Giovanni Saponaro
University of Lisbon, INESC TEC, Instituto Superior Técnico, Sapienza University of Rome
Papers
9
Total Citations
143
H-Index
6
About
Giovanni Saponaro is a robotics and artificial intelligence researcher whose work sits at the intersection of developmental robotics, object affordances, and human-robot interaction. Drawing inspiration from infant cognitive development, Saponaro has made significant contributions to enabling robots to autonomously learn how their actions affect the world around them — a capability known as affordance learning. His highly cited work on intermediate object affordances (35 citations) and visual affordance learning through autonomous exploration (25 citations) demonstrates how robots can generalize from self-directed experience to understand and use tools effectively. A defining thread in Saponaro's research is bridging perception, language, and action. His work on translating spoken human instructions into robot motor tasks (35 citations) and anticipating human intentions through gesture recognition (23 citations) reflects a sustained effort to make human-robot collaboration more natural and intuitive. More recent work explores how robots can interpret and verbally describe the actions of others by reusing grounded experience, extending affordance frameworks beyond the self. Saponaro has also contributed to expressive robot communication and neuropsychologically-inspired planning architectures, showcasing a broad but cohesive research vision — creating robots that learn, communicate, and collaborate as thoughtfully as possible alongside humans.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
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- 6Interactive Robot Learning of Gestures, Language and Affordances6 citations · 2017
- 7Generation of meaningful robot expressions with active learning5 citations · 2011
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- 9POSE ESTIMATION FOR GRASPING PREPARATION FROM STEREO ELLIPSES2 citations · 2008