Department of Computer, Control and Management Engineering

PhD in Systems Engineering in 1987. Researcher in 1988. Associate professor at the Università di Milano in 1992, moved to Sapienza in 1993. Full professor since 2000.
Associate Editor (1994-98), Editor (1998-2003), and Editor-in-Chief (2003-04) of the IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation. Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Robotics (2004-08).
General Chair of the 2007 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Roma, 2007). Elected member of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) AdCom (2008-10). Vice-President for Publication Activities of IEEE RAS (2012-13). Program Chair of the 2016 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Stockholm, 2016). General Chair of the 1st Italian Conference on Robotics and Intelligent Machines (Roma, 2019).
IEEE Fellow (class of 2007). IEEE Life Fellow since 2023. Member of the Search Committee for Physical Sciences of the Körber European Science Award (2006-12) and of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics (2015-17). Chair of Panel PE7 (Systems and Communication Engineering) of the European Research Council for the Advanced Grants in 2009, 2011, and 2013. Member of the Science Advisory Board of the Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence (MIRMI) of the Technical University of Munich since 2022 and of the Advisory Board of The International Journal of Robotics Research since 2023. One of the Vice-presidents of the national Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines (I-RIM) since 2019.

National coordinator of the MIUR PRIN project SICURA (2008-10).
Principal investigator of the European projects PROMotion, PHRIDOM, FP6 CyberWalk, FP6 PHRIENDS, H2020 SYMPLEXITY. Team member of H2020 COMANOID project.
Coordinator of the European project FP7 ICT-287513 SAPHARI (Safe and Autonomous Physical Human-Aware Robot Interaction) 2011-15.

Director of the Master course in Control Engineering (2013-19), a two-year M.Sc. program fully taught in English. Senior Research Fellow of the Scuola Superiore di Studi Avanzati Sapienza (2017-20, renewed 2020-23).

He published more than 240 journal or conference papers and book chapters. See the complete list at http://www.diag.uniroma1.it/deluca/Publications.php.
Author for the Springer Handbook of Robotics (1st and 2nd Edition).

Bibliometric indices (April 18, 2024):

ORCID: 0000-0002-0713-5608
Google Scholar: My Citations h-index = 68, with 19742 citations (since 2019: h-index = 42, with 7300 citations), i10-index = 177 (since 2019: i10-index = 104)
Scopus Author ID#: 7201948195 h-index = 56, with 11345 citations (e 164 coautori)
Semantic Scholar 144765522: h-index = 62, with 14311 citations
WoS ResearcherID: F-3835-2011 h-index = 44, with 8104 citations

Awards and recognitions

• Finalist of the ICRA 2021 Best Human-Robot Interaction Paper Award for the paper Collision detection and localization for the DLR SARA robot with sensing redundancy (by M. Iskandar, O. Eiberger, A. Albu-Schäffer, A. De Luca, A. Dietrich) ---see [C-150] in my list of publications (Xi'an, CHN, June 2021)
• 2019 IEEE-RAS George Saridis Leadership Award in Robotics and Automation. Citation: "For contributions to the robotics and automation community through research innovation and education, and for leadership in publication and conference activities in RAS" (May 2019)
• 2017 Mechanisms and Machine Theory Award for Excellence for the 2008 paper An atlas of physical human-robot interaction (by A. De Santis, B. Siciliano, A. De Luca, A. Bicchi), as one of the top 10 most cited papers since the journal's first publication based on Scopus ---see [J-35] in my list of publications (August 2017)
• Finalist of the ICRA 2015 Best Conference Paper Award for the paper Control of generalized contact motion and force in physical human-robot interaction (by E. Magrini, F. Flacco, A. De Luca) ---see [C-132] in my list of publications (Seattle, USA, May 2015).
• Finalist of the IROS 2013 Best Video Award for the video Safe physical human-robot collaboration (by F. Flacco, A. De Luca) ---see [V-1] in my list of publications (Tokyo, JPN, November 2013)
• Best Paper Award at the 4th IEEE RAS-EMBS International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics (BioRob 2012) for the paper Integrated control for pHRI: Collision avoidance, detection, reaction and collaboration (by A. De Luca, F. Flacco) ---see [C-121] in my list of publications (Rome, ITA, June 2012)
• 2009 IEEE-RAS Distinguished Service Award. Citation: "For outstanding leadership and contributions as Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Robotics, and for service as the ICRA 2007 General Chair" (April 2009)
• Chapter author of the Springer Handbook of Robotics that received the two PROSE Awards for Excellence in Physical Sciences & Mathematics and for Engineering & Technology, The American Publishers Awards for Professional and Scholarly Excellence ---see [BC-12] in my list of publications (February 2009)
• Best Application Paper Award at the 2008 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2008) for the paper Collision detection and reaction: A contribution to safe physical human-robot interaction (by S. Haddadin, A. Albu-Schäffer, A. De Luca, G. Hirzinger) ---see [C-105] in my list of publications (Nice, FRA, September 2008)
• Fellow of the IEEE (The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers). Citation: "For contributions to modeling and control of robotic systems" (2007)
• Recipient of the German Helmholtz Humboldt Research Award for foreign scientists (April 2005)
• Best Conference Paper Award at the 1998 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 1998) for the paper A general algorithm for dynamic feedback linearization of robots with elastic joints (by A. De Luca, P. Lucibello). ---see [C-59] in my list of publications (Leuven, BEL, May 1998)