Biography

Italo Almirante is a PhD student at the ARS Control Laboratory (DISMI, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia), working on multi-robot systems, autonomous control, soft robotic manipulation, and AI-driven robotics. His research focuses on scalable and robust autonomy for real-world applications, with particular attention to large-scale planning in dynamic environments, reinforcement learning for coordination, and robotic manipulation.

He received both his Bachelor’s degree (2021) and Master’s degree (2024) in Mechatronic Engineering from the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. In 2024, he joined the ARS Control Laboratory as a Research Fellow, working on advanced control for manipulators, perception techniques for deformable objects, and interaction between robots and complex environments.

He has been a core member of the ProjectRED team since 2021, contributing initially as Control Software Developer and later serving as Team Leader and Project Manager. He is currently Robotics Supervisor of the team, supporting system design and development of autonomous rover platforms. Under his leadership and contribution, the team achieved 9th place at the European Rover Challenge (ERC) 2023 On-Site competition and 3rd place in the ERC 2023 Remote competition.

He developed a multi-robot simulation framework integrating ROS2 and CoppeliaSim for large-scale fleet replanning in dynamic environments. He is also actively involved in manipulation of deformable objects through the integration of vision and force feedback control strategies.