Ph.D. students
BioRobotics Institute
Cristian Felipe Blanco DÍaz
Bio
Cristian Felipe Blanco-Diaz is a PhD candidate in Biorobotics at the BioRobotics Institute of Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (Italy), where he works in the Textile Robotics Laboratory within the Artificial Hands Area. His research focuses on wearable technologies for human sensorimotor restoration and augmentation, integrating robotics, haptics, and motor neuroscience. During his PhD, he was a visiting researcher at Aalborg University (Denmark).
He received his B.Sc. in Biomedical Engineering (magna cum laude, 2020) from Antonio Nariño University (Colombia) and his M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering (2023) from the Federal University of Espírito Santo (Brazil). His previous research focused on biosignal processing and machine learning for EEG-based mental activity recognition, and on the design of brain–computer interfaces for lower-limb rehabilitation. During his studies he was also a visiting student at the Biorobotics Laboratory at EPFL (Switzerland) and the Santos Dumont International Institute for Neuroscience (Brazil).
He is a student Member of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS), IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS), and the International Consortium for Rehabilitation Robotics (ICORR). His research interests include neuroengineering, biosignal processing, human–machine interfaces, sensory feedback, and rehabilitation robotics.
Research
My research focuses on developing bidirectional human–robot interfaces for wearable assistive technologies such as prosthetic limbs and robotic exoskeletons. While recent advances in artificial intelligence have improved the decoding of motor intentions from biosignals, most assistive devices still lack effective sensory feedback, forcing users to rely heavily on vision and increasing cognitive load. To address this limitation, I investigate novel sensory feedback strategies based on osseoperception, a phenomenon in which vibrations transmitted through bone evoke both vibrotactile and auditory sensations, enabling compact and intrinsically multimodal feedback systems. During my PhD at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, I have studied the perceptual properties of this mechanism and its integration into myoelectric prosthetic hands, demonstrating improvements in object manipulation performance and reductions in cognitive load. Additionally, I investigate the integration of osseoperception in immersive virtual environments for applications in robotic teleoperation and rehabilitation training. My long-term goal is to develop adaptive human–robot interfaces in which artificial intelligence dynamically interprets user intention and modulates sensory feedback to create intuitive, personalized assistive technologies.