Massimiliano Di Luca
Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, University of Birmingham, University of Bristol
Papers
8
Total Citations
631
H-Index
5
About
Massimiliano Di Luca is a leading researcher at the intersection of human perception, haptics, and human-robot interaction. His work fundamentally explores how the brain constructs a sense of body ownership and how this knowledge can be applied to create more intuitive robotic systems. Di Luca’s most influential contribution is his seminal 2011 paper on the Rubber Hand Illusion (494 citations), which challenged prevailing assumptions by demonstrating that the feeling of owning a rubber hand and the perceived shift in hand position (proprioceptive drift) are dissociable processes, not a single phenomenon. This work has profound implications for understanding body representation and for applications in prosthetics and virtual reality. He has also made significant contributions to computational modeling of touch, reviewing how mechanoreceptor simulations can inform robotics and sensorimotor science (95 citations). Di Luca is a pioneer in the concept of progressive co-adaptation in human-machine interaction, exploring how humans and machines can dynamically adjust to each other in teleoperation and assistive technology. His recent work focuses on task-oriented robot handovers and grasp generation, using proxy-hand simulations to improve robot dexterity. Through his research, Di Luca bridges cognitive science and robotics, aiming to create machines that understand and adapt to human capabilities.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1
- 2
- 3Progressive Co-adaptation in Human-Machine Interaction19 citations · 2015
- 4
- 5Exploratory reach-to-grasp trajectories for uncertain object poses6 citations · 2012
- 6PrendoSim: Proxy-Hand-Based Robot Grasp Generator2 citations · 2021
- 7PrendoSim: Proxy-Hand-Based Robot Grasp Generator2 citations · 2021
- 8