Christian Cella, a PhD student in Information Technology at the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering – Politecnico di Milano and member of the MeRLiN research group, was awarded the Young Author Award at the 1st IFAC Joint Conference on Computers, Cognition and Communication (J3C 2025), for the paper “Optimized Scheduling and Positioning of Mobile Manipulators in Collaborative Applications”, co-authored by Sole Ester Sonnino, Marco Faroni, Andrea Maria Zanchettin, and Paolo Rocco. The conference took place in Padua and gathered more than 200 participants.
The winning paper presents an optimization framework for mobile manipulators in human-robot collaborative scenarios, capable of determining robot base positioning and task sequencing through black-box simulations. The approach, based on Particle Swarm Optimization, reduces cycle times and dynamically adapts the robot’s behavior to the presence of the human operator, ensuring both safety and efficiency.
The work was carried out within the MICS (Circular and Sustainable Made in Italy) Extended Partnership, using a packing line developed in collaboration with the Camozzi Research Center.