Riccardo Mengacci
Papers
9
Total Citations
213
H-Index
8
About
Riccardo Mengacci is a leading researcher in the field of compliant and articulated soft robotics, focusing on the control and actuation of robots designed for safe human-robot interaction. His major contributions center on solving the fundamental challenge of preserving a robot’s inherent softness while achieving precise motion control. He has pioneered methods for motion/stiffness decoupling and model-free iterative learning control, enabling articulated soft robots to follow trajectories without stiffening their compliant joints. Mengacci also developed the Elastic Structure Preserving Control (ESPaa) framework for agonistic-antagonistic actuators, ensuring stable, oscillation-free link positioning while maintaining natural elasticity. His work on overcoming the torque/stiffness range tradeoff in variable stiffness actuators has been highly influential, with his top papers accumulating over 200 citations. Notably, his open-source ROS-Gazebo toolbox has become a valuable resource for the research community, facilitating Sim2Real transfer in compliant robot simulation. Mengacci’s research has also advanced time-optimal trajectory planning for flexible joint robots and learning-based feedforward control, establishing him as a key figure in making compliant robots both safe and capable in unstructured environments.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
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- 3Iterative Learning Control for Compliant Underactuated Arms39 citations · 2023
- 4Time-Optimal Trajectory Planning for Flexible Joint Robots29 citations · 2020
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- 7Time Generalization of Trajectories Learned on Articulated Soft Robots9 citations · 2020
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