Centro "E. Piaggio", Università di Pisa (UNIPI), Italy

The Interdepartmental Research Center "E. Piaggio" is an Institute of the University of Pisa that works to promote and perform multidisciplinary research in the fields of Bioengineering, Robotics and Automation. It cooperates with private and public companies to study specific application problems that need advanced or innovative solutions. The staff is composed of mechanical, electronic and chemical engineers, mathematicians, physicists, chemists and biologists. The Center actively participates in many EC-funded projects including the Networks of Excellence HYCON, PHRIENDS, IMMERSENSE, and the recently completed RUNES project. The Interdepartmental Research Center also promotes a fruitful activity of training of PhD students and Post-Doctoral fellows.

Antonio Bicchi received the "Laurea" degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Pisa in 1984, and the Doctoral degree from the University of Bologna in 1989. After a post-doctoral fellowship at the Artificial Intelligence lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he joined the Faculty of Centro "E. Piaggio" and D.S.E.A. in 1990. He is currently Professor of Systems Theory and Robotics in the Department of Electrical Systems and Automation (DSEA) of the University of Pisa. Since 1990 he has been leading the Robotics and Automation Group at the Interdepartmental Research Center "E. Piaggio", University of Pisa.
His main research interests are in: Dynamics, kinematics and control of complex mechanical systems, including robots, autonomous vehicles, and automotive systems; Air Traffic Management systems, Haptics and dexterous manipulation; Theory and control of nonlinear systems, in particular hybrid (logic/dynamic, symbol/signal) systems.
He has published more than 200 papers on international journals, books, and refereed conferences.

Lucia Pallottino was born in Rome, Italy, in 1974. She received the Laurea degree in Mathematics from the University of Pisa in 1996/97 with a thesis in Numerical Analysis. She received a Ph.D. in Robotics and Industrial Automation at the Department of Electrical Systems and Automation (DSEA) of the University of Pisa in 2002. She is currently a researcher in the Interdepartmental Research Center "E. Piaggio'" in the University of Pisa. Her main research interests within Robotics are in management of networked mobile robots, motion planning and control for nonholonomic systems, Air Traffic Management Systems and quantized control.