Energy-based control for human-robot interaction

Wednesday, June 29th, 2026 | 14:30 PM
Istituto IIM, sede Via Moruzzi, Aula Grey

Prof. Cristian Secchi, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Full Professor of Robotics and Director of the ARS Control Lab

Seminar Title
ENERGY-BASED CONTROL FOR HUMAN - ROBOT INTERACTION

Short Bio
Cristian Secchi is a Full Professor of Robotics at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. He received his Ph.D in Information Engineering from the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia in 2004. His thesis on interactive robotic interfaces has been selected as finalist for the Georges Giralt PhD Award for the best PhD thesis on robotics in Europe.

He served as an Associate Editor of the Robotics and Automation Magazine (2005-2008), the Transactions on Robotics (2012-2017), the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (2015-2017) and for the International Journal or Robotics (2023-). He served in the editorial boards of the major robotics conferences, and he was the program chair of the 2024 European Robotics Forum, the most influential meeting of the robotics community in Europe.

He coordinated and participated to several national and European projects and to several research activities funded by industries.

He is the Director of the ARSControl lab of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. His main research interests are in the fields of human-robot collaboration, multi-robot systems and medical robotics. In particular, he is interested in energy based methods for achieving a smooth safe and stable interaction between humans and robots in different application areas. He is author of more than 300 scientific articles published on conference proceedings and on international journals, including three books and two patents.

Short Abstract
Operating in a dynamic and unstructured environment is one of the maim challenges of today’s robotics. Robots have to physically interact with entities with unknown dynamics, among which the human is the most challenging. In this scenario, the interactive behavior of the robot has to be reliable, dynamic and safe. In this talk, I will show how, using energy based arguments, it is possible to build a flexible yet provably reliable and safe control strategy for human robot interaction.

Organizer & Contacts: Dott. Domenico Chiaradia domenico.chiaradia@santannapisa.it