The Robotics group at DIAG (Dipartimento di Ingegneria Informatica, Automatica e Gestionale) and the associated Robotics Lab (http://www.diag.uniroma1.it/~labrob/) were established at Sapienza University of Rome in the late 1980s with a commitment to develop innovative methods for modeling, planning and control of both industrial and service robots.

Over the years, original research results were obtained on several subjects, including: nonlinear control of robots; iterative learning control on repetitive tasks; hybrid force/velocity control of manipulators interacting with the environment; optimization schemes in kinematically redundant robots; motion planning and control of wheeled mobile robots and other nonholonomic mechanical systems; stabilization of underactuated robots; robot actuator fault detection and isolation; safe control of physical human-robot interaction; control of manipulators with flexible joints/links; control of locomotion platforms for VR immersion; image-based visual servoing; sensor-based navigation and exploration in unknown environments; motion planning for high-dimensional systems; multi-robot coordination and mutual localization.

In addition to further development in the above mentioned areas, recent activities include control and visual servoing for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), control-based motion planning for mobile manipulators, motion planning and control of locomotion in humanoid robots, and sensory supervision of human-robot interaction.

Currently active equipment at the DIAG Robotics Lab includes

3 fixed-base manipulators: a KR 5 Sixx (6-dof) and an LWR 4+ (7-dof) by KUKA, and a UR10 (6-dof) by Universal Robots
3 NAO humanoid robots by Aldebaran
2 quadrotor UAVs: a Hummingbird and a Pelican, both by Ascending Technologies
2 Geomagic Touch haptic interfaces by 3D Systems
a Cyberith Virtualizer locomotion platform for virtual reality
a Pendubot underactuated robot by Quanser
several wheeled mobile robots: an iRobot MagellanPro plus a team of K-Team Kheperas III
All these robots are equipped with sensing devices of various complexity, going from ultrasonic/laser range finders to cameras, IMUs and force/torque sensors. In the past, we have also designed and built in-house a two-link flexible manipulator (FlexArm) and a differentially-driven wheeled mobile robot (SuperMARIO).