Giovanna Sansoni

About

Giovanna Sansoni is a prominent researcher whose work sits at the intersection of computer vision, human-robot interaction, and intelligent automation. Her career spans over a decade of contributions to 3D vision systems and, more recently, deep learning-driven gesture recognition technologies that are reshaping how humans collaborate with robotic systems. Sansoni's most influential contributions center on enabling intuitive, vision-based communication between humans and collaborative robots. Her pioneering work applying Faster R-CNN object detection to hand gesture recognition—developed across a series of studies from 2018 to 2021 and collectively accumulating over 110 citations—established foundational frameworks still referenced by researchers today. The HANDS RGB-D dataset she helped create (2021) has become a valuable resource for the human-robot interaction research community, offering richly annotated gesture data for training and benchmarking. Her MEGURU system (2020, 43 citations) further demonstrated how gesture-based interfaces could practically transform collaborative workstation programming. Beyond gesture recognition, Sansoni has made meaningful contributions to industrial automation through bin-picking vision systems and robotic cell safety monitoring using Time-of-Flight cameras. Her "Hands-Free" teleoperation system elegantly bridges augmented reality with neural network-based hand tracking, reflecting her commitment to accessible, hands-on robotics innovation. Her body of work signals a researcher dedicated to making human-robot collaboration safer, smarter, and more natural.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   Deep learning-based hand gesture recognition for collaborative robots

   53 citations · 2019
2. 2
   MEGURU: a gesture-based robot program builder for Meta-Collaborative workstations

   43 citations · 2020
3. 3
   Deep Learning Based Machine Vision: First Steps Towards a Hand Gesture Recognition Set Up for Collaborative Robots

   29 citations · 2018
4. 4
   HANDS: an RGB-D dataset of static hand-gestures for human-robot interaction

   28 citations · 2021
5. 5
   Roboscan: a combined 2D and 3D vision system for improved speed and flexibility in pick-and-place operation

   28 citations · 2013
6. 6
   Optoranger: A 3D pattern matching method for bin picking applications

   25 citations · 2013
7. 7
   Hands-Free: a robot augmented reality teleoperation system

   16 citations · 2020
8. 8
   Development and Characterization of a Safety System for Robotic Cells Based on Multiple Time of Flight (TOF) Cameras and Point Cloud Analysis

   13 citations · 2018
9. 9
   Development and characterization of a multi-camera 2D-vision system for enhanced performance of a drink serving robotic cell

   12 citations · 2011
10. 10
    Hand Gesture Recognition for Collaborative Workstations: A Smart Command System Prototype

    9 citations · 2019

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links