Fabrizio Schiano

Ph.D. in robotics applied to multi-drone systems.

Fabrizio received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Automation Engineering from the University of Napoli Federico II (Italy) in 2010 and 2013. His master thesis was carried out at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ) and Disney Research Zurich (DRZ). It involved the estimation and correction of wind effects on a quadrotor UAV.

He was a research scientist between 2013 and 2014 at the Zentrum Fur Telematik (ZfT) in Wurzburg (Germany). The main project in which he was involved was about controlling a Dielectric Elastomer Generator (DEG) for energy harvesting applications.

Between 2014 and 2018, he worked on his Ph.D. thesis at Inria Rennes (France) and Boston University (USA). His thesis’s main goal was the autonomous navigation of a group of drones in unknown/unstructured environments by only leveraging onboard sensors (e.g., cameras, IMUs) and local communication (e.g., WiFi).

Between 2018 and 2021, he was a postdoctoral researcher and scientific collaborator at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), where his main activities involved: research, national/international proposal writing, supervision of Ph.D. and Master students, and teaching/organising the aerial robotics course.

Regarding research, during his time at EPFL, the research lines he was involved with included: design and development of modular aerial vehicles, aerial drone swarms, and human-robot interfaces (HRIs). He also led a project for autonomous detection and deterrence of pigeons on buildings by drones using AI-based techniques.

Fabrizio currently works in the Future Rotorcraft Technology Lab at Leonardo as a senior research fellow to conduct research aimed at using AI-based perception and sensor fusion algorithms to enhance the pilot external situational awareness.

Fabrizio is excited about new technologies such as autonomous vehicles and their potential impact on society. After almost 10 years in academic research, he transitioned to industry thanks to the current research fellow position at Leonardo.

Autonomous flight, enhanced sensing, AI, sensor fusion, high-fidelity simulations

In press

F. Schiano, D. Natter, D. Zambrano, D. Floreano, Autonomous detection and deterrence of pigeons on buildings by drones, IEEE Access, 2021 

Under Review

M. Macchini, J. Frogg, F. Schiano, D. Floreano, Data-Driven Personalization of Body-Machine Interfaces to Control Diverse Robot Types, IEEE Transactions of Man Systems and Cybernetics, 2021

M. Macchini, J. Frogg, F. Schiano, D. Floreano, Does spontaneous motion lead to intuitive Body-Machine Interfaces? A fitness study of different body segments for wearable telerobotics, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2022

Published

E. Soria, F. Schiano, D. Floreano, Predictive Control of Aerial Swarms in Cluttered Environments, Nature Machine Intelligence, 2021

M. Macchini, M. Lortkipanidze, F. Schiano, D. Floreano, The effects of virtual reality and viewpoint on embodiment and instinctive body motion for wearable teleoperation, IEEE Virtual Reality (VR) conference, 2021

M. Pavliv, F. Schiano, C. Reardon, D. Floreano, G. Loianno, Tracking and Relative Localization of Drone Swarms with a Vision-based Headset, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L) and IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2021

E. Soria, F. Schiano, D. Floreano, SwarmLab: a Matlab Drone Swarm Simulator, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2020

J.P. Queralta, C.M. Almansa, F. Schiano, D. Floreano, T. Westerlund, UWB-based system for UAV Localization in GNSS-Denied Environments: Characterization and Dataset, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2020

M. Macchini, T. Havy, A. Weber, F. Schiano, D. Floreano, Hand-worn Haptic Interface for Drone Teleoperation, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2020

V. Delafontaine, F. Schiano, G. Cocco, A. Rusu, D. Floreano, Drone-aided Localization in LoRa IoT Networks, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2020

M. Macchini, F. Schiano, D. Floreano, Personalized Telerobotics by Fast Machine Learning of Body-Machine Interfaces, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 2019

F. Schilling, J. Lecoeur, F. Schiano, D Floreano, Learning vision-based flight in drone swarms by imitation, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 2019

E. Soria, F. Schiano, D. Floreano, The influence of limited visual sensing on the Reynolds flocking algorithm, IEEE International Conference on Robotic Computing (IRC), 2019

F. Schilling, J. Lecoeur, F. Schiano, D Floreano, Learning vision-based cohesive flight in drone swarms, arXiv preprint arXiv:1809.00543, 2019

F. Schiano, R. Tron, The dynamic bearing observability matrix: nonlinear observability and estimation for multi-agent systems, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2018

F. Schiano, P. Robuffo Giordano, Bearing rigidity maintenance for formations of quadrotor UAVs, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2017

F. Schiano, A. Franchi, D. Zelazo, P. Robuffo Giordano, A rigidity-based decentralized bearing formation controller for groups of quadrotor UAVs, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2016

F. Schiano, J. Alonso-Mora, K. Rudin, P. Beardsley, R. Siegwart, B. Siciliano, Towards estimation and correction of wind effects on a quadrotor UAV, International Micro Air Vehicle Conference and Competition (IMAV), 2014