Luca Garello
Robot Planning & Autonomy Engineer
Professional Summary
Robotics engineer with 6+ years of experience deploying autonomous humanoid robots in real-world, uncontrolled environments, from museum floors to hospital wards. Specialized in behavior orchestration, task and motion planning, cognitive architectures (LLM/VLM reasoning, graph memory), and full-stack ROS2/YARP engineering. Owned the end-to-end design, architectural definition, and full-stack development of the robot’s cognitive framework, driving the platform’s high-level autonomy and intelligent HRI capabilities. Strong track record shipping autonomy pipelines on physical robots with measurable societal impact.
Recent Works
Maugeri Hospital
Maugeri Hospital 2
Acquario di Genova
Building Knowledge from Interaction
Interview with iCub
Galata Museo del Mare
Experience
AlterEgo / iCub Robots — Planning, Autonomy & Cognitive Architecture
- Designed end-to-end autonomy pipelines for live public deployments: state machines + behavior trees integrating multimodal user recognition and understanding, LLM-based dialogue (OpenAI API / local models), goal-conditioned Navigation, and safety monitoring.
- Sole software maintainer for the full AlterEgo fleet (10+ robot units): managing the entire ROS2 codebase spanning hardware interfaces, control, navigation, and perception — covering LQR self-balancing, Nav2, VSA actuator drivers, kinematics, and Meta Quest 3S teleoperation, all migrated from ROS1 to ROS2 Lyrical via ros2_control. Extensive practical and theoretical experience in edge computing architectures such as Nvidia Jetson platforms.
- Built graph-based RAG cognitive architecture (LangChain, LangGraph, Neo4j) enabling iCub to execute cross-user inference and aggregate interactions across different timeframes, overcoming traditional RAG memory limitations.
- Currently investigating computationally efficient, low-parameter world models (e.g. NVIDIA's GR00T) for autonomous robotic manipulation, relying exclusively on unlabelled 2D human video as the primary observational modality.
- Led the design and implementation of human-subject studies in real-world environments, employing co-design methodologies with key stakeholders and validated psychological scales to rigorously evaluate robot effectiveness and acceptability.
- Field Operations & Demo Support: Managed the transport, setup, and live technical demonstrations of robots at major international conferences (including ICRA, ECCV, Humanoids and EmTech), ensuring reliable system performance in public booth environments.
Real-World Robot Deployments
IRCCS Maugeri — ALS Clinical Ward, Milan (2026): AlterEgo operating autonomously and via teleoperation alongside clinical staff in an active ALS care unit. First humanoid robot in an Italian clinical setting. [press release]
Galata Museo del Mare, Genoa (2023–2025): AlterEgo conducting live autonomous guided tours with LLM dialogue, spatial context awareness and goal-conditioned navigation for real public visitors. [press release]
Acquario di Genova (2023–2025): AlterEgo dynamically engaging visitors to disseminate oceanographic data on the Pelagos Sanctuary, and executing intelligent, real-time query-answering regarding the marine fauna. [press release]
Stazione Marittima, Genova (2023–2025): AlterEgo inviting passengers to fill out questionnaires stimulating users to express their point of view and evaluate the services offered in the Maritime Station. [press release]
euROBIN 2024 Coopetition — 1st Place: AlterEgo successfully executed everyday household tasks using a mixed-control paradigm combining autonomous and teleoperated operation modes. [press release]
Selected Publications
Education
Thesis: Learning Actions from Human and Robot Visual Motion Observations
Advisors: A. Sciutti, F. Rea, N. Noceti