Francesco Vigni

/franˈt͡ʃe.sko ˈvi.ɲi/ -

he/him why?

I spend my time exploring the world of robots, their brains (AI) and their impact on our societies.
Currently, I am pursuing my PhD at the University of Naples Federico II, Italy where I study how robots can learn to interact in a human-like way. The future expects robots to be able to interact with humans naturally and somebody has to make it happen ;).
I am part of the perseo project, a Marie Skłodowska-Curie International Training Network (ITN) funded by the European Commission that allows me to collaborate with the top European researchers in the field.
On this website, I collect some of my works and interests.

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Francesco Vigni

Handshake prototype

@icra2019

Want a beer?

Telepresence robot


26 May, 2024

The work Too Close to You? A Study on Emotion-Adapted Proxemics Behaviours has been accepted for presentation at the 33rd IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN 2024) in Pasadena, California.

26 May, 2024

The work Are Emotions Important? A Study on Social Distances for Path Planning based on Emotions has been accepted for presentation at the 33rd IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN 2024) in Pasadena, California.

22 Mar, 2024

The highschool Istituto Salesiano Sacro Cuore in Napoli, Italia invited me to give a talk titled: "Datemi un bit e solleverò il mondo" focused on the implication of Robotics and AI in the future of our societies. Around 200 students attended the talk and actively participated in the discussion. The event took place in the Teatro Auditorium Salesiano Salvo D'Acquisto.

09 Mar, 2024

The second edition of our workshop WARN: Weighting the benefits of Autonomous Robot persoNalization has been accepted for inclusion in the 33rd IEEE RO-MAN 2024 conference in Pasadena California, USA.

10 Feb, 2024

I was hosted at the Autonomous Systems Lab at the Technische Universitaet Wien (TUW) in Vienna, Austria, where I worked on developing non-verbal intuitive behaviours for first encounters with social robots as a visiting researcher for a five-month period.

10 Jan, 2024

The work A Rosbag Tool to Improve Dataset Reliability has been accepted as Late Breaking Report at the 2024 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI 2024) in Boulder Colorado, USA.

20 Oct, 2023

Our work The impact of robot communication style on user task performance was presented at the 5th edition of I-RIM 3D of in Rome, Italy.

15 Jul, 2023

I was a visiting researcher at Noosware NV in Eindhoven, The Netherlands for 2 months working on the development of emotional aware mobile robotics. This stay lead to the work Are Emotions Important? A Study on Social Distances for Path Planning based on Emotions.

01 Jun, 2023

The work Sweet Robot O’Mine - How a Cheerful Robot Boosts Users' Performance in a Game Scenario has been accepted for presentation at the 32nd IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN 2023) in Busan, Korea.


Early Stage Researcher - MSCA Fellow

University of Naples Federico II - Naples, Italy

Dec, 2022

Perseo Project

Robotics Engineer

Roboception GmbH - Munich, Germany

Jul, 2022

Licensed Engineer

Polytechnic University of Turin - Turin, Italy

Dec, 2022

Autonomous Systems Developer

STtech GmbH - Munich, Germany

Apr, 2020

Research Assistant

Technical University of Munich - Munich, Germany

Apr, 2019

Daimler Cloud Services Consultant

Kadacon GmbH - Area Mid-North Italy

Feb, 2019

Master Degree in Robotics and Automation Engineering

University of Siena - Siena, Italy

Oct, 2018

Thesis: “A Closed Loop Approach to Human-Robot Handshake“ - 110/110 e Lode

Bachelor Degree in Management Engineering

University of Siena - Siena, Italy

Oct, 2015

Thesis: “Analisi e confronti di sistemi di trading basate sul trend following” - 92/110


© Francesco Vigni 2024