Carlo Pinciroli, PhD

Main Research Activities

I am an Associate Professor and the Graduate Coordinator of the Robotics Engineering department at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where I direct NEST Lab. I also have appointments in the Artificial Intelligence Program (as one of the Graduate Coordinators) and in the Departments of Computer Science and Fire Protection Engineering.

The focus of my research is swarm robotics. My research has been funded by NSF, NASA, US Army, Mathworks, Amazon Science, Charles River Analytics, Raytheon Technologies, and BAE Systems, among others.

If you want to join my lab, please follow these instructions.

Programming large-scale robot swarms

NEST Lab is developing Buzz, an innovative programming language specifically designed for real-world robot swarms. Buzz was widely covered in the media, most notably by MIT Technology Review, Communications of the ACM, and RoboHub.

Accurate, physics-based simulation of robot swarms

During my Ph.D., I have designed ARGoS, which is currently the fastest general-purpose robot simulator in the literature. ARGoS is used by many laboratories across the world to perform accurate physics-based simulations of large-scale robots swarms. NEST Lab continuously improves ARGoS to suit the diverse needs of the swarm robotics research community.

Selected Awards and Honors

  • Best Paper Award at AAMAS2022.
  • 2020 recipient of a Romeo L. Moruzzi Young Faculty Award for Innovation in Undergraduate Education
  • 2019 recipient of an Amazon Research Award
  • 2019 nominee for Best Faculty Advisor Award at WPI
  • 2018 Rho Beta Epsilon Award for Excellence in Robotics Education
  • 2015 F.R.S.-FNRS Chargé des Recherches, 3-year postdoctoral fellowship
  • 2012 winner of the Most Innovative Technology award at the Robot Film Festival for Swarmanoid, the movie
  • 2011 winner of the AAAI video competition for Swarmanoid, the movie

Editorial Activities

Conference Chair

Editor

Program Committee Member (last 3 years)