Federico Pecora is an Associate Professor in Computer Science at the Center for Applied Autonomous Sensor Systems (AASS). He was previously a research assistant at the Italian National Research Council (ISTC-CNR), where he worked on AI tools for space mission planning on a grant from the European Space Agency.
Federico talks about AI and how the computer decides what to do and when to do it.
Federico finds many interesting research problems combining AI and robotics. Being out in the real world challenges the AI algorithms and makes real physical tasks possible.
Federico talks about working on AI and service robotics. In this area he has worked on planning, especially focusing on why a particular goal is the one that the robot should work on. To make robots as useful and user friendly as possible, he works on inferring the goal from the robot’s environment so that the user does not have to tell the robot everything.
Federico has also worked with AI robotics planning in industry to optimize results. Managing the relative importance of tasks is another challenging area there. In this context, he works on automating not only a single robot for its goal, but an entire fleet of robots for
their collective goal. We get to hear about how these techniques are being used in warehouse operations, in mines and in agriculture.
Federico discusses how important the co-operation between roboticists and AI specialists is. It can sometimes be challenging, but when it works it yields very interesting questions and results.
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