Dr. Antonio Andriella

Tenured Scientist @

Institut de Robòtica i Informàtica Industrial (IRII)

Last update: January 24, 2026

My research focuses on designing social robots that can adapt to and proactively anticipate a user’s individual needs in assistive context. To achieve this, I investigate methods for personalisation and explainable AI, ensuring robots are transparent partners that foster trust in long-term interactions.

I’m a Tenured Scientist at the Institut de Robòtica i Informàtica Industrial (IRII). Prior to that I was a Postdoctoral Researcher at IRII and the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (IIIA). I was also a Research Scientist at Pal Robotics awarded with a Marie Skłodowska-Curie cofund fellowship in the H2020 project PRO-CARED which aimed at designing social robots with proactive personalised behaviour during long-lasting interactions (2022-2024). I received my PhD with a thesis entitled “Personalising robot assistance for cognitive training therapy” from the Institut de Robòtica i Informàtica Industrial (IRII) under the supervision of Dr. Guillem Alenyà and Prof. Carme Torras (2017-2022). My thesis was awarded the prestigious Georges Giralt award for the best European PhD thesis from euRobotics. Furthermore, I also won the AIHUB.CSIC prize for the best AI PhD Thesis from the AI Hub of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). Prior to my accademic carrer, I worked at Cogisen as Artificial Intelligence lead.

My work is guided by a clear vision: to create robots that support and empower us, enriching our daily lives while ensuring technology always complements —never competes with — human relationships.

Interests

Human-Centered Robotics
Socially Assistive Robotics
Short- and Long-term Personalisation
Robot Personalisation
Experimental Design
Proactive Behaviour
Explainable Robotics
User Mental Models

Education

PhD in Control, Robotics and Vision, 2022
Institut de Robotica i Informatica Industrial, CSIC-UPC
MEng in Artificial Intelligence, 2009
Sapienza, University of Rome
BSc in Computer Engineering, 2006
Sapienza, University of Rome

Latest News

2025-12-21

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The work of my PhD student Aniol Civit has been accepted as a full paper at the next AAMAS conference in Cyprus.

2025-12-16

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The work of my PhD student Tamlin Love has been accepted to Pioneers at the upcoming Human-Robot Interaction conference.

2025-05-01

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My work on Theory of Mind with Silvia Rossi and Giovanni Falcone has been accepted for publication in the International Journal of Social Robotics: Enhancing Robot Assistive Behaviour with Reinforcement Learning and Theory of Mind.

Experience

Postdoctoral Researcher

Institut de Robòtica i Informàtica Industrial

Mar 2025 – Jan 2026 Barcelona, ESP

I worked in the ADMIT and ROBOCAT projects aiming to build robots that can personalise and explain their behaviour over long term interactions.

Postdoctoral Researcher

Artificial Intelligence Reserch Institute

Mar 2024 – Jan 2025 Barcelona, ESP

I worked in the Value-Aware Artificial Intelligence (VALAWAI) project that aimed at developing AI systems that were able to understand and act by a value system and explain their own behaviour or understand the behaviour of others in terms of a value system.

Researcher Scientist

Pal Robotics

Feb 2022 – Feb 2024 Barcelona, ESP

Marie Curie fellow in the EU PRO-CARED project funded by the H2020 Program and Acció. The aim of the project is to develop social robots to help children and adults learn a second language, focusing primarily on people arriving from foreign countries. Language learning is the first obvious barrier to the integration of this population and their adaptation to different cultures. I focus on designing and developing mechanisms for personal robots to proactively interact with students providing them with adaptive and personalised assistance in an educational context.

Researcher and PhD Student

Institut de Robotica i Informatica Industrial

Mar 2017 – Feb 2022 Barcelona, ESP

Designed and developed a fully autonomous personalised-robot assisted cognitive training for patients affected by cognitive impairment. Tacked personalisation by designing robots that are both adaptable and adaptive. Adaptable in such a manner as to enable therapists to set them up and customise their high-level behaviour. Adaptive in such a manner that they can tailor their intervention to suit the individual’s unique needs as they evolve through time. Developed a novel framework called aCtive leARning agEnt aSsiStive bEhaviouR (CARESSER) which enables therapists to customise the robot’s assistive behaviour (adaptable) and allows the robot to learn in situ personalised patient-specific policies (adaptive) in a fully autonomous fashion. Evaluation of the robotic system in a healthcare centre with 22 patients affected my mild cognitive impairment and mild dementia.

Artificial Intelligence Lead

Cogisen

Jan 2012 – Oct 2016 Rome, IT

Worked on developing a set of machine learning algorithms aiming to go beyond the current limitations. The algorithms had been used for gaze tracking technology with RGB cameras as well as for image and video compression. The platform I worked on, allowed for the quick creation of models to capture and follow specific sparse changes of information in the frequency domain.

Artificial Intelligence Expert

Cogisen

Jan 2010 – Jan 2012 Rome, IT

Worked on the first gaze tracking solution for an F1 simulator at Ferrari. Furthermore, developed a silhouette detection pipeline for a kart simulator for a Ferrari Driver Academy pilot.

Artificial Intelligence Consultant

Cogisen

Jul 2009 – Jan 2010 Rome, IT

Analysed and evaluated the opportunity to introduce artificial intelligence into the automotive market.

MEng in Artificial Intelligence

La Sapienza, University of Rome

Jan 2007 – Mar 2009 Rome, IT

Studied the generation of rational behaviors through the planning of actions for teams of robots that follow different objectives. The thesis work consisted of three different activities: i) formalize the domain in Situation Calculus, ii) formulate an approach to find a solution that takes into account both the cooperative aspect of the team as well as the conflict situations, iii) validate the proposed approach in a rescue scenario.