Cesare Stefanini

• Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies

Animal–robot interaction (ARI) is an emerging field that uses biomimetic robots to replicate biological cues, enabling controlled studies of animal behavior. This study investigates the potential for ARI systems to induce local enhancement (e.g. where animals are attracted to areas based on the presence or actions of conspecifics) in the Mediterran...

The inherent challenges of robotic underwater exploration, such as hydrodynamic effects, the complexity of dynamic coupling, and the necessity for sensitive interaction with marine life, call for the adoption of soft robotic approaches in marine exploration. To address this, we present a novel prototype, ZodiAq, a soft underwater drone inspired by...

Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) analysis of single cells, especially nonadherent, is inherently slow and analysis-heavy. To address the inherent difficulty of measuring individual cells, and to scale up toward a large number of cells, we take a two-fold approach; first, we introduce an easy-to-fabricate reusable poly(dimethylsiloxane)-based array tha...

This paper introduces Animal Recognition Through Enhanced Multimodal Integration System (ARTEMIS), a transformer-based framework designed for multilabel animal action recognition by fusing video, image, and textual modalities. ARTEMIS utilizes state-of-the-art captioning and language models, such as BLIP2 and Llama 3, to generate textual descriptio...

Social immunity involves collective defensive strategies against infectious diseases. Despite its prevalence in eusocial insects, little is known about social immunity in non‐eusocial organisms like gregarious locusts. To address this gap, an emergent biohybrid approach bridging robotics and ethology is employed to study the behavior of the gregari...

The inherent challenges of robotic underwater exploration, such as hydrodynamic effects, the complexity of dynamic coupling, and the necessity for sensitive interaction with marine life, call for the adoption of soft robotic approaches in marine exploration. To address this, we present a novel prototype, ZodiAq, a soft underwater drone inspired by...

Modular soft robots (MSRs) exhibit greater potential for sophisticated tasks compared with single-module robots. However, the modular structure incurs the complexity of accurate control and necessitates a control strategy specifically for modular robots. In this article, we introduce a data collection strategy tailored for MSR and a bidirectional l...

This study presents acoustic-based methods for the control of multiple autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV). This study proposes two different models for implementing boundary and path control on low-cost AUVs using acoustic communication and a single central acoustic beacon. Two methods are presented: the Range Variation-Based (RVB) model complete...

Modular soft robot arms (MSRAs) are composed of multiple independent modules connected in a sequence. Due to their modular structure and high degrees of freedom (DOFs), these modules can simultaneously bend at different angles in various directions, enabling complex deformation. This capability allows MSRAs to perform more intricate tasks than sing...

Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) being inherently slow and analysis heavy, becomes challenging for scaling up. Addressing this, we take a two-fold approach; first we introduce an easy-to-fabricate reusable poly(dimethylsiloxane)-based array that consists of micron-sized traps for single-cell trapping and second, we apply a deep-learning method directl...

Entomopathogenic nematodes (EPNs) are effective biocontrol agents, reducing pesticide impact on health and the environment. Understanding their physiology and ethology is crucial for optimizing their application. This study offers innovative insights about Steinernema carpocapsae EPN behavior, contributing to the interdisciplinary field of engineer...

Understanding the biology and ecology of parasitoids can have direct implications for their evaluation as biological control agents, as well as for the development and implementation of mass-rearing techniques. Nonetheless, our current knowledge of the possible influence of lateralized displays (i.e., the asymmetric expression of cognitive function...

The nonlinearity and hysteresis of soft robot motions have posed challenges in accurate soft robot control. Neural networks, especially recurrent neural networks (RNNs), have been widely leveraged for this issue due to their nonlinear activation functions and recurrent structures. Although they have shown satisfying accuracy in most tasks, these bl...

Entomopathogenic nematodes (EPNs) are organisms that are often mass-produced as biological control agents (BCAs) to mitigate pesticide-related hazards and foster environmental sustainability. Enhancing our understanding of EPNs biology and their interactions with hosts is crucial for refining the use of EPNs in integrated pest management. This stud...

Animal behavior serves as a reliable indicator of the adaptation of organisms to their environment and their overall well-being. Through rigorous observation of animal actions and interactions, researchers and observers can glean valuable insights into diverse facets of their lives, encompassing health, social dynamics, ecological relationships, an...

Heart failure (HF) encompasses a diverse clinical spectrum, including instances of transient HF or HF with recovered ejection fraction, alongside persistent cases. This dynamic condition exhibits a growing prevalence and entails substantial healthcare expenditures, with anticipated escalation in the future. It is essential to classify HF patients i...

Bioinspired underwater robots can move efficiently, with agility, even in complex aquatic areas, reducing marine ecosystem disturbance during exploration and inspection. These robots can improve animal farming conditions and preserve wildlife. This study proposes a muscle-like control for an underactuated robot in carangiform swimming mode. The art...

Social learning is an evolutionarily important ability increasingly attributed also to invertebrate species. Interfacing robots with animals represents a promising strategy to investigate social learning. Herein, we studied if the gregarious form of Locusta migratoria, a particularly suited model to examine social learning, can use social informati...

Soft robots show compliance and have infinite degrees of freedom. Thanks to these properties, such robots can be leveraged for surgery, rehabilitation, biomimetics, unstructured environment exploring, and industrial grippers. In this case, they attract scholars from a variety of areas. However, nonlinearity and hysteresis effects also bring a burde...

Reliable navigation and localization systems are crucial for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs). The limitations of electromagnetic signals underwater make the use of the Global Positioning System (GPS) impractical. As a result, real-time positioning often relies on expensive sensors like the Doppler Velocity Log (DVL) or acoustic ranging, integ...

Heart Failure (HF) significantly impacts approximately 26 million people worldwide, causing disruptions in the normal functioning of their hearts. The estimation of left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) plays a crucial role in the diagnosis, risk stratification, treatment selection, and monitoring of heart failure. However, achieving a definiti...

Rapidly intensifying global warming and water pollution calls for more efficient and continuous environmental monitoring methods. Biohybrid systems connect mechatronic components to living organisms and this approach can be used to extract data from the organisms. Compared to conventional monitoring methods, they allow for a broader data collection...

Orthoptera are insects with excellent olfactory sense abilities due to their antennae richly equipped with receptors. This makes them interesting model organisms to be used as biosensors for environmental and agricultural monitoring. Herein, we investigated if the house cricket Acheta domesticus can be used to detect different chemical cues by exam...

The growing global prevalence of heart failure (HF) necessitates innovative methods for early diagnosis and classification of myocardial dysfunction. In recent decades, non-invasive sensor-based technologies have significantly advanced cardiac care. These technologies ease research, aid in early detection, confirm hemodynamic parameters, and suppor...

In this paper we present the H-SURF modular system, consisting of three different platforms (floater, sinker and fish), that can be used for underwater wireless telecontrolled inspection. Differently from the most common commercial approaches where tethered big ROVs are used for subsea inspection, here many small untethered semiautonomous robots ar...

Pesticide exposure, even at low doses, can have detrimental effects on ecosystems. This study aimed at validating the use of machine learning for recognizing motor anomalies, produced by minimal insecticide exposure on a model insect species. The Mediterranean fruit fly, Ceratitis capitata (Diptera: Tephritidae), was exposed to food contaminated wi...

Underwater robotics is prevalent today in the field of undersea surveys. The current single-agent approach struggles to cover surveys of large areas, especially when visual analyses are required. Applications of underwater multi-robots fleets need to manage the coordination of the agents, which in turn stresses the already limited capabilities of u...

Biomimetic robotics can help support underwater exploration and monitoring while minimizing ecosystem disturbance. It also has potential applications in sustainable aquafarming management, biodiversity preservation, and animalrobot interaction studies. This study proposes a bio-inspired control strategy for an underactuated robotic fish, which util...

Bioinspired robotics is a promising technology for minimizing environmental disruption during underwater inspection, exploration, and monitoring. In this research, we propose a control strategy for an underactuated robotic fish that mimics the oscillatory movement of a real fish’s tail using only one DC motor. Our control strategy is bioinspired to...

Pesticides are still abused in modern agriculture. The effects of their exposure to even sub-lethal doses can be detrimental to ecosystem stability and human health. This work aims to validate the use of machine learning techniques for recognizing motor abnormalities and to assess any effect post-exposure to a minimal dosage of these substances on...

Soft robots have been leveraged in considerable areas like surgery, rehabilitation, and bionics due to their softness, flexibility, and safety. However, it is challenging to produce two same soft robots even with the same mold and manufacturing process owing to the complexity of soft materials. Meanwhile, widespread usage of a system requires the a...

Mass-rearing procedures of insect species, often used in biological control and Sterile Insect Technique, can reduce the insects competitiveness in foraging, dispersal, and mating. The evocation of certain behaviours responsible to induce specific neuroendocrine products may restore or improve the competitiveness of mass-reared individuals. Herein,...

Soft robots show compliance and have infinite degrees of freedom. Thanks to these properties, such robots are leveraged for surgery, rehabilitation, biomimetics, unstructured environment exploring, and industrial gripper. In this case, they attract scholars from a variety of areas. However, nonlinearity and hysteresis effects also bring a burden to...

In this paper we show the application of the new robotic multi-platform system HSURF to a specific use case of teleoperation, aimed at monitoring and inspection. The HSURF system, consists of 3 different kinds of platforms: floater, sinker and robotic fishes. The collaborative control of the 3 platforms allows a remotely based operator to control t...

The earthworms beneficial effects on soils may be promising to improve lunar soil fertility, enabling the use of local substrates for space farming. Herein, we investigated the effects of the lunar regolith simulant (LHS-1) at different concentrations in cow manure mixtures on the survival and fitness of Eisenia fetida. During 14 and 60-day experim...

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automation are fostering more sustainable and effective solutions for a wide spectrum of agricultural problems. Pest management is a major challenge for crop production that can benefit from machine learning techniques to detect and monitor specific pests and diseases. Traditional monitoring is labor intensive, time...

This paper proposes a novel, reconfigurable parallel kinematics machine with three degrees of freedom that can be used for various three-axis manipulation tasks, including machining. By locking some joints, the proposed parallel kinematics machine (PKM) can be transformed into four topologies with eight configurations to attain certain kinematic pr...

This paper presents a novel walking hybrid-kinematics robot having three degrees of freedom for on-structure machining of large structures. A symmetric 3PRRR parallel mechanism having maximally regular property is used to provide 3D translational manipulation. Three attachment pads are connected to the base of the parallel mechanism through passive...

Soft robots have been leveraged in considerable areas like surgery, rehabilitation, and bionics due to their softness, flexibility, and safety. However, it is challenging to produce two same soft robots even with the same mold and manufacturing process owing to the complexity of soft materials. Meanwhile, widespread usage of a system requires the a...

This paper presents a novel walking hybrid-kinematics robot that can be reconfigured to have three, five, and six degrees of freedom (DOFs) for adsorption machining of large structures. A symmetric 3PRPR or 3PRRR parallel mechanism with three translational (3T) DOFs is used to perform three-axis machining tasks. Three attachment pads connected to p...

A new family of soft underwater propellers has been recently presented. Mimicking the swimming strategy of bacterial flagella, these modules passively adapt to the surrounding fluid to provide a propulsive thrust. In the present paper we aim at further investigating the behaviour of this device and we address the optimization of its design towards...

In this study, a robotic fish inspired by carangiform swimmers is developed. The artifact presents a new transmission system that employs the magnetic field interaction of permanent magnets to ensure waterproofness and prevention from any overload for the structure and the actuating motor. This mechanism converts the rotary motion of the motor into...

Collective behaviours in homogeneous shoals provide several benefits to conspecifics, although mixed-species aggregations have been reported to often occur. Mixed aggregations may confer several beneficial effects such as antipredator and foraging advantages. However, the mechanisms promoting phenotypically heterogeneous fish aggregations have been...

Phosphate ions are the most abundant anions inside the cells, and they are increasingly gaining attention as key modulators of cellular function and gene expression. However, little is known about the effect of inorganic phosphate ions on cancer cells, particularly breast cancer cells. Here, we investigated the toxicity of different phosphate compo...

This study aimed to explore novel inertial measurement unit (IMU)-based strategies to estimate respiratory parameters in healthy adults lying on a bed while breathing normally. During the experimental sessions, the kinematics of the chest wall were contemporaneously collected through both a network of 9 IMUs and a set of 45 uniformly distributed re...

Oryzaephilus surinamensis (L.) (Coleoptera: Silvanidae) is a widely distributed key stored-product insect pest. Recent research efforts have been conducted on the laterality (i.e., left-right asymmetries in brain and behavior) during courtship and mating of coleopteran species that are related to stored products. However, our knowledge on the poten...

The cytotoxic self-aggregation of β-amyloid (Aβ) peptide and islet amyloid polypeptide (IAPP) is implicated in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Type 2 diabetes (T2D), respectively. Increasing evidence, particularly the co-deposition of Aβ and IAPP in both brain and pancreatic tissues, suggests that Aβ and IAPP cross-interaction may...

Lateralization has been documented in many insect species, but limited information on courtship and mating lateralization in wild conditions is available. We conducted field investigation on the courtship and mating behavior of the neem bug, Halys dentatus, a polyphagous insect mainly infesting Azadirachta indica, with particular attention to later...

Riding a road vehicle involves only 10-16% of the fuel energy to overcome the resistance from friction and air drag, while the rest contributes to a massive ecological and economic damage. From an energy balance point of view, a great amount of energy is dissipated as vibrations at the shock absorbers level. In this paper, a hydraulic regenerative...

Water monitoring is crucial for environmental monitoring, transportation, energy and telecommunication. One of the main problems in aquatic environmental monitoring is biofouling. The simplest method among the current antifouling strategies is the use of wiper technologies like brushes and wipers which apply mechanical pressure. In designing built-...

Welding defect detection is crucial to determine welding quality and assure correct mechanical performance of the welded joint during operation. Most of common detection techniques are performed offline, are time consuming, and strongly dependent on the operator skill. In the present work, two novel automatic online welding imperfections detection...

In this chapter, we provide a critical discussion on the fabrication challenges for endoluminal microdevices. We detail the physical laws that govern the miniaturization of a device, the theoretical mechanical limits of miniaturized structures, and the viability of different fabrication options depending on the application. Then, we provide fabrica...

The emerging field of social robotics comprises several multidisciplinary applications. Anxiety and stress therapies can greatly benefit by socio-emotional support provided by robots, although the intervention of social robots as effective treatment needs to be fully understood. Herein, Paracheirodon innesi , a social fish species, was used to inte...

Miniaturised analytical systems are showing growing interest in aquatic ecology, although this technology has not been exploited to study cognitive behaviours of organisms in aquatic micro-environments. Herein, a miniaturised testing arena was developed to investigate information processes and learning of Heterocypris incongruens, a freshwater ostr...

There is a growing need to develop novel well-characterized biological inks (bioinks) that are customizable for three-dimensional (3D) bioprinting of specific tissue types. Gelatin methacryloyl (GelMA) is one such candidate bioink due to its biocompatibility and tunable mechanical properties. Currently, only low-concentration GelMA hydrogels (≤5% w...

Fiducial markers are fundamental components of many computer vision systems that help, through their unique features (e.g., shape, color), a fast localization of spatial objects in unstructured scenarios. They find applications in many scientific and industrial fields, such as augmented reality, human-robot interaction, and robot navigation. In ord...

Extrusion-based three dimensional bioprinting has emerged as a promising fabrication technique in the field of tissue engineering. However, it still suffers from reduced cell survival post-printing due to process-induced shear stress. Great research efforts have been made to reduce such an effect, yet none have investigated the ability of precondit...

Phosphate ions are the most abundant anions inside the cells, and they are increasingly gaining attention as key modulators of cellular function and gene expression. However, little is known about the effect of inorganic phosphate ions on cancer cells, particularly breast cancer cells. Here, we investigated the toxicity of different phosphate compo...

Organs-on-chip are gaining increasing attention as promising platforms for drug screening and testing applications. However, lymph nodes-on-chip options remain limited although the lymph node is one of the main determinants of the immunotoxicity of newly developed pharmacological drugs. In this review, we describe existing biomimetic lymph nodes-on...

Insects are important agents in ecosystems. Their diverseness and developed coping mechanisms also make them interesting for direct application and as a source of inspiration in medical engineering. We summarized the main contribution of insects in biomedical applications. Medical centers in North America, and Europe use fly larvae for maggot thera...

Prokaryotic flagellum is considered as the only known example of a biological “wheel,” a system capable of converting the action of rotatory actuator into a continuous propulsive force. For this reason, flagella are an interesting case study in soft robotics and they represent an appealing source of inspiration for the design of underwater robots....

One of the most commonly used file formats in manufacturing industry is .STL. We developed a semi-automated C++ -based preprocessor with a command line interface and an OpenGL-based visual module to extract topological features from simplified 3D volumes presented in .STL file format. The preprocessor evaluates input 3D models in five major steps:...

Simple Summary Engineered human skeletal muscle tissue is a platform tool that can help scientists and physicians better understand human physiology, pharmacology, and disease modeling. Over the past few years this area of research has been actively being pursued by many labs worldwide. Significant challenges remain, including accessing an adequate...

The assessment of respiratory activity based on wearable devices is becoming an area of growing interest due to the wide range of available sensors. Accordingly, this scoping review aims to identify research evidence supporting the use of wearable devices to monitor the tidal volume during both daily activities and clinical settings. A screening of...

While the dilemma of motion tracking and force control in beating-heart surgery is previously addressed using active control architectures and rigid robotic actuators, this work leverages the highly controllable mechanical properties of concentric tube robots for intelligent, design-based force control in minimally invasive cardiac ablation. Briefl...

Variations in size and geometry of objectsand the need for a delicate grasp are major challengesfor the development of grippers for the agri-food industry.To address this, we present a novel reconfigurable soft(ReSoft) gripper based on monolithic silicone fingers anddifferential mechanism. One motor is used to achieve differentconfigurations for th...

LSG is one of the most performed bariatric procedures worldwide. It is a safe and effective operation with a low complication rate. Unsatisfactory weight loss/regain may occur, suggesting that the operation design could be improved. A bioengineering approach might significantly help in avoiding the most common complications. Computational models of...

Group behaviours in fish are widespread, and are increasingly used to develop new optimisation algorithms for solving complex tasks. However, how external factors regulate individual spatial location in a fish school represents an overlooked aspect that is fundamental to understand collective dynamics. Herein, the neon tetra Paracheirodon innesi, a...

Pathogen transmission is a major limit of social species. Social distancing, a behavioural-based response to diseases, has been regularly reported in nature. However, the identification of distinctive stimuli associated with an infectious disease represents a challenging task for host species, whose cognitive mechanisms are still poorly understood....

Social learning represents a high-level complex process to acquire information about the environment, which is increasingly reported in invertebrates. The animal–robot interaction paradigm turned out to be an encouraging strategy to unveil social learning in vertebrates, but it has not been fully exploited in invertebrates. In this study, Lucilia s...

Sustainable, green energy harvesting has gained a considerable amount of attention over the last few decades and within its vast field of resources, bio-energy harvesters have become promising. These bio-energy harvesters appear in a wide variety and function either by directly generating energy with mechanisms similar to living organisms or indire...

Organs On-a-Chip represent novel platforms for modelling human physiology and disease. The lymph node (LN) is a relevant immune organ in which B and T lymphocytes are spatially organized in a complex architecture, and it is the place where the immune response initiates. The present study addresses the utility of a recently designed LN-on-a-chip to...