okay
if you can just start by telling us
where you were born where you grew up
and went to school
okay first of all my name is paolo daria
i'm now a professor of biorobotics at
the school of superintendent in
pisa italy i was born in pyongbino
a small town just in front of the isle
of elba
in tuscany that was uh
inhabited by truthscans then by
romans and also by napoleon actually
and i went to school there
and then i moved in different parts of
italy and
i got my university degree mechanical
engineering at the university of
pisa in 1977.
and after that
i had to serve in the military
for one year and then i
started by by chance actually
my research activity
also at the university of visa
and in the field of biomedical
engineering actually my
thesis was also on biomedical
engineering
and i was interested in biomedical
engineering
although my degree was mechanical
engineering
because i wished to do something useful
for mankind i was also
always interested in the usefulness of
what
i was doing i would say that
i i've been always interested in merging
science and engineering i could define
myself
a true engineer that is i
always look for uh for for objective for
results
for usefulness rather than for pure
new knowledge i'm interested in new
knowledge but to the extent
that i know it could be useful to solve
practical problems so
and in this process i i like and i
enable you know even if i didn't know a
priori
that i'm pretty good in devising
new solutions be creative
and this has been a sort of like motive
i mean
continuous
guidance in my in my career
what was your graduate thesis
uh it has been in the design of a new
artificial heart
putsatile artificial heart
that was intended to to overcome
the limitations of artificial hearts
available at that time so i was
i learned a lot about design about
modeling about sensing even if
at that time sensing was
not as common as today but i got
uh interest in that in that area
and it is very interesting to notice
that
uh after 40 years or two even more
i have been able to
get a project on artificial heart right
now
uh that is uh like closing the
circle that and this this
teaches to me a lesson that there is
always a time
sometimes you can do things too early
but if you have you know vision
and also perseverance the right
time comes so i'm working now
on my graduate thesis again let's see
a different perspective it might be also
with
more chances of being successful but
this is also
i think a lesson for
our students you know listening to this
talk uh be the perseverant
and the right times uh
almost always comes even when you
do not expect and who is your thesis
advisor
this advisor was an italian professor
an engineering professor tranquilo nardi
but i also got many
good hints from
other senior colleagues who are now
also professional colleagues on the
medical doctors also
i got i think my my life in a way
changed at that time because
i would say more after my thesis reading
than before i must say that at that time
in italy we didn't have any any phd
courses
strictly speaking the first phd
courses were introduced in 1982
or so and we we completed our education
through a quite long sequence of
the equivalent of bs and
ms plus sort of
training the post-degree training so in
total actually i
i got almost uh nine years of education
total one at that time mostly one decade
actually in mechanical engineering but
also in biomedical engineering
uh as the sort of specialization
and i mostly in pisa
at that time i must admit just to be
clear that i
i traveled for the first time in my life
on an airplane
at an age of 29 it will be a sort of
incredible today
of course i travel a lot using my
motorcycle because i'm still a biker
this is my passion uh
and uh but but not uh
not much before so my education i travel
in europe also but
never in the us and i had an education
that was international in vision and
aspiration
and not much in real
traveling but i must say that
even at that time pisa in in some
departments some
research centers was deeply
international so i had the chance
of for example there was an institution
i owe very much
to it the institute of clinical
physiology of the cnr cnr is the
national research council of italy
where i learned really a lot working
with biomedical engineers
physicists mathematicians and many many
doctors
and it was a very nice community
where i learned interdisciplinary
research
very much and international
say opening
to to new ideas to new new
inputs i've always been
prone to to have a very open mind
not too sectorial so i'm curious
very open to good ideas
hints coming from everywhere
rather than to from my own
specific field and then at that time i
learned a lot so i learned
you know working with sensors because
from the artificial heart
is lightly moved towards sensors
sensor technology so sensor to measure
pressure to measure
flow to measure you know
vibrations accelerations
noise any any kind mostly physical
physical parameters because i'm still a
mechanical engineer as a background so i
like physics
physics and
i you know sense of technology
is a very very good
gym for education of engineers because
it's very very interdisciplinary in
order to design a sensor
you need to have a
good understanding of many different
phenomena
and using different things so modeling
material science microelectronics
signal processing measurement
technologies
so you you become aware
of many different uh problems and you're
able to
integrate them in because the sensor
today we are no longer talking about
sensor we are more and more talking
about
mems and microsystems and in fact they
are sort of
micro uh machines if you will micro
microsystem
integrating mechanical parts actuators
sometimes
sensor themselves electronics
then control communication so
sensor technology is very very good for
training
and i learned a lot by working on
sensors for
a few years in many different areas
the problem of sensors is that the sense
sensors sensor experts
are they depend on the needs of
different people
so they have their own technology their
own
abilities there is a community and part
of it
also being part and still and part of it
but they are either
discoverers inventors in search of an
application
or say
the the implement people who can
implement
problems created by others
so but through the sensor pathway
i moved from the core of biomedical
engineering
into robotics so i entered the field of
robotics
through the door of the sensors
because while developing the physical
sensors
like pressure temperature vibrations
sensor acceleration sensors i i
learned about robotics i was not really
aware about robotics before
1982.
i met many many bright
colleagues and masters
who really advised me that
this would be a good area
for research of course for application
i go back to my and my thoughts for
science
so robotics gradually
became my main field of interest
because robotics is extremely wide
and so it was a very appropriate field
for
my own attitude
so looking at problems with the
large extension for example if you look
at
this robot here there is
everything here from sensors
to the actuators electronics
control intelligence
sensing in fact vision and and
communication and usefulness okay
and there's a mechanical structure that
i like something like my motorcycle
of course those are just electric motors
but they
can move i like uh motion capability in
outstanding things
so sensors were the gateway for robotics
and my first uh research in robotics
was on
sensing because
these colleagues that i met at that time
uh
advised me that robot
robots needed tactile sensors so
artificial skins they didn't have
artificial skin and you it's easy to
understand that
the sense of touch is
is very strong in biological systems
say all living beings need and have
the contact or more sophisticated
contact sensor like tactile sensors or
skin
able to detect uh
different kinds of contacts passively
but more frequently
actively so the sense of touch
is an active sense
it doesn't it's not let's say relatively
passive as hearing
for example you have to
search for information so
the sensors use similar technologies
as pressure sensors in biomedical
engineering and this was
where i came from but
they have many different functions
related to manipulation
and to active search so essentially
perception and intelligence if you will
so gradually
i became interested
not only in in the sensor but also
in the fingertip in the finger
in the hand then in the arm
and finally in the full body of the
robot
and this was what i gradually
developed and became the core
of my research interest in the late
80s and in the 90s i should also say
that
in the 80s
i was able to gather with a colleague of
mine
in pisa who is now professor daniel de
rossi
and people in
the cnr and the university
this is when i said that even if i
always studied in pisa
pisa was a place where
i could meet virtually everybody from
every part of the world was already very
international
so i met
two people who really changed my
my life one is
professor pierre galetti late professor
pierre galente
and professor peter richardson from
brown both from brown university
and through them
finally i i took a plane and
i visited my my dream
country that was the u.s so in 1980 i
was
finally able to fly to the u.s and then
i flew you know maybe more than a pilot
sometimes so now
top frequent flyer should come to i
i i just
say re reconsidered all my
previous uh staticity let's say and
now i'm very frequent so and i
we we started a collaboration with a
very big company
johnson johnson at that time so we
even create a partnership so pisa
providence because brown university is
in providence rhode island
and i i spent a lot of time
also with my family by the way in 1977
i i married my wife still my wife only
one
wife laura and i got two
daughters in those years
almost and so we went together to
spend time in providence in from
1983 to 1986 and seven i was a
an assistant professor in research at
brown university and we worked together
with the group of biomedical engineers
there
and medical doctors
in the development of a variety
of applications of piezoelectric
polymers
you still remember my background in
sensor technology
for medical application but also for
robotics applications so
and and that period exactly in those
years i moved from biomedical
engineering more and more towards
robotics and then
in 1985 and six
and seven i was one of the first
participants in the in ikra icrow
is now the international conference
robotics research
the first conference was in 1984
it was at that time it was a council and
not a natalie society
immediately afterwards it became a
nitropolis society
first the conference formerly was in
1985 in saint louis
and i had always attended the class from
that time on and i
met and i became familiar with many many
nice colleagues who are still good
friends from
sama katib ken salisbury
thomas lozano perez
and i cannot of course list all of them
but all of them are
very good friends colleagues still
we enjoy meeting collaborating that time
i would say really we created the
community
of robotics we were all young more or
less
some really young some mature but the
community was very young
very enthusiastic willing to
open a new frontier new field
in this sense we really were the
pioneers
of robotics uh even if
it's difficult at that time we didn't
realize entirely this but
there was a lot of enthusiasm everything
was uh to be discovered
mark rybert made this hopping robot
and you know all of us
worked in different fields i would say
at that time my specialization was
essentially
was very good in vision and the ken
sauce breathing
design his hand and samakati
was an excellent controller and and so
on and again i don't want to forget
distinguished colleagues but
just to name a few and so the the
community was uh
was growing and we were achieving
a very very good result and every every
conference actually every six months so
new things
were implemented or discovered sometimes
invented implemented and demonstrated
and it was so nice you know at that time
we used the vhs
videos okay and and we could uh
see that for the first time you know the
implementation
and so i also became
a close collaborator of regina bai chi
at the grasp lab
and we work together on hands on
perception
tactile sensing i spent years
collaborating
with her the university of pennsylvania
in philadelphia she came actually we
hosted
many many courses
all the members of the robotics
community more or less
came as visiting professors in pisa
i should also say that in 1983
i became a former and assistant
professor
at the university of pisa with tenure
and then in 1986 i became an associate
professor with tenure
of biomedical engineering at escuala
superior
santana and then in 2000 it took a lot
of time
because in italy those things are quite
unpredictable
i became a full professor still at the
square superior santana
and meanwhile i was a visiting professor
in many different places visiting
meeting organizing conferences
i think it's interesting and a very good
suggestion also for
young researchers there was a
one person who also probably changed my
life
so one i think was tony beige you know
tony beiji i met him in 1982
in one of my early
trips in the u.s with robotics mostly
robotics for me
that time i met lou paul who was a
purdue university
and mr pennsylvania but i also met
tony beichy at that time he was a jpl
and he was really very very nice
in advising me again to continue
on tactile the development investigating
of touch
and development of tactile sensors that
time also wrote
very fundamental papers on
tactile sensing uh including one on
spectrum
hydrocory spectrum who was
really very very often
cited it was one of the most cited
early papers on tactile sensing in
robotics
on active touch active tactile senses so
the concept of active touch
was introduced by me and colleagues at
that time
and so after this meeting with the tony
beijing actually
invited me in next conferences
for for many years i was the only
italian participating
these in robotics conferences
and also working with hydropoolee
because i tropoli was the main
society of course organized there we
were the founders of
of the robotics and automation society
and regina baichi was another person who
really advised me
and another person that a
few of us remember was jean victor
was a french scientist
who was a pioneer in teleoperation he
worked
at sea it is the nuclear
agency or energy agency in france in
paris
and he essentially invited me he
proposed me to organize
a natto workshop
in robotics you know at that p in that
period of time
82 83 84 there was a
flourishing of many organizations
in robotics and one of them
was the was irp
the international advanced robotics
program
of course russ hydropoli russ also
isr the international symposium or
robotics research that was
very strongly for only invitation
and i was honored to be invited i'm now
a permanent member of the board
there and at that time
jean vertu advised me to organize
this workshop promoted by natto
not a scientific workshop of course and
i organized two such workshops in 1986
and 1989
and i edited the books
that came out of these workshops
and if you read and i'm and
you know i'm glad to show to my students
the names of the people who attended
the the those workshops especially the
second one
and you can see all roboticists so those
who are famous in robotics
now were there so these were
founding events
and i owe to gender to you i was
hesitating because i was very young and
i thought i was you know inadequate for
organizing this workshop he encouraged
me very very much
we had a meeting in paris he said
you will never
say we will always remember positively
these
this effort so do this and just the one
week after
where this meeting in piracy
unfortunately he died of heart attack
but i want to remember him as
one visionary who had
really this attitude of encouraging
young person
to take you know to
to dream and to be part
of of this growing
area personally and so in
in in those years i i also
developed my own laboratory i should say
this because
my group of course i was alone i was
traveling i was
studying i was doing research alone but
i was also educating
young collaborators and i was in that
period toward the end of the 80s
i in in parallel with this international
networking
with this increasing responsibility in
organizing events
i mentioned these workshops but in 1991
i organized so accepted in 1989
to organize the one of the first
icar conferences icar stand
stand for international conference
on of advanced robotics i organized this
conference in pisa in 1981
1991 and we had 501
participants which you know it's huge
and again
if you look sometimes i do
all the pictures slides
yeah you can find uh virtually old
robotics community there
so and and my own group grew
very much uh in those years
in 1989 i created the
arts lab arts stage for advanced
robotics technology
system so also pointing out
the the work advanced because we didn't
work
very much in automation or industrial
robotics
it was mostly non-industrial robotics
technology because we like to build
real stuff and to have our own
technology very advanced technology and
system because we like to
integrate different components into
systems and then in 1991
i established the second laboratory the
square supply santana called the
first mytek then cream lab and stays for
laboratory for micro technologies and
microbiotics
both these laboratories have been fused
this year in the new
institute of biorobotics that i had the
privilege to coordinate
and we have we are now about 160 people
working on a variety of topics
with about 80 phd students on board
which is a huge number and doing
different things
okay i just want to go back a little bit
um
so in terms of the the social
connections
um so when did you meet
say uh virginia by chief for the first
time was when you were already at brown
or did you met her at these
ledger well you know i think i met her
first
in 1984 at this
first robotics international robotics
conference it was nice because
i remember i was introduced by tony
beijing
tony beijing from hungary regina baichi
from slovak at that time
and there was another colleague
who is a was a very good mathematician
and
and uh expert in algorithms i remember
the name now where we sat together
and uh you know the the three of them
were from formerly let's say from from
eastern europe
and they were in the in the us as
refugees i'd say very high quality
refugees
yes i met her at that time 1984
and then we became good friends and also
you know really colleagues in in working
together she came to pisa many times
i went to philadelphia many times
and were you a participant at all in the
romance
yeah not so often i must say but a
couple of times
uh also on that there is a interesting
uh story i think it was uh
exactly 1984 also or
three or five and i met uh
many many uh
very nice very good people bernie roth
from stanford also sama katib was there
bruno siciliano was a young student at
that time
and also also takanishi the professor
cato was there
i i became very a good uh
as a colleague of professor kato and
i and his student
atsu takanishi and also
professor sugano at that time were just
students
and they sang the the the wazada song
quite impressively at romanci
and now for they are additional mark
rayburt was there
so yes by david orrin
you know names david orrin is
now president-elect of uh the robotics
and the automation society
so yeah talking about people where and
at that time by the way 1983
i went for the first time in my life in
china
i spent one month in china at the
academia sinica and then at
jejan university you can imagine what
was china in 1983
and then i immediately from china i went
to japan for
also for the first time in my life and i
became a very very good friend of japan
so in the following years in most cases
i was living
outside my lab mostly in the us
i would say predominantly brown
providence in philadelphia and
also visiting and meeting and my kids
stand for the
also salt lake city the university of
steve jacobson
team with he is a fantastic
implementation in artificial arms
limbs and robots and
cmu and so
many and japan to japan i
i became really
very familiar with tokyo
tokyo wazada nagoya all
japan and i really became
acquainted and a very good friend and
higher
estimator of the japanese producer in
norway
and all all the people there's the
university of tokyo
and and a
great great admirer of japanese
abilities
you know really great names
great people great scientists very good
fantastic implementers of
very complex systems very creative
sometimes even doing very strange
things so the very same idea of the
humanoid was born at that time
more or less and i was fascinated
please remember that my background is
biomedical engineering it is coming back
because i should say my main
i would say a revolutionary idea
at that time was medical robotics
at that time people did not believe
in the possibility of using robots
in a medicine okay well of course it was
a
an idea circulating but
many people were very skeptical you know
that time
the puma robot the puma arm was was
there actually we had the puma
i had the first puma arm in italy
i was able to buy with my research funds
and bring and use in the lab at that
time
the first puma arm in uh
so we were part of this effort but this
was uh
they're just on control on very basic uh
very basic skills but i i thought
that it was possible to integrate
my competencies but not because of my
competitor because i
thought that for some application
robotic could
have been a fantastic solution
so merging and and keeping into account
my skills and my say
knowledge of the medical problems
with the new technology of robotics and
so
i began exploring and this happened
already in 1986
87 i published a paper with a student of
mine who is now professor
massimo bergamasco that time we
published
the first paper on the hydroponic
transaction of
biomedical engineering was a special
issue
of robotics and we we presented
a finger to be used as a palpation
device you know
active sensing actually it was the idea
was to
detect tumors in for
breast tumors or other pathologies
essentially based on the ability to
discriminate
embedded features
with the different mechanical properties
than the contiguous
material and also at that time i was the
tutor
of another brilliant student who who
became then also a specialist
on hands and manipulation that is
antonio vicki he is now a professor
i would say most many of my students and
giorgio buttato was another
student of mine we worked together he
spent a
long time training period grass blob
is now now also a full professor so
during my career i have educated now
maybe about 15
students who are full professors
in some cases associate professors in
most of them food professors
in italy and many abroad including the
us
some one of them in japan and
one is growing korea yes yes so in
europe different places are there any
other ones you want to name specifically
i would hesitate otherwise i forget of
your name
but in a way my latest student
is now director of our university so
mariah she is also extremely good
in she she is she is an expert
now of prosthetic ants is a world expert
in prosthetic hands
and she is director of my own university
and she was my phd student so
i think that it has been fun and
also exciting you know to to work
together to to
create etc such a community gradually
have you had a lot of students that go
into industry
as well yes many of them i'm very proud
that
this is another from let's say
a
academic policy point of view you know
let's put this way
was my vision you know traditionally
labs in the u.s
but also in japan
and in europe are
formed by one professor
plus a few graduate students this is a
typical model
in japan there is an almost rule that
each laboratory that is named after
professor
as 12 13 people maximum okay so a
professor
maybe one associate professor maybe one
assistant or a postdoc and then
graduate and undergraduate students i
i thought that this was that i
could explore a different frontier okay
and a different frontier is uh
attracting educating
large number of students
i'm talking about graduate students okay
and
this was very risky and also very
controversial
for some people but i i think this is in
fact a
very good model because one you have a
critical mass and you can do
big projects you can explore
many different frontiers rather than
being a specialist
and i must say that many many colleagues
are now coming after
this model and also increasing their
laboratories i was one of the first i
should
could not say the first but certainly
one of the pioneers of this new model
in robotics it is large groups but not
in research institutes but really in a
university setting
um and so it's a sort of pyramidal
sorry okay you were talking about the
larps
yes so um i i was able to create this
uh it was an adventure it was a big risk
i like risk by the way i really i like
to take risk i
i like to have visions and to go beyond
the conventions
in science i would say or in engineering
i make mistakes sometimes but
in general i'm able to adapt the
circumstances and to
find in any case a good solution for a
problem
so this one having large laboratories
was a risk
but i said i believe that robotics
needs a large number of researchers
to have an impact
and my my research activity
is a demonstration of this essentially i
started
i mentioned this from one sensor
to an array to the fingertip
then finger then the hand then the
entire limb the shoulder
and and more and complete complete
systems
and and in parallel the number of people
also grew and the number of projects
also
grew we were able to raise funds
and when you raise uh large funds
that were risky in the beginning
you know we were ambitious we started we
were mostly the first
to investigate the european uh
area so i said that i i passed i
spent my uh in
my 80s so beginning of 90s
in in japan and in the us mostly
and then i started to to to
to stay in europe rather because of the
growing of european the european
research program that i explored
since the very beginning so large funds
we are talking about million euros or
million dollars
allowed me to pay to support
many students many graduate students
many postdocs
so it was a sort of i'll say you know
the more you you you take a risk and
then you have
resources and then you you take further
risks okay
and so i explore this model of many many
phd students
not one professor one student but one
professor
maybe 10 students and in the meantime a
few post docs
that could work as sort of co-trainees
okay and the trainers of these and
i would say this model works very nicely
so was most of your funding then from
the european commission
how has that changed over the years
stila the large majority with some
exception of course there were peers for
example
still you know as i told you we had this
big
startup funding from johnson and johnson
and brown university then there was a
period we
were able to get quite substantial funds
from the national research council of
italy
and this was the final big
national program launched by italy
and at that time i i created a very
strong still lasting
partnership with julia sandini who is
also a professor and
director of one of the big groups
at the italian institute of technology
working now
on humanoid robot robotics the icub and
so on and we have many joint projects
we we're also playing the current
adventure
for the new european flagship on
problem companions that i'm coordinating
and
julia sandini is a part so it has been
and he's also a biomedical engineer as a
professor you know and so we
share this attention to the human model
to the biological models
so at that time in the late 80s early
90s
i i was really if i was quite young i
was invited to be a member of the board
of the italian program
the big one on robotics
and in that framework we started two big
projects
one on a robot a system for hospitals
and the other one as a robot for
agriculture
okay i coordinated the project on
the the medical robot and the judo
sandini the one on agricultural
and we had a quite substantial amount of
money
and we were able to test you know with i
tested
this model of coordinated project you
know how to
work in a product and this in my opinion
is a very very interesting model that in
general is not
it is not common in the us is not common
in japan
while i strongly believe in its value
of course there are inefficiencies
because you know when you have 10
different groups working on singles
subsystems and components
sometimes the efficiency is not the
highest
but at the same time you
you get the contributions from
some of the leading groups in in a
country
or in a continent and
it's really extremely uh
i would say educational for all of us
okay
and we were able to build
data we build a mobile robot a big one
with an
arm and the arm
by the way became i'm also very proud to
see that
the first product or the first startup
company that i created in our laboratory
in 1991 we created the first
startup company of the squarespare
santana
probably one of the first in italy they
have now
50 employees still alive
and successful and building nice
robots and nice mechanisms
they this company they have a number of
phd
graduates so you
have it's called it's interesting the
name is
sm that means chancia mcinally
sciencia is a let's say
an old italian it's not really latin is
an
old italian term to indicate
mechanical signs okay in
in in general it was invented it was
proposed by leonardo da vinci
so we wanted to have and the name the
original
signature let's say uh brand of
chancellor mcinally was written to write
from right
to left as leonardo wrote
so i think a very nice combination
of say history
attention to our past and look for the
future
this is typically italian i would say
and it's also our tradition try to blend
culture interdisciplinary
knowledge and
and what we hope is advanced engineering
so 1991 this arm became the first
product to the end
all together they represented one of the
first
robot in the world devoted to
medical applications have you been
involved in other startups
since yes i'm right now i'm the
president
of two startup companies
small but ready to grow
and our
team has created more than 20
startup companies so you asked me
about our phd students they work in
industry and my answer is yes they work
everywhere they work in university in
italy and abroad they work in research
institutes some of them work in patent
offices
some many of them work in
industries and
many of them create or work in
startup companies so even if
we produce many phd students i must say
that so far
i don't have major complaints
about finding jobs i would say
is a virtuous process you know our
institution has a
high reputation so if
just being here and being educated here
like in the best university in the world
is is a good
uh passport you know it's true is a good
background for getting
positions and i would say
and in addition there are obviously the
capabilities of
both those those graduates
so i'm pretty happy about this model so
large number so the ability to have an
impact
not a miniaturized laboratory to do
miniaturized things
okay but a large lab
to do visible things or to miniaturize
but complex
i like this idea of having an impact
okay doing things
that are visible and perceived
as at the frontier of science but at the
same time
at the frontier of application
and we create jobs
we create jobs we we create
people who have who are successful
essentially
i i'm very glad that i'm not the only
one of course but i'm glad that
our students are highly appreciated
worldwide
they go everywhere they travel not like
me
they travel not like me when i was
that their age i mean they are traveling
old times uh i have
huge
network of knowledge so
it's a it's an interesting system
i'm quite proud of just to go back to
some of your
the actual projects that you worked on
so you're early working on the tactile
sensors
what were some of the technical issues
you were addressing at that time and the
real challenges you overcame and what
kind of
materials and technologies did you
develop to overcome this channel
well at that time i would say the most
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challenging issues where the and first
of all the
understanding of the nature of touch
from in neurophysiology this is really a
challenge because uh while vision
has been a motion so motor control
have been and diseases related to motor
control
have been investigated quite a lot in
neuroscience
okay so mapping of different areas of
the brain
for for uh vision
or for locomotion
are quite well known like
other reasoning logic language
tactile sensing touch the sense of touch
has been
investigated at a much lower level of
depth i would say so
there was some knowledge about the main
structure
of skin different receptors
and how they relate to the
cortical areas and and then
to other areas but they were still are
not totally elucidated so this one was
one of the
the main challenges modeling and
modeling
the the sense of touch in humans that
was really fascinating but that
and this opened to me uh
on the one hand a connection with the
word again
of biology i was familiar with and very
interested in
but also relation with neuroscientists
so we still are working very much with
neuroscientists
so in the
in last decade i was also one of the
pioneer
i hope to not to be too ambitious to say
that
of neurobiotics neural robotics
it is really the the fusion or the
integration of knowledge in neuroscience
and robotics okay also this was very
controversial at the beginning
so people said well what is the relation
the robot is just the machine why
this idea of using robot to understand
how biological systems work
or using robots to or robotic
solution to substitute for example
limbs you know prostate artificial so
that
the hand or the arm or a leg it was
in my opinion very very promising very
important so
first point neuro science
let's say scientific knowledge then the
second
issue was the technology for building
factory sensor
so at that time we're talking about
25 or more years ago the technology
technology was growing it was still
quite immature also so
together with my colleagues and my
students i was able to
explore also combined solutions you know
working with
piezoelectric materials especially
polymers that could adapt
to and conform different shapes
but also other solutions
like optical
sensor for example optical fibers or
thermistors or temperature sensors
and and solid state
pressure sensors and the combination of
you know so the idea was to combine
all these sensors essentially into a
layered structure so this was probably
one of the main innovations i was able
to
introduce these are of a multi-layered
tactile sensor not just one type that is
similar to what we have in our
fingertips
so each sensor able to detect
something so high frequency
vibrations
i even used a nail an artificial nail
so it was a combination of static or
quasi-static sensing
dynamic sensing temperature sensing
so at the end one of the most i would
say this was really
pioneer workers again was really cited
by
a lot of people
some of them are now famous professor at
that time they were
graduate students they met me at that
time i
already made some many seminars and
conferences on these
so it was really a quite pioneer work
was the idea of using a fingertip
to to detect texture or
also the distribution of
of local stresses to detect
sharp features the ability to
sense a thermal flow
from heated finger to
the object to have a
uh to to detect to have a sense
of the the material the water materials
don't know for example when you touch
wood or touch uh
iron steel plastic
you have a different feeling even if the
temperature is the same
and the reason is that the heat is drawn
at different speed by different
materials
for the same contact more or less and so
you have different uh sensations on what
your touches so this kind of thing
that mix technology
with processing so how you
this this could be processed and and
then of course
also the activity so how you
explore different surfaces what are the
what is the strategy
and still now we have project on that
so we have been made we made a lot of
work
on for example uh
micro technologies for
for increasing the resolution
of the sensors or also using silicon
technologies
and now hybrid technologies or different
kind of polymers
we are collaborating with industry on
this
for detecting for example the
hardness softness or
say smoothness of the skin and so there
is an
interesting evolution of this
but in terms of the the more signal
processing and software
side what are the big challenges of
integrating these different
kinds of
yeah well of course there are different
levels of integration of these
uh one level is the let's say the the
the peripheral one
and this information can be either kept
different like different sensory
channels
okay toward the brain or this can be
integrated at different levels because
we have different levels of reactivity
okay so for example some of the of the
of the this information should be
processed
very quickly in fact
some of these of
sensory information when we touch
something that is
really hot so we need to
to react quickly sometimes this does not
happen
in fact when we touch something that is
very hard to sometimes it takes time
to make it to remove the finger because
it goes
up to let's say deeper
and more complex processing units but
maybe when you expect something these
are you are ready
you can close the loop much much faster
and this is an example of some behavior
then there are
a higher level uh when you take
maybe a decision or you define a
strategy
and and they go up to the let's say the
cortical level
when you have a strategy when you take
the decisions
so the sense of touch as like other
senses of course have many different
levels of processing
some of them unconscious some of them
conscious
and the goal that we pursue
is uh to try to integrate these
different levels
into an architecture that a robot
can properly use
and i would say we are exploring
all of these uh issues also gradually
at this time our we still have
the finger as a basic unit you know
for exploring the sense of
for example roughness and
we my students actor my colleagues have
now
obtained a very nice results published
in top
journals including top neuroscience
junior because we are collaborating with
neuroscientists now
we found finally some very good partners
in neuroscience but then the next
unit say like some systems we're working
on is the hand
so using these capabilities in order to
control
the grasping of the hand in robotics
also in in prosthesis and then finally
also we are using we're using the sensor
touch
in the in for for for the foot now
we're also working on locomotion this
robot that actually has been developed
after wazada university is an example of
collaboration with wazada university
as as working capabilities and working
is a very very complex
ability that of course humans
have but we take quite a lot to learn it
and then the sense of touch you can find
the sensor touching many
other applications from exoskeletons
for helping
people fragile elderly but also
disabled people to to to work
to work and we we use uh
contact sensors everywhere there is a
a contact between uh uh a
say robotic devices or exoskeleton with
uh with the with the limbs
we use more and more robots for
rehabilitation
we use we have a new program that's very
fascinating and very promising in using
sensorized toys to detect
pathologies of neurodevelopment in
babies actually and children
we have developed a sort of gym you know
sort of
uh playstation if you will but for
children in which shooter can play
with different toys and
while they play the toys
sense what the the child
is doing if manipulation is
let's say physiological
or as some pathological tract
and we can find touch
in even in micro robots on a small robot
so we are working on a new generation
of robots for diagnostics or for
therapy in which locomotion
vision and and touch are also very
important
could you talk a little bit more about
the significance of the active touch and
active sensing and how that changes the
problem and
where you keep up with that yeah uh
we started you know my first very first
development together with a student
of uh contact sensing was
with a with a was a fixed platform
uh on which we we put objects
okay and then the the the
platform had many tax cells tactile
units
and then and then and they uh
could detect the presence or absence of
this object this was a very preliminary
and very primitive if you will
technology for detecting
an object using contact but it
was very very clear very soon
that this is not the solution that
we need activity to
say to
increase the the information you can get
you know it's like when we observe
something from different uh positions
essentially we
increase the information that we get
from an image and for touch this is even
more important
so by touching different objects
so by the hand we
increase the information we can get and
we can
further increase this information by
moving
our cameras let's say because the
fingertip is a certain camera
is a tactile camera so it is like
getting
uh different kinds of information on an
object
with different from different points of
view actually
so active touch is fundamental during
desperation then when you have learned
how what an object is you you just
move with with a very simple grasping
but it's very fascinating to explore
this kind of active
behavior and and an idea robert
should be able to do that in the
learning phase
the learning phase is probably the most
fascinating phase
in the development of of a person
okay children always learn and we all
always continue continue to learn but
it's fascinating how a newborn
is is learning and discovering the world
so active touch is like a discovery in
the world
and then when you have learned how
the object look like or feel like
you can use your let's say mechanical
you can use the hand because the hand is
an exploratory tool
but then is also a very effective
tool for doing things so the two phases
follow each other
so over the last 30 years of robotics
we've seen
commercial robots that have arms and
hands and
now they can walk and we're really just
starting to see the beginning of robots
with real
touch so what are the real challenges
for consumer products that take
advantage of this kind of
touch see this is uh
it is the current challenge you know
and i would say that
due to technology
and due to progress in
understanding of models
on learning and perception lots of
progress have been
been done in in
in implementing complex and effective
behaviors
in in robots
still this area has not
reached the level that one would
envisage
that one would really would like to
achieve in consumer let's say
robots so we we
are pursuing so there are two main
areas that are pursued one is
based on let's say the
ai style kind of
approach it is uh developing
more and more effective algorithms
to understand i mean to
provide the robot with the ability to
discriminate with ability
to explore
and manipulate for example objects
there is another road
that can be pursued and then
that we are for example myself i believe
in this very much and it is
the one based on the biological model so
understanding the brain what we call the
neuro
robotics and there are
models and i would say now the majority
i i dare to say the majority of
roboticists
are working in this direction to so to
take
as a model the structure of the human
or the different structures and to
try to replicate to understand and then
replicate
different levels of behavior starting
from
now quite a lot from low level
low level animal species i would say so
back to basic
uh in order to understand how these
robots can
become aware of the environment they are
so to use a touch
in an active manner to
explore and then negotiate
let's say environment that are not well
known
i would say that here there is a new
area that is becoming extremely
promising in my opinion that is the
field of uh
embodied intelligence okay the area
embodied intelligence and people like
ralph pfeiffer the university of zurich
have pioneered this area recently
um and uh there are colleagues in my lab
like uh professor chuchi alaski who are
exploring this
field uh very very deeply uh
the the the idea is
that body and
brain cannot be separated okay
this is my opinion the the most
attractive and promising approach in the
last
few years so in the past the idea was
that
if you uh fabricate
different components i mentioned the
tactile sensors and then the finger and
then the
the the hand and so on and then the
brain then you process
these with with some software okay
uh you can do things well like the
reality
seems uh that is this is not
the right way to go of course it works
in many circumstances
but this is not how biological organisms
really work in biological organisms
you cannot separate actually the
function that the body
structures and and morphology really
uh are developed let's say
together with the processing and
actually the processing
uh in some way depends on the morphology
uh with a very simple verb basic
very simple basic uh behavior of
neurons or group of neurons you with
different
morphologies you get different behaviors
so those features and the imagines
of what we we can call the the
the connection you know the nexus of
brain body
and mind you know you can come
eventually
to to
to develop robots that could be
as effective as biological systems when
i say biological systems i do not mean
necessarily humans
actually it is uh probably
more appropriate to to start from
basic that are of course trying to
accelerate to accelerate
the evolution but beginning from
simple uh animals
up to more complex animals some simple
animals
exhibit extraordinary performance and
how they do is uh is my own curiosity
more and more and the curiosity of many
colleagues
so and it is not
i would say admitting that we are not
able
to do to achieve complex behavior it's
just
a a parallel way because
we are still and we are still taking a
lot of benefit from
novel technology you know we have
robotics
has been able in the last few decades to
develop
extraordinary effective technologies
and to incorporate them in very reliable
very dependable machines if we think of
mars or just an industrial robot or even
the the
for cleaning robots you know they are
extremely effective
using available technology so robotics
we are very optimistic but we believe
that
in order to make the the the real next
step
okay that is obtaining behavior
that could eventually allow
to leave robots together with humans and
then they can interact
we should probably pursue the other way
so for example developing what we call
the soft robots okay this is but
soft doesn't mean it's necessarily
sponge-like
robots it means a soft behavior that is
partly physical softness but in part
is a contrast softness is ability
to adapt and to negotiate
other shapes
and and and machines and and
people so this combination this
those are the real frontiers you know
given that
we are already able to to develop very
effective components so
the basic is mechatronics incidentally
should add that i've been one of the
pioneers for sure in italy and also
in europe japanese have been the real
pioneer so mechatronics
mechatronics is the real conceptual
fusion not
just the addition you know but really
the future
of mechanical structures so you need the
body
of sensors actuators
energy energy is very important energy
will become one of the main issues in
robotics we cannot afford
to have robots that consume like
a a heater a boiler
you know energy like a bar we need a
robot that
have a very very low consumption that
means
they have very smart solutions
in them then communication
of course architectures all these
integrated
is mechatronics so we know how to make a
good mechatronic rob platform for robots
but next step is to go as i say beyond
the mechatronics
so rather than developing different
components
putting together and then trying to
miniaturize
we need to design entirely
you know deeply integrated systems
in which uh there is a there is no
distinction
between what is mechanics uh
what what what are the actuators what
are the sensor what is the intelligence
in a way
it's like and this is how uh
uh bodies uh in in biology are built
so i go back to my original
pasture biomedical engineering but it's
really hard to design
deeply integrated systems absolutely
that is a challenge in fact
but i'm not saying that we should forget
the other one i'm saying that
the mechatronic approach has been
the major success of robotics still is a
major success
and we should design robots
according to the mechatronic approach if
we want to develop
machines that can be used by people
now but if you ask me
what is the frontier of research
i would add to the previous one that's
still
there this one of
of we call sentient machines
we called the actually we are pursuing
this
in a in a this new
adventure that is the
european uh initiative on
fat flagships you know fat stays for
future energy technology
flagship is is a is an initiative of the
size
of 1 billion euro 10 year duration
president obama just launched a
sort of u.s flagship in the u.s 10 years
also similar
size of funding i would say more
industry
related and application related the
concept is
co-something so co-worker
human robot cooperation which is
perfectly fine
okay and this is more along the line of
the mechatronics
paradigm also in europe
we have initiatives in this field now
i'm fully supportive and part of it
so how to increase and to improve the
the
the performance of the mechatronic
platform
plus the the software
so intelligent machines robots are high
performance interior machines
but in my opinion the new research
frontier okay entirely research frontier
or probably the most interesting for me
and most challenging as you said is
building new bodies
and new brains for
new robots and
so reducing or even eliminating this
distinction between the different
components by building the system
all together so we human twitter
we of course we can find a different
morphologies and different organs in a
body
but sometimes they are sort of
indistinguishable they work
as a system they really work together
and this is in my opinion is a marvelous
concept probably is the real new
generation of machines
in the future one could use this concept
maybe for
building cars or airplanes
well what do you think the major
applications are going to be for this
new generation of robotics
well our
our main
application field of application i would
say
is uh taking care of humans
okay um because this
soft behavior one could call gentle
behavior
you know it's like but i don't want to
use a word that can be misleading but
it's like
a pact you know but sometimes you use
the term pet you have the impression on
sort of low
quality low level but
from from an interaction point of view
okay how you uh
to to develop the
combination of mechanical properties
you you don't want to have maybe a
machine like this
at home you know of course this is a
fantastic piece of engineering
but it's also diverse
you know that if you touch this machine
you can hurt
or be harmed so
of course you can put something around
but
in most cases the intrinsic behavior of
a machine
is something that you immediately
distinguish from
a a living being a living being is
silent it's not not noisy
is a is a is a
very uh very very very sweet activity
the word is uh gracious
you know i like this very much okay this
concept of graceful behavior
actually it was proposed or
its importance was already mentioned by
steve jacobson
almost 30 years ago because he developed
the robot for disney
and he had always this idea of graceful
behavior but they had in mind
to make a robot for an amusement park
let's say but but actually this is
really a fundamental feature
you know i can tell you my real dream
is uh and in fact i vote
to put this concept in the flagship
proposal but it was
at this time is in standby because it is
considered to be frivolous
but my real dream is to develop
a dancing partner robot
because i think this will be the
highest expression of performance
because a robot able to dance a
passionate tango or a waltzer
it's a fantastic demonstration of
performance
it's like having a formula one you know
the formula one
is the performance is handling and above
all
speed uh but
so a a a robot has a different kind of
performance
and dancing
but not in a robotic way in a
totally human way you know dancing i'm
not able
i'm not know if you are able most of our
listeners
are really not but they can easily
recognize by carefully observing
a human dancing nicely
how difficult it is the marvelous
coordination
of planning
of expression of motion
capabilities
coordination and also emotional
interaction with your partner
it's fantastic and
one could say well it is frivolous it's
not
particularly useful yeah my answer is
that
a dancing robot like cinderella
could remove his or her
dancing suit and maybe put on
a working suit and be a waiter be a
worker be a plumber
do a lot of different things because
when you
are able to develop this kind of
performance you are able
obviously to develop all the useful ones
but
combining dream and usefulness
is my opinion is a fantastic new
frontier robotics and again
it is in my opinion this is a really big
issue
it is not possible to achieve this
with let's say the traditional approach
okay
there is a there are a lot of things
that you can do with the traditional
approach and i fully support
i'm fully involved and fully say
positive
but if you really want to develop a
behavior
like a very humble worm
or a professional
dancer man or female you need a
different approach and this is the one
in my opinion a robot you should pursue
sort of the robot team that can beat the
world cup champion
but this is yeah but this is a different
kind of performer in a way it's a
strength
okay of course there is something
coordination but
gracefulness okay the the
the football player is not particularly
graceful one could say
a gymnastic a say
a champion of gymnastics is also
very highly coordinated but dancing as
an added value that is coordination
with the partner is also communication
you know being
exchanging information and this is my
vision again
i i'm saying that in order to in order
to do this
we have the solution as i said of course
they will take time
we want to develop new entirely new
materials
entirely new actuators like muscles
new sensors new energy new communication
new nerves
and fusing them together in a in a
in the way i mentioned it is with using
these
signs of embodiment not just
screwing the pieces together this is the
count
right when you achieve you you're able
to put together this system
i think one could develop a paradigm
of course it will take decades
not so many actually we are confident
that
if we start now working in this
direction as we are doing and many
others are doing
we can achieve this uh in a couple of
decades even
even earlier okay so before the
couple of wrap up questions i just want
to get one more historical question
which is uh when you decided to come
back to italy
after the states and japan what did
robotics look like in europe and in
italy and
how has it evolved yeah no it's a
interesting point
i would say that robotics
in europe in the 90s
was not as definitely not as advanced
as in japan and as in the us
in the field of non-industrial robots
you know
europe was
i maybe one could say leading but
certainly being one of the major players
in industrial buildings so the goal of
europe at that time was
industrial robotics while in the us
and in japan especially the field of
non-industrial robotics was
explored quite deeply and
in a more advanced way so what i this is
why
in the 90s i spent so much time with
and in japan and in the u.s okay
but then i started to introduce
this concept gradually of course with a
lot of criticism by the way because
europeans are very pragmatic
and many people said well this is not
useful the idea of service robots okay
non-industrial medical robots and they
gradually became
very popular and accepted so
now i dare to say that
robotics in europe is probably
leading this area
i can say why maybe korea is also
working very much but korea
is a is a relatively large but not so
large country you know europe is about
500 million people
the us is a very very good in military
robotics now
the choice that the us have done mostly
where in the military field military
field
american robotics is at the top
japan has declined i must say
my japanese friends will forgive me but
they've been very good in some areas but
not
as visionary and as good as in the
90s i think
now europe especially due to the major
efforts that have been invested and i've
been
one of the say players
in the game also by convincing
the commission there are many many names
eric christensen for example
have been a leading person in this and
now is a
georgia tech he's doing the same in the
u.s by the way
but we created first the euron
uh network now it is called
europe still urine is there but we were
able
to gather so the european community or
roboticists
to convince the commission to make a
major investment
a few hundred million euros in this area
so i think that
to get now really europe is uh
at the top it was not like this
and um what's your advice for young
people who are interested in
pursuing a career in robotics or getting
involved
uh my advice is
quite simple it is first of all
to study a specific discipline
to acquire a very basic
competence in an area
like mechanical engineering like
computer science like
control and so on because i think this
is very important robotics in my opinion
is for
graduate students okay it's not for
undergraduate
it's a i i am this
opinion that first you must
really dominate be good in
one discipline but you should if you
want
to become a roboticist the same is for
biomedical engineering by the way
you should not become a
real specialist okay on the contrary
after your basic studies that
can be at the bs but better at master
level
rather than go narrow
into a speciality you must go white
in interdisciplinarity and this is
really the difference
robotics requires broad vision
interests curiosity and ability and will
to learn different things rather than
being specialized
to be not specialized okay
and to be able to deal with different
things to be curious
physics biology
basic science material science
intelligence
even social and
ethical philosophy issues you know
should be this is really robotics
is a is a paradigm of
actually the paradigm of how intelligent
systems
humans even are so and and you can do
this uh
with at a graduate level
with working in a good group in my
opinion
a large group not a tiny group
but you can also follow and select a
very good advisor there are so many
robotics now and uh learn
under his or her guidance but
uh i i think this is uh this is my
recommendation
so selecting uh
one of the best robotics
groups in the world and be part of the
community so
being involved in large projects
international projects is very important
i say this especially you know because
sometimes especially in the u.s
graduate students tend to remain in
their own university
for all their phd peers this is wrong
in my opinion i strongly recommend not
to do this
fortunately in europe we don't have this
attitude actually
inside for example in my university it
is compulsory to spend
one year of your phd abroad
compulsory because this
is very effective in learning but also
in
opening your mind in understanding
how things work in a different
environment with different people it's
not only a matter of eating different
food and learning different languages it
is also this
but it's a matter of of uh
uh becoming acquainted with
how different uh people different areas
maybe work
and this is very important to reach the
the skill
that is needed to become a real leader
in robotics that is as i said in a way
robotics is against specialization okay
it
is a pro a very open mind
but it's fascinating i would advise
everybody to work in robotics
actually many people invite us
because they recognize that robotics is
so
fascinating is also as so attractive for
ordinary people for media it is a way
to uh to have access to many different
communities because robotics can do
everything you can work with the rescue
people
you can work with nurses and surgeons
you can work with artists you can work
with philosophers so you can work
with neuroscientists who can get a nobel
prize
with material sciences scientists you
can publish together with them
in journals with 30 as an impact factor
that would never be possible
with traditional robotics so it's a
standing expanding your mind
your reach your culture your networks
my opinion is fantastic
no i must admit that my
my motorcycle is uh is a
suzuki bustrom so it's an enduro
but i had uh many
italian mothers at the very beginning of
my passion
which comes back to when i was 16.
so i had a vespa scooter a kyanjo i had
an
augusta augusta that was
world champion for many years i had a
moto mourini
that is now well just the back
was a fantastic motorcycle and then
japanese unfortunately for
my italian pride but very nice
motorcycles
i can say one final thing you are
talking about
sentient no sense is this a
sort of empathy between that one would
like to implement
between a robot and the machine okay
a robot and the human so for example the
metaphor
of the dancing partner robot is like
this
is how to uh to create
an empathy uh uh that is really
moving together having no
looking uh eye to eye that is typical
of a couple dancing and of course this
is
a a dream but is a way but
actually one could think about sentient
with like a a cat
and the owner or a dog okay
or a horse this kind of empathy but i
consider as an empathy also the
relationship between myself and my
motorbike
but of course i in other words i'm a
wife i have two daughters i have many
friends
real empathy is with them but when i'm
alone
with my motorcycle there is an empathy
i talk to her and this demonstrates and
this doesn't happen with a car
it doesn't happen with the tv it happens
with a motorcycle with a bike
so you have this uh anthony i i really
think that the same kind of
empathy you know could uh become real
with
with with the robot uh companion you
know that companion is not
only a system he's an assistant with an
empathy you know with some level of
emotional interaction but i want to say
i
i don't pretend that the machine is
intelligent has its own consciousness
or nothing like this because i
my background as a mechanical engineer
is such that i like the concept of a
machine
that has some degree of intelligence but
not
as much as me okay but the same level of
empathy that i have with my motorcycle
i think is very nice and fully
affordable to all
this is what i like to achieve well it's
sort of an extension of yourself
when it's yeah of course exactly but i
think the dance partner is even
more complicated because not only are
you empathizing with the partner but
they're
empathizing back with you yeah no but in
fact
it's fascinating though all right
thank you