My Research

I focus my research on Artificial Cognition for Socially Intelligent Robots. My work addresses several fundamental questions like:

How can robots build sophisticated mental models and maintain socio-physical situation awareness of their human partners?
What socio-cognitive architectures favor the long-term, responsible acceptance of robots in human environments?

By bridging cognitive psychology with robotics and artificial intelligence, I explore the psychological determinants - such as Theory of Mind - that influence our relationships with embodied AI.

My research lays at the cross-roads of fundamental modeling in artificial intelligence (AI) and cognitive sciences, and experimental research, with many "in-the-wild" field experiments, in real-world settings.

I have pioneered work on semantic knowledge representation and recently introduced the concept of Social Embeddings: a promising new avenue for modeling dynamic social 'situations' using hybrid LLM/symbolic approaches.

I validate my research through extensive real-world deployments, including lifelong co-design with users in public spaces like schools and hospitals.

Check out some of my papers showing how social robots might help children with autism or children struggling with handwriting; how robots might help older adults in geriatric hospitals or be trained to assist in a gym.

A core pillar of my work is the creation of open-source software standards and tools. I am the lead architect and maintainer of ROS4HRI (ROS REP-155), the first international software standard for Human-Robot Interaction. I have developed and deployed robust architectures across diverse platforms, from Willow Garage’s PR2 to PAL Robotics' ARI and TIAGo Pro. These tools include the ORO and KnowledgeCore management modules, as well as perspective-aware Natural Language Processing frameworks.

Science should have an impact on society: From 2021 to 2025, I have led Technology Transfer at PAL Robotics as the Head of the AI and Social Robotics group. In this role, I bridged the gap between academic research and industry, defining the roadmap for socially intelligent manipulators and establishing frameworks for ethics and responsible robotics. My research now underpins the backbone architecture of commercial robots used globally in healthcare, education, and research.

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