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About

Lucia Seminara is a prominent researcher whose work sits at the intersection of robotics, tactile sensing, and intelligent systems, with a particular focus on developing artificial skin technologies that enable robots to perceive and interact with the physical world. Her most influential contribution, the electromechanical characterization of piezoelectric PVDF polymer films (146 citations), laid crucial groundwork for flexible, large-area tactile sensors capable of detecting dynamic contact across broad frequency bandwidths. Building on this, her development of piezoelectric polymer transducer arrays (127 citations) advanced the practical implementation of electronic skin for robotic platforms. Seminara has consistently pushed the field toward intelligent interpretation of tactile data, pioneering tensor-based machine learning frameworks for classifying touch modalities in artificial skin systems — a challenge central to natural human-robot interaction. Her 2019 review of active haptic perception in robots (74 citations) synthesized the state of the field and has become a key reference for researchers entering the area. More recently, her hierarchical sensorimotor control framework for robotic hands (33 citations) reflects her expanding vision toward biologically inspired, dexterous robotic manipulation. Across her career, Seminara's work has shaped how robots sense, interpret, and respond to touch.