresenting at IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2024
It is my great pleasure to announce that I presented the work from my first year in Huawei at ICRA 2024, one of the top international robotics conferences, held in Yokohama. The work is about a ful pipeline for allowing robots to play table-tennis by employing three different control strategies:- Model-based- Pure Reinforcement Learning- Hybrid…
Keep readingSumMario: The AI Agent for Text Summarization and Information Retrieval
I have recently released SumMario, an AI agent based on Chatgpt which is capable of searching the internet for news, summarizing the news, summarizing Youtube video contents, and read txt, ppt, pdf files. You can find the codes on GitHub. SumMario also acts as a personal assistant, being able to access its memory and keep…
Keep readingExcellent New Joiner @ Huawei
It is my great pleasure to announce that I was awarded the Excellent New Joiner award for the year 2023 at Huawei Hong Kong. It was a honor for me to receive such an award from the company after my first year of joining it. I hope and I wish I will be able to…
Keep readingFeature Clustering for Open-Set Recognition in LCD Manufacturing
It is my great pleasure to announce that our latets paper has been publishe on IEEE Transaction on Instrumentation and Measurements (TIM). The work is about image classification for defect detection in LCD manufacturing, specifically open-set classification. Qualty assessment is of uttermost importance in industries like LCD manufacturing, in order to ensure products meet customer’s…
Keep readingImperial College London-Amazon PhD Prizes for Outstanding Achievement in Robotics 2022
It is my great pleasure to announce that I was selected as one of the finalist of the Amazon Award 2022 organized by Imperial College Robotics Forum. I presented the research achievents of my PhD on the novel approahces developed for robot model learning, control, and design optmization.
Keep readingTask Accuracy Enhancement for a Surgical Macro-Micro Manipulator With Probabilistic Neural Networks and Uncertainty Minimization
Accepted for publication in IEEE Transaction in Automation Science and Engineering (T-ASE), 2022 Description: Machine learning and Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) can be powerful tools to model complex systems like robots.In fileds like surgery, robots are very complex, and analytical models are hard to compute. Having an accurate model is, however, fundamental in order to…
Keep readingPresenting at IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) 2022
It is my great pleasure to announce that I presented two of my PhD works at IROS 2022, one of the top international robotics conferences, held in Kyoto. The two works are those described in : I am here sharing the videos of my presentations during the conference.
Keep readingModel Learning with Backlash Compensation for a Tendon-driven Surgical Robot
Accepted for publication in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RAL), 2022 Description: Surgical robots are very complex systems, due to the requirements for miniaturization and high dexterity. This leads to highly articulated and complex designs to increase the system’s felxibility and dexterity, while the miniaturization requirement leads to the choice of non-traditional actuation systems like…
Keep readingOptimization of Surgical Robotic Instrument Mounting in a Macro-Micro Manipulator Setup for Improving Task Execution
Accepted for publication in IEEE Transaction on Robotics (TRO), 2022 Description: Surgical robots for Minimally Invasive Surgery are generally mounted on serial-link manipulators with the aim of increasing the number of Degrees of Freedom (DOF) of the system. This setup is called macro-micro manipulator. The serial-link manipulator can then be directly ivolved in the control…
Keep readingAugmented Neural Network for Full Robot Kinematic Modelling in SE(3)
Accepted for publication in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RAL), 2022 Description: Robot kinematics is a fundamental basis for robot control. The kinematic model finds the relationship between actuation space (mtor/joint values) and Cartesian space (robot’s 3D position and orientation). Generally, for serial-link rigid robots, geometric approaches (e.g. Denavit-Hartenberg convention) are sufficient to obtain accurate…
Keep readingBraino NFT
It has been already more than one year since I created my own (first) NFT (Non Fungible Token) collection named Braino. It consists of 5000 pictures with different unique features. I will soon release it on the most popular NFT platforms and make a post on how I made it. You can here take a…
Keep readingSiemens Innovation Think Tank
I am happy to announce that from March 28th to April 7th 2022 I was selected to join the Siemens Heltineers Innovation Think Tank. The program focuses on open innovation and co-creation of business ideas in healthcare, and participants get the opportunity to learn co-implementation approaches by working on real life challenges from healthcare systems. It has…
Keep readingBrief Notes on Machine Learning, Robotics, and Random Projects
Check out my brief notes on topics like Machine Learning, Robotics, or some other topics related to some additional personal projects (here). All files (pdf for explanations) and codes can be found on my GitHub page. Hope you will enjoy 😁, and please do not hesitate to contact me for any suggestion or edit.
Keep readingIn the news
Check out our interview at Mediaset Italia 1 Studio Aperto Mag on February 1st 2022. It was great to be interviewed by an Italian TV and show our research topics to the general public.
Keep readingAugmenting Loss Functions of Feedforward Neural Networks withDifferential Relationships for Robot Kinematic Modelling
Accepted for publication in IEEE ICAR 2021 Description: In this work we present two novel strategies for training Feedforward Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) to learn robot’s forward kinematics (3D position only). Generally, ANN are used to diectly learn the mapping from actuation space to Cartesian space using a cost function that just minimizes the error…
Keep readingGlobDesOpt: A Global Optimization Framework for Optimal Robot Manipulator Design
Accepted for publication in IEEE Access, 2022 Available in Git-Hub. Description: In this work we present GlobDesOpt, a simple-to-use Matlab package for robot manipulator design. Currently, it only focuses on serial-link manipulators to optimize different user-defined parametrs such as link lenghts, joint offsets, joint types (prismatic or revolute). It allows the user to choose between…
Keep readingAmazon Pathways Operations Intern
I am happy to announce that from July to October 2021 I joined Amazon as Pathways Operations Intern. Amazon Pathways Operations is a career accelerator in Amazon to develop leaders to become Amazon General Managers and Directors. During my internship (which occurred during my PhD) I was in charge of imporving a metrics measuring the…
Keep readingKalibrot: A Simple-To-Use Matlab Package for Robot Kinematic Calibration
Accepted for publication in IEEE IROS 2021-International Conference on Intelligent Systems and Robots Available in Git-Hub. Description: In this work we present Kalibrot, a simple-to-use Matlab package for robot kinematic calibration. Currently, it only focuses on serial-link manipulators to optimize the Denavit-Hartenberg parameters. It allows the user to choose between two solvers: Traditional pseudoinverse; Quadratic…
Keep readingPre-operative Offline Optimization of Insertion Point Location for Safe and Accurate Surgical Task Execution
Accepted for publication in IEEE IROS 2021-International Conference on Intelligent Systems and Robots Description: In this work we present an optimization approach to identify the optiaml insertion point location for laparascopic surgeies when employing macro-micro robotic manipulators. Our results show how the location of the Remote Center of Motion (RCM) afects the robot’s perfomance. The…
Keep readingBayesian Neural Network Modeling and Hierarchical MPC for a Tendon-Driven Surgical Robot with Uncertainty Minimization
Accepted for publication in Robotics and Automation Letters (RAL) and ICRA 2021- International Conference on Robotics and Automation. Description: In this work we present a Hierarchical Model Predictive Control (Hi-MPC) approach in conjunction with Bayesian Neural Networks (BNN) to model and control a tendon-driven surgical robotic tool. BNN are here employed because they allow obtaining…
Keep readingModel predictive control for a tendon-driven surgical robot with safety constraints in kinematics and dynamics
Accepted for publication in IROS 2020- International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. Description: In this work we evaluate the applicatbility of Model Predictive Control (MPC) to control a tendon-driven surgical robotic tool. The dynamic model of the robot is learnt by means of Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) and used to impose bounds on the…
Keep readingAdaptive kinematic modelling for multiobjective control of a redundant surgical robotic tool
Published in MDPI Robotics 2020 Description to come
Keep readingWSRender: A Workspace Analysis and Visualization Toolbox for Robotic Manipulator Design and Verification
Accepted fo publication in IROS 2019- International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems Description to come.
Keep readingA Novel Approach for Outlier Detection and Robust Sensory Data Model Learning
Accepted for publication in IROS 2019- International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems Description: In this work we developed a novel algorithm for nonlinear regression with Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) capable of rejecting outliers in the dataset and thus improve the modelling.
Keep readingAn online interactive method for guided calibration of multi-dimensional force/torque transducers
Accepted in IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids) 2017 Description to come
Keep readingBalanced and falling states for biped systems: Applications to robotic versus human walking stability
Accepted in IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids) 2016. Description to come
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Francesco Cursi 