Get to know Francesca Canale, Project Engineer at STAM. A robotics engineer passionate about artificial intelligence, machine vision, robot programming, and automation.
“Introducing HumanTech technologies in construction sites can empower and support workers, resulting in improved working conditions. This would lead to a more inclusive and diverse workforce, making the construction industry more appealing to women and young people.”
Q: Francesca, tell us a little about yourself. Wat aspect of your profession do you enjoy the most?
A: As a robotics engineer, I enjoy challenging myself, experimenting with new concepts, and constantly learning new things about the ever-evolving world of robotics. Among the topics that I find most fascinating are artificial intelligence, machine vision, robot programming, and automation in general.
“As a robotics engineer, I enjoy challenging myself, experimenting with new concepts, and constantly learning new things about the ever-evolving world of robotics.”
Q: Interesting! And about your company, what is its main mission? What is the team involved in HumanTech?
A: STAM is a private engineering company based in Genoa, Italy. Our main mission is to provide engineering services to industries and to support our clients in addressing new businesses and technology challenges. The enthusiasm and the experience of our staff is our most valuable asset.
The STAM team directly involved in the HumanTech project is the Robotics and Mechatronics one, which is active in several R&D projects concerning topics such as collaborative robotics, AI-based image processing, robotic sorting and augmented reality.
Q: Great. Now, tell us about your role at HumanTech. What do you do and what is the most rewarding thing about it?
A: We contribute to the HumanTech project mainly by leading task 5.1 (“Development of the ontology for demolition task planning”), which deals with developing a robotic task planner for the automatic execution of demolition activities.
The most rewarding aspect for me is to have the opportunity to apply my robotics knowledge in a domain which is entirely new to me: the construction industry.
Q: What is the activity you are developing that excites you the most?
A: I think the most exciting activity will be to demonstrate our technologies on actual construction sites. In particular, we will validate our demolition task planner in scenarios involving cutting openings in existing walls during building renovations. This task, which is typically carried out using human-operated tools and exposes workers to hazardous conditions, will be performed autonomously with our HumanTech demolition robot and overseen remotely by a human operator.
Q: That sounds exciting. To conclude, what is the positive impact you hope to generate through this project?
A: I believe that introducing HumanTech technologies in construction sites can empower and support workers, resulting in improved working conditions. This would lead to a more inclusive and diverse workforce, making the construction industry more appealing to women and young people. I consider this one of the most significant and impactful outcomes that HumanTech aims to achieve.
Learn more about our work at HumanTech and the team behind it.
Know Jason Rambach, our project coordinator from the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Bharath Sankaran, CTO and Co-founder of Scaled Robotics, Gabor Sziebig, Research Manager at SINTEF, Gloria Callinan, Project Support Officer at the Technological University of the Shannon (TUS), Fabian Kaufmann, Researcher at the Rheinland-Pfälzische Technische Universität Kaiserslautern-Landau (RPTU), and Florendia Fourli, CEO and Managing Director of Hypercliq.
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