Alessandro Roncone

About

Alessandro Roncone is a roboticist whose research sits at the intersection of human-robot collaboration, embodied cognition, and safe robot motion control. His work spans two complementary frontiers: making robots physically safe and perceptually aware in shared human environments, and enabling them to collaborate intelligently and transparently with human partners. Roncone's most influential contribution — "Transparent Role Assignment and Task Allocation in Human-Robot Collaboration" (2017, 109 citations) — tackled a fundamental challenge in collaborative manufacturing: how robots can dynamically negotiate tasks with human workers in real time. This work, alongside his preference-based assistance prediction research, helped establish principled frameworks for genuine human-robot teaming rather than mere co-presence. Equally significant is his foundational work on peripersonal space — the region immediately surrounding a robot's body — drawing inspiration from neuroscience to give robots skin-like awareness of their environment (58 citations). This contributed directly to his motion control and contact anticipation systems, enabling robots to avoid collisions while remaining open to deliberate physical interaction (73 and 31 citations respectively). His earlier contributions on humanoid robot calibration, gaze control, and eye-hand coordination on platforms like iCub further demonstrate a career built on rigorous, biologically informed robot engineering with real-world impact.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   Transparent role assignment and task allocation in human robot collaboration

   109 citations · 2017
2. 2
   A Cartesian 6-DoF Gaze Controller for Humanoid Robots

   73 citations · 2016
3. 3
   Real-time motion control of robotic manipulators for safe human–robot coexistence

   73 citations · 2021
4. 4
   Peripersonal Space and Margin of Safety around the Body: Learning Visuo-Tactile Associations in a Humanoid Robot with Artificial Skin

   58 citations · 2016
5. 5
   Automatic kinematic chain calibration using artificial skin: Self-touch in the iCub humanoid robot

   50 citations · 2014
6. 6
   3D stereo estimation and fully automated learning of eye-hand coordination in humanoid robots

   32 citations · 2014
7. 7
   Contact Anticipation for Physical Human–Robot Interaction with Robotic Manipulators using Onboard Proximity Sensors

   31 citations · 2021
8. 8
   Preference-Based Assistance Prediction for Human-Robot Collaboration Tasks

   30 citations · 2018
9. 9
   Compact Real-time Avoidance on a Humanoid Robot for Human-robot Interaction

   28 citations · 2018
10. 10
    Learning peripersonal space representation through artificial skin for avoidance and reaching with whole body surface

    23 citations · 2015

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links