Riccardo Spica

About

Riccardo Spica’s research lies at the intersection of active perception, optimal control, and multi-robot systems, with a particular focus on vision-based autonomous flight. His major contributions include developing game-theoretic motion planning for multi-robot racing (62 citations) and pioneering vision-based minimum-time trajectory generation for quadrotors in aggressive flight regimes—a method that guarantees feature visibility even during high-speed maneuvers (50 citations). Spica has also advanced decentralized active perception, proposing strategies that maximize convergence rates for bearing-based formation localization and scale estimation (24 citations). His work on online optimal active sensing control (19 citations) addresses the challenge of improving observer accuracy by dynamically optimizing robot inputs to gather the most informative data. Additionally, Spica contributed to open-source hardware/software architectures for quadrotor UAVs (22 citations), facilitating broader access to experimental platforms. His achievements include coupling visual servoing with active structure from motion, enabling robots to simultaneously execute tasks and estimate unknown 3D scene structure. With a PhD thesis titled "Contributions to Active Visual Estimation and Control of Robotic Systems," Spica’s research has significantly impacted autonomous navigation and perception, offering practical solutions for high-performance robotic systems.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   Game Theoretic Motion Planning for Multi-robot Racing

   62 citations · 2019
2. 2
   Vision-based minimum-time trajectory generation for a quadrotor UAV

   50 citations · 2017
3. 3
   Active decentralized scale estimation for bearing-based localization

   24 citations · 2016
4. 4
   An Open-Source Hardware/Software Architecture for Quadrotor UAVs

   22 citations · 2013
5. 5
   Online optimal active sensing control

   19 citations · 2017
6. 6
   Coupling visual servoing with active structure from motion

   8 citations · 2014
7. 7
   An active strategy for plane detection and estimation with a monocular camera

   6 citations · 2014
8. 8
   Active structure from motion for spherical and cylindrical targets

   4 citations · 2014
9. 9
   Interfacing Matlab/Simulink with V-REP for an Easy Development of Sensor-Based Control Algorithms for Robotic Platforms

   3 citations · 2014
10. 10
    Contributions to active visual estimation and control of robotic systems

    2 citations · 2015

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links