Carmelo Di Franco, PhD.
Post Doctoral Researcher at Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna.
Carmelo Di Franco Photo

email:

Address:

Via G. Moruzzi 1, 56124 Pisa (PI), Italy
Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna
TeCiP Institute (ReTiS Laboratory)

Telephone:

050 5492021

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 Phd. 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 PhD. Student for 6 months at the GRASP lab of 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.

Click here to watch a short interview from a local TV about the project . utilization of drones in farms to inspect plants

Publications

Submitted Journals

  1. Integrated Framework for Fast Prototyping and Testing of Autonomous Systems. Luigi Pannocchi, Carmelo Di Franco, Mauro Marinoni, and Giorgio Buttazzo.
  2. Near-optimal Energy-aware Grid-based Coverage Path Planning over irregular-shaped areas with UAVs. Taua M. Cabreira, Carmelo Di Franco, Paulo R. Ferreira Jr., and Giorgio Buttazzo.

Journals Publications

  1. Dynamic Multidimensional Scaling with anchors and height constraints for indoor localization of mobile nodes. Carmelo Di Franco, Mauro Marinoni, Enrico Bini, and Giorgio Buttazzo. Robotics and Autonomous Systems 108, 28-37
  2. Energy-Aware Spiral Coverage Path Planning for UAV Photogrammetric Applications. Taua M. Cabreira, Carmelo Di Franco, Paulo R. Ferreira Junior, and Giorgio Buttazzo. IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters
  3. Coverage Path Planning for UAVs Photogrammetry with Energy and Resolution Constraints. Carmelo Di Franco, Giorgio Buttazzo. Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems, 2016.
  4. Design and analysis of target-sensitive real-time systems. Giorgio Buttazzo, Carmelo Di Franco, Mauro Marinoni. Software: Practice and Experience, 2015.

Conference Publications

  1. Multidimensional Scaling with Anchors.Carmelo Di Franco, Enrico Bini, Mauro Marinoni, and Giorgio Buttazzo. Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Autonomous Robot Systems and Competitions (ICARSC 2017). Coimbra (Portugal), 26-30 April, 2017.
  2. Multidimensional Scaling with Anchors.Carmelo Di Franco, Enrico Bini, Mauro Marinoni, and Giorgio Buttazzo. Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Autonomous Robot Systems and Competitions (ICARSC 2017). Coimbra (Portugal), 26-30 April, 2017.
  3. Calibration-free Network Localization using Non-Line-Of-Sight Ultra-wideband Measurements.Carmelo Di Franco, Amanda Prorok, Nikolay Atanasov, Benjamin Kempke, Prabal Dutta, Vijay Kumar, and George Pappas. The 16th ACM/IEE international Conference on Information and Processing om Sensor Networks, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, USA, April 18-21, 2017.
  4. Solving Ambiguities in MDS Relative Localization.Carmelo Di Franco, Alessandra Melani and Mauro Marinoni. Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Advanced Robotics (ICAR 2015). Istanbul (Turkey), 27-31 July, 2015.[BibTeX].
    Best Paper Award Candidate
  5. Energy-aware Coverage Path Planning of UAVs. Carmelo Di Franco and Giorgio Buttazzo. Proceedings of the International Conference on Autonomous Robot Systems and Competitions (ICARSC 2015), Villa Real, April 8- 12, 2015 [PDF] [BibTeX].
  6. Data Fusion for Relative Localization of Wireless Mobile Nodes. Carmelo Di Franco, Gianluca Franchino, and Mauro Marinoni. Proceedings of the 9th International Symposium on Industrial Embedded Systems (SIES 2014), Pisa, June 18- 20, 2014 [PDF] [BibTeX].
    Best Paper Award Candidate
  7. Fusing Time-of-Flight and Received Signal Strength for Adaptive Radio-Frequency Ranging. Luis Oliveira, Carmelo Di Franco, Traian E. Abrudan,and Luis Almeida. Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Advanced Robotics (ICAR 2013), Montevideo, Uruguay, November 25- 29, 2013 [PDF] [BibTeX].
  8. Target-sensitive systems: Analysis and Implementation Issues. Giorgio Buttazzo, Carmelo Di Franco, and Mauro Marinoni. Proceedings of the 17th IEEE Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation (ETFA 2012), Cracow, Poland, September 17-21, 2012.[PDF] [BibTeX].

Posters

  1. RF-based Ranging for Mobile Robots: Using Time-of-Flight and RSSI for Channel Estimation. Luis Oliveira, Carmelo Di Franco, Traian E. Abrudan, and Luis Almeida. WiP at 2nd PhD. Studends conference in electrical and computer engineering (StudECE 2013) - Oporto, Portugal, June 2013