Carmelo Di Franco

Short Bio

I am currently a Post Doctoral Researcher of the ReTiS Lab at the Scuola Superiore S.Anna, Pisa. In March 2017, I finished my Ph.D. in Emerging Digital Technologies, curriculum Embedded System at the ReTiS Lab of the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa, under the supervision of Professor Giorgio Buttazzo. From September 2015 I was a visiting Ph.D. Student for 6 months at the GRASP lab of the University of Pennsylvania under the supervision of George J. Pappas.

My research focuses on two main topics: Energy-Aware path planning of mobile robots and Indoor Distance-based Localization.

Current Research Projects

GNSS-Free IMU-based Railway localization: The project aims at providing precise railways positioning based on Inertial Measuring units, Odometry, and track information.

Accurate and Adaptive Energy model for UAVS with variable payload based on neural networks: The project aims at designing and building an energy model for UAVs that is able of estimating the energy consumption of vehicles with a variable payload both offline and online.

Energy-Aware Coverage path planning of UAVs: The project aims at providing tools and techniques for optimizing and minimizing the energy cost of Coverage Path Planning operations.

Past Projects

AVIATOR: is an innovative project, proposed by ReTiSLab and LandLAb of the Scuola Superiore S. Anna, that aims at using fleets of drones to monitoring the growth of plants in farms and finding plant infections on time to prevent bad crops. Using a team of cooperating drones that autonomously take off and inspects the entire field could drastically reduce the costs preventing extensive use of herbicides and reducing the manual effort of the farmer.