Research Topics
Human Interaction
In our daily social interactions, the way we perform actions is crucial for communication and promoting relationships. This dynamicity of action has been termed by Daniel Stern “Vitality Forms” (VFs) by Daniel Stern and allows people to express their own state and understand that of others.
Human-Robot Interaction
The study of VFs also finds application in the robotic field, where it is used to improve the kinematics of humanoid agents (such as iCub) by making them increasingly human-like, and to study human-robot interactions.
Autism
Children with autism spectrum condition show significant difficulties in both understanding (Rochat et al., 2024; Di Cesare et al., 2017) and expressing (Di Cesare et al., 2024) vitality forms (VFs) compared to neurotypical children. We are currently studying these aspects of communication in depth to develop personalized clinical interventions that improve social interaction among children, caregivers, and parents
This video example illustrates the same action i.e. passing a bottle to another individual, carried out in both gentle and rude manners by a neurotypical child and five children with autism.
AI & Robotics
Artificial intelligence is leveraged to equip the iCub robot with the ability to express a wide range of goal-directed actions, fostering more natural and meaningful interactions with humans. Within this framework, our experiments exploit AI-driven approaches to investigate the intrinsic properties of vitality forms (VFs), which are difficult to capture using conventional data analysis techniques. Looking ahead, we aim to further refine our experimental methodology by integrating advanced AI in robotics to achieve adaptive and precise control of iCub’s movements during human–robot interactions.
