EMERGE’s findings will be communicated at scientific conferences and published in open-access journals. Find below the current list of publications.

Access all publication on the project's Zenodo community clicking here.

3D Printable Gradient Lattice Design for Multi-Stiffness Robotic Fingers

This paper focuses on the development of a robotic finger that emulates these multi-stiffness characteristics.

S. J. Schouten et al., 2025 IEEE 8th International Conference on Soft Robotics (RoboSoft), Lausanne, Switzerland, 2025, pp. 1-7, doi: 10.1109/RoboSoft63089.2025.11020868.

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A Data-Driven Method to Identify Fault Mitigation Strategies in Robot Swarms

In this paper, the authors present a data-driven method to identify effective local actions available to faulty robots in the swarm.

Lee, S., Hauert, S. (2024). Swarm Intelligence. ANTS 2024. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14987. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-70932-6_2

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A Hybrid Control Approach for a Pneumatic-Actuated Soft Robot

This paper proposes a hybrid controller for a pneumatic-actuated soft robot.

Tavio y Cabrera, E., Santina, C.D., Borja, P. (2024). In Proceedings in Advanced Robotics, vol 29. doi: 10.1007/978-3-031-55000-3_2

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A memristive computational neural network model for time-series processing

In this work, the authors introduce a novel computational framework inspired by the physics of memristive devices and systems, which is embed into the context of Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) for time-series processing.

Veronica Pistolesi, Andrea Ceni, Gianluca Milano, Carlo Ricciardi, Claudio Gallicchio; APL Mach. Learn. 1 March 2025; 3 (1): 016117. DOI: 10.1063/5.0255168

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A Model of Memristive Nanowire Neuron for Recurrent Neural Networks

This work proposes a novel neural processing unit for artificial neural networks, inspired by the memristive properties of nanowires.

Pistolesi, Veronica & Ceni, Andrea & Milano, Gianluca & Gallicchio, Claudio. (2025). 479-484. 10.14428/esann/2025.ES2025-104.

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A Protocol for Continual Explanation of SHAP

In this work, the authors study the behavior of SHAP values explanations in Continual Learning and propose an evaluation protocol to robustly assess the change of explanations in Class-Incremental scenarios.

Andrea Cossu, Francesco Spinnato, Riccardo Guidotti and Davide Bacciu, in ESANN 2023 proceedings, European Symposium on Artificial Neural Networks, Computational Intelligence and Machine Learning. Bruges (Belgium), doi: 10.14428/esann/2023.ES2023-41

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A Provably Stable Iterative Learning Controller for Continuum Soft Robots

This letter proposes a purely feedforward iterative learning control algorithm that refines the torque action by leveraging both the knowledge of the model and data obtained from past experience.

M. Pierallini et al., IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 8, no. 10, pp. 6427-6434, 2023, DOI: 10.1109/LRA.2023.3307007.

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Adaptive LoRA Merging for Efficient Domain Incremental Learning

This paper addresses a key limitation of current merging algorithms: their overreliance on fixed weights that usually assume equal importance across tasks.

Eric Nuertey Coleman, Luigi Quarantiello, Julio Hurtado, Vincenzo Lomonaco, NeuroIPS 2024, Adaptive Foundation Models: Evolving AI for Personalized and Efficient Learning, 2024.

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An Empirical Investigation on Variational Autoencoder-Based Dynamic Modeling of Deformable Objects from RGB Data

This paper explores the use of deep learning techniques to solve the nonlinear identification problem of the dynamics of continuously deformable objects and other mechanical systems analytically from first principles.

T. Coleman, R. Babuška, J. Kober and C. D. Santina, 2024 32nd Mediterranean Conference on Control and Automation (MED), Chania - Crete, Greece, 2024, pp. 921-928, doi: 10.1109/MED61351.2024.10566173.

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An Experimental Study of Model-Based Control for Planar Handed Shearing Auxetics Robots

This paper presents a model-based control strategy for planar HSA robots enabling regulation in task space.

Stölzle, M., Rus, D., Della Santina, C. (2024). In Experimental Robotics. ISER 2023. Springer Proceedings in Advanced Robotics, vol 30. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-63596-0_14

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An Untrained Neural Model for Fast and Accurate Graph Classification

This paper aims to explore a simple form of a randomized graph neural network inspired by the success of randomized convolutions in the 1-dimensional domain. Our idea is pretty simple: implement a no-frills convolutional graph neural network and leave its weights untrained.

Navarin, N., Pasa, L., Gallicchio, C., Sperduti, A. (2023). In Artificial Neural Networks and Machine Learning – ICANN 2023. ICANN 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14257. Springer, Cham. doi: 10.1007/978-3-031-44216-2_23

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Anti-Symmetric DGN: a stable architecture for Deep Graph Networks

In this work, the authors present Anti-Symmetric Deep Graph Networks (A-DGNs), a framework for stable and non-dissipative DGN design, conceived through the lens of ordinary differential equations.

Gravina, A., Bacciu, D., & Gallicchio, C. (2022). Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR). doi: 10.48550/arXiv.2210.09789.

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Automating the Evaluation of the Scalability, Flexibility, and Robustness of Collective Behaviors for Robot Swarms

In this paper, the authors use recently proposed experimental protocols to evaluate these properties in various typical collective behaviors for robot swarms.

G. M. Madroñero Pachajoa, W. Achicanoy and D. G. Ramos, 2024 Brazilian Symposium on Robotics (SBR) and 2024 Workshop on Robotics in Education (WRE), Goiania, Brazil, 2024, pp. 144-149, doi: 10.1109/SBR/WRE63066.2024.10837963.

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Awareness in Robotics: An Early Perspective from the Viewpoint of the EIC Pathfinder Challenge “Awareness Inside”

This paper summarizes and discusses the projects funded by the EIC Pathfinder Challenge “Awareness Inside” call within Horizon Europe, designed specifically for fostering research on natural and synthetic awareness.

Della Santina, C. et al. (2024). In European Robotics Forum 2024. ERF 2024. Springer Proceedings in Advanced Robotics, vol 32. doi: 10.1007/978-3-031-76424-0_20

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Benchmarking Nonlinear Readouts in Linear Reservoir Networks

This paper systematically benchmarks a spectrum of nonlinear readouts within linear RC frameworks.

Lagomarsini, G., Ceni, A., Gallicchio, C. (2026). ICANN 2025 International Workshops and Special Sessions. ICANN 2025. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 16072. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-032-04552-2_17

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BerryTwist: A Twisting-Tube Soft Robotic Gripper for Blackberry Harvesting

This paper introduces BerryTwist, a prototype robotic gripper specifically designed for blackberry harvesting.

J. F. Elfferich, E. Shahabi, C. D. Santina and D. Dodou, in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 429-435, Jan. 2025, doi: 10.1109/LRA.2024.3505813.

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Building Trustworthiness by Minimizing the Sim-to-Real Gap in Fault Detection for Robot Swarms

In this work, the authors implement metric extraction in a real-world environment and evaluate whether the extracted metrics can overcome the “sim-to-real gap”

Suet Lee and Sabine Hauert. 2023. In Proceedings of the First International Symposium on Trustworthy Autonomous Systems (TAS '23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 47, 1–3. doi: 10.1145/3597512.3597527

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Calibration of Continual Learning Models

This paper provides the first empirical study of the behavior of calibration approaches in CL, showing that CL strategies do not inherently learn calibrated models.

L. Li, E. Piccoli, A. Cossu, D. Bacciu and V. Lomonaco, 2024 IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workshops (CVPRW), Seattle, WA, USA, 2024, pp. 4160-4169, doi: 10.1109/CVPRW63382.2024.00419.

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