One of the main focuses of our lab is to create intelligent collaborative robots that can work alongside people in industry, healthcare, and various service sectors.
In this picture I am working on MOCA, which stands for mobile collaborative robot assistant. We believe this will be one of the robots of the future. In classical automation, robots perform specific sets of tasks – their adaptation to new environments is almost impossible. Instead we are trying to create collaborative and safe robotic systems that can perceive the environment, react to it, and interact with humans. The goal is to improve how tasks are performed, but also to help workers with routines that can cause physical and mental fatigue.
We are using collaborative robots, AI, and digital human models to help workers perform tasks in a more ergonomic and productive way: the robot can help perform a task in a posture that minimizes the risk of musculoskeletal disorders, which are the leading cause of workplace injuries. And we are working on a similar idea about cognitive models, creating systems to monitor people’s attention loss, anxiety, and stress levels, so that robots can also adapt to these factors in real time. You may have a bad day, where you may be slower and make more mistakes. The robot should be able to understand this, and respond accordingly.
In terms of accuracy, repetitiveness, and reducing errors, robots indeed perform better than humans. But we cannot expect robots to be innovative. If a robot can take care of the exhausting and repetitive part, or the physically demanding part, the person can spend time creating new ideas, transferring knowledge, and contributing to process improvements. The role of humans is always central to this interaction.
Our lab deals with basic research, trying to figure out what innovation technologies can come out of it. We work on those ideas and bring them to a certain technology readiness level, so that we can start evaluating them in realistic environments.
I have a very young and international team of researchers with multidisciplinary backgrounds. We are about 35 people from seven countries. I am also proud to have been able to bring back Italian researchers who had jobs in the UK, Austria and elsewhere. I know how difficult it is for a country to lose its resources.
Back in Iran, I studied biomedical engineering, then earned a master’s degree in control systems and control theory. I got into robotics during my PhD, a joint programme between the University of Pisa and IIT.
People often say: ‘If something can be automated, it should be automated’. I disagree: if you automate everything, you lose the sense of originality. Automation is important, but improvement is only possible if we keep these systems human-centric.
