Michele Schirru
Papers
3
Total Citations
54
H-Index
3
About
Michele Schirru is a leading researcher in the field of robotic inspection for critical water infrastructure, specializing in the challenging domain of autonomous navigation within buried pipe networks. His work directly addresses the fundamental problem of localization and mapping in feature-sparse, GPS-denied environments. Schirru’s major contributions include pioneering the use of acoustic signals for robot localization in water pipes, developing a method that employs hydrophone-induced vibration and map alignment via dynamic time warping. He further advanced the field with PipeSLAM, a novel approach that applies the Rao-Blackwellised particle filter to achieve simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) in these difficult conditions. His most-cited works, including his 2017 paper on robot mapping (20 citations) and his 2020 work on pose graph optimization (19 citations), have established foundational techniques for enabling autonomous inspection robots to navigate, detect faults, and communicate their positions. By solving the core challenge of “where am I?” for in-pipe robots, Schirru’s research is instrumental in transforming asset management for water distribution networks, moving from reactive repairs to proactive, robot-assisted maintenance.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
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