About

Francesco Vigni is an Italian-Dominican engineer with a strong background in software development for robotics and autonomous systems. He earned his Ph.D. in Information and Communication Technology for Health (ICTH) from the University of Naples Federico II in 2025, with a thesis titled "The Unscripted Encounter: Social Cues for Spontaneous Human-Robot Interactions." His doctoral research, funded by the European Horizon 2020 PERSEO project, was conducted in affiliation with the ICAROS research center.
Francesco brings extensive industry experience in robot perception, motion planning, and embedded systems. He has contributed to the development of real-time software solutions for stereo vision, 3D object detection, and deep learning-based embedded vision systems. His work has supported robotic grasping, scene understanding, and social-aware navigation, with a focus on creating robust and scalable software pipelines for autonomous and interactive robots.
He holds an M.Sc. with honors in Computer and Automation Engineering (2018) and a B.Sc. in Management Engineering (2015), both from the University of Siena, Italy. While his academic research explores human-inspired behaviors for socially engaging robots, his industrial focus lies in building reliable, efficient, and intelligent software architectures that bridge the gap between perception, decision-making, and robot behavior in dynamic environments.