The Robotics group at DIAG
(Dipartimento di Ingegneria Informatica, Automatica e Gestionale) and
the associated Robotics Lab were established at Sapienza University of Rome
in the late 1980s with a commitment to develop innovative methods for
modeling, planning and control of both industrial and service robots.
Over
the years, original research results were obtained on several subjects, including:
nonlinear control of robots; iterative learning control on repetitive tasks;
hybrid force/velocity control of manipulators interacting with the
environment; optimization schemes in kinematically redundant robots;
motion planning and control of wheeled mobile robots and other
nonholonomic mechanical systems; stabilization of underactuated robots;
robot actuator fault detection and isolation; safe control of physical
human-robot interaction; control of manipulators with flexible
joints/links; control of locomotion platforms for VR immersion;
image-based visual servoing; sensor-based navigation and exploration in
unknown environments; motion planning for high-dimensional systems;
multi-robot coordination and mutual localization.
In addition
to further development in the above mentioned areas, recent activities
include control and visual servoing for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV),
control-based motion planning for mobile manipulators, motion planning
and control of locomotion in humanoid robots, and sensory supervision
of human-robot interaction.
Currently active equipment at the DIAG Robotics Lab includes
All these robots are equipped with sensing devices of various complexity, going from ultrasonic/laser range finders to cameras, IMUs and force/torque sensors. In the past, we have also designed and built in-house a two-link flexible manipulator (FlexArm) and a differentially-driven wheeled mobile robot (SuperMARIO).