← Return to the planispherePlate VIII · CREATE / PRISMA · O3 lead

PLATE VIII · MMXXVI · CREATE / PRISMA · SICILIANOOne controller, four task behavioursHAPTIC SHARED CONTROL · ARCHITECTURAL PRIMARYSUPERVISOR · LOW-BANDWIDTH SCALARTASK TOKENSNeedle graspSurgical · low-force pickupDual-arm manipulationIndustrial · coordinated graspTeleoperated cutSurgical · gated motionAerial manipulationUAV · load-bearing flightν = NEEDLE GRASP
Active constraints prevent contact above 0.5 N at the tip. The autonomous controller plans the trajectory; the supervisor's narrow scalar caps the force budget.
CREATE · PRISMA Lab · UNINA · Naples

Bruno Siciliano

Director of PRISMA Lab — Projects of Industrial and Service Manipulation Robotics — at CREATE / UNINA. ERC Advanced Grant holder, Engelberger Award laureate. Lead of Objective O3.

· keep the gradient ·


I · Position

PRISMA Lab, four decades of robotics

Bruno Siciliano directs PRISMA Lab at CREATE — Centro di Ricerca per l’Ingegneria Elettronica e Telecomunicazioni dell’Università di Napoli Federico II. PRISMA — Projects of Industrial and Service Manipulation Robotics — spans seven domains of modern robotics: industrial manipulation, service robotics, aerial robotics, surgical robotics, haptic shared control, human-robot interaction, and motion planning.

The lab’s body of work is the architectural primary source for SYMPHONY’s task-baton interface. Across a decade of RA-L, ICRA, T-RO and IROS papers (2018–2025), the Selvaggio-Pacchierotti-Giordano-Siciliano programme demonstrated in physical hardware that a low-bandwidth supervisory signal can reshape a high-degree-of-freedom autonomous controller into qualitatively different task behaviours — without rewriting the controller. The hero above is what that looks like in cartoon form.

II · The seven domains of PRISMA

The rose — and the architectural primitive in its centre

INDUSTRIAL MANIPULATIONSERVICE ROBOTICSAERIAL ROBOTICSSURGICAL ROBOTICSHAPTIC SHARED CONTROLHUMAN–ROBOT INTERACTIONMOTION PLANNINGPRISMAKeep the gradient.ERC ADVANCED GRANT · ENGELBERGER AWARD · CREATE / UNINABruno Siciliano · director, PRISMA Lab · O3 lead, SYMPHONY
PRISMA Lab spans seven domains of robotics. Hover any sector for the slice and what it brings to SYMPHONY. The haptic shared-control sector is the architectural primitive being transposed — the rest of the rose is the pedigree the lab brings to bear on it.

Seven domains of PRISMA. The haptic shared-control sector is the one SYMPHONY transposes — but the rest of the rose is the depth of evidence the lab brings to bear on the transposition.

III · Awards and standing

ERC Advanced Grant · Engelberger Award · Springer Handbook

Iaward

ERC Advanced Grant

European Research Council's senior funding tier — granted to investigators whose work has redefined a research field. Siciliano has held an ERC Advanced Grant in robotics.

IIaward

Engelberger Award

The IRC's lifetime-achievement award in robotics — named for Joseph Engelberger, considered the father of industrial robotics. Siciliano is a laureate.

IIIaward

Editor, Springer Handbook of Robotics

The standard reference work for the field. Two editions co-edited with Oussama Khatib — the textbook every robotics engineer trains on.

IV · Role in SYMPHONY

O3 lead · the low-bandwidth control interface

Objective O3M24 decision milestone

Derive a narrow scalar control interface by which engineering-task tokens reshape the substrate’s activation regime without modifying its stored structure. Threshold: task-switching latency < 500 ms and state-preservation score ≥ 0.95 (cosine similarity between post-switch resting state and pre-task baseline), over ≥ 100 task-switching trials on both demonstrator codebases.

CREATE-PRISMA leads O3 with Newcastle as a deputy partner — mapping the haptic shared-control formalism (active constraints, virtual fixtures, admittance-based teleoperation) onto a discrete symbolic substrate. The result is the task baton: a small set of scalar modulatory signals, not a prompt window.