Intro
We are delighted to introduce Giovanni, the second member of our student team working on the Sight Guide project. In this series of articles, we are presenting each student team member to showcase their unique skills and background. Today, we will learn more about Giovanni's passion for autonomous systems and his role in the project.
Giovanni Cioffi - Autonomous Systems Enthusiast
Giovanni is a dedicated PhD student at the Robotics and Perception Group at the University of Zurich (UZH) and ETH Zurich. With nearly three years of experience in the field, Giovanni focuses his research on Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM), perception, and planning for autonomous systems. His expertise in these areas has made him an invaluable member of the Sight Guide team.
Prior to his PhD, Giovanni was a research assistant at the Robotics and Perception Group, where he worked on SLAM and sensor fusion for accurate localization and mapping. His background also includes a research internship at ABB Corporate Research Center in Ladenburg, Germany, where he focused on machine learning for human-robot contact detection and classification, with applications on ABB's YuMi manipulator.
In addition to his research experience, Giovanni has also worked as a production engineer intern at Avio Aero, a GE Aviation Business, where he redesigned a production line for turbine combustors. He has also been a student research assistant at ETH Zurich's Institute of Structural Engineering (IBK), working on various Arduino and sensor-based projects.
Giovanni holds a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering, with a focus on robotics and computer vision, from ETH Zurich. His master's thesis, entitled "Teach and Aggressive Repeat," explored visual teaching and high-speed repetition on a quadrotor. During his time at ETH Zurich, Giovanni also completed a semester project on deep representation learning for event-based data, where he used convolutional autoencoders to learn input representations from event-based images.
His academic background also includes a Master of Science in Industrial Engineering and a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering, both from the Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II in Italy. Giovanni's diverse educational experiences have equipped him with a strong foundation in robotics, computer vision, and AI.
Giovanni's passion for autonomous systems and robotics has driven him to excel in his field, making him an integral part of the Sight Guide team. His technical skills and experience in SLAM, perception, and planning are crucial to the development of the vision assistance technology.
Working on autonomous systems and robotics has allowed me to explore the incredible potential of these technologies. I am excited to be part of the Sight Guide team, where we can use our combined expertise to create meaningful solutions for people in need of vision assistance.
Stay tuned for our next article, where we will introduce another talented student team member working on the Sight Guide project.