Massimo Caccia
University of Genoa, MTS3 (United States), Institute of Intelligent Systems for Automation, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Rina Services (Italy), Consorzio Roma Ricerche, Institute of Marine Engineering, National Research Council, Institute of Electronics, Computer and Telecommunication Engineering, Istituto per le Tecnologie Didattiche
Papers
92
Total Citations
1,388
H-Index
23
About
Massimo Caccia is a leading Italian roboticist whose career has been devoted to advancing autonomous systems for marine and underwater environments. Working primarily through CNR-ISSIA (now CNR-INM) in Genoa, Caccia has made foundational contributions to the design, development, and deployment of unmanned surface and underwater vehicles for both scientific exploration and robotic intervention. His early work produced ROMEO, an advanced ROV supporting intelligent autonomy research in extreme conditions, and SESAMO, a pioneering autonomous surface craft deployed even in Antarctic waters to study sea-air interactions — earning 128 citations and establishing him as a key figure in marine robotics. His path-following algorithms for autonomous surface vehicles further solidified his expertise in marine vehicle guidance and control. Caccia has also played a central role in major Italian and European initiatives, including the MARIS national project on underwater intervention robotics and the EU-funded CADDY project, which developed a cognitive robot companion for diver support — generating novel gesture-based human-robot communication languages suited to harsh underwater conditions. His swarm-based guidance work for cooperative unmanned surface vehicles reflects a forward-looking interest in multi-robot coordination. Collectively, his publications have garnered hundreds of citations, making him an indispensable reference for researchers entering marine autonomy and underwater robotics.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
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- 3A Novel Gesture-Based Language for Underwater Human–Robot Interaction43 citations · 2018
- 4PATH-FOLLOWING ALGORITHMS AND EXPERIMENTS FOR AN AUTONOMOUS SURFACE VEHICLE39 citations · 2007
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- 6Gesture-based language for diver-robot underwater interaction35 citations · 2015
- 7MARIS: A national project on marine robotics for interventions34 citations · 2014
- 8Swarm-based path-following for cooperative unmanned surface vehicles33 citations · 2014
- 9A vision-based system for robotic inspection of marine vessels29 citations · 2017
- 10