Francesco Cursi

I am Francesco Cursi, a 3rd year PhD student at the Hamlyn Centre and the Robot Intelligence Lab, Imperial College London. My PhD research is supervised by Dr Petar Kormushev and co-supervised by Dr George Mylonas.

I obtained my Bachelor's degree (summa cum lode) in 2014 and my Master's degree (summa cum lode) in 2016 in Mechanical Engineering from Sapienza University of Rome. I also graduated from NYU Tandon School of Engineering in 2016, as part of a Double Degree Program. My Master thesis focused on theoretical framework to  evaluate stability of biped systems. [1]

After gaduation and before starting my PhD, I was intern at the "Humanoid & Human Centered Mechatronics Lab" at the Italian Institute of Technology, where I worked on a method for online calibration of force torque sensors, under supervision of Dr. Nikos Tsagarakis. [2]

My PhD research topic focuses on modelling and control of a tendon-driven surgical robotic tool for minimally invasive surgery. The final goal would be to perform some surgical task automation and to implement force feedback and force control strategies.

I am very passionate about robotics in all its flavours, and eager to deepen and broaden my knwoldge in robot control and machine learning.

Publications

  1. C. Mummolo, F.Cursi , J.H. Kim, "Balanced and Falling States for Biped Systems: Applications to Robotic vs Human Walking Stability", Int. Conf. on Humanoid Robots, 2016.
  2. F.Cursi, Malzahn J., Tsagarakis N. , Caldwell D.G., "An Online Interactive Method for Guided Calibration of Multi-dimensional Force/Torque Transducers", Int. Conf. on Humanoid Robots, 2017.
  3. F. Cursi, G.Z. Yang, "A novel approach for outlier detection and robust sensory data model learning", IROS 2019, Nov 4-8, Macao, 2019.
  4. D. Zhang, F. Cursi, G.Z. Yang, "WSRender: A workspace analysis and visualization toolbox for robotic manipulator design and verification", RAL/IROS 2019.