Francesco Del Duchetto

(he/them)

3118 Isaac Newton building

Brayford Pool

Lincoln LN6 7TS, UK

I am a Lecturer (Asst. Prof.) in Robotics and Autonomous Systems at the Lincoln Centre for Autonomous Systems at the University of Lincoln UK and an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (AFHEA). I am also a member of Interaction Lab and Autism Research and Innovation Centre.

The aims of my research are endowing robots with the capabilities to operate autonomously in everyday human environments and to interact with people in a socially appropriate fashion. To this end, I develop methodologies for robot learning from human interactions, I study and deploy social robots for and with people in education, cultural, assistive, and public environments, and I build autonomous robots for agriculture and sustainability.

I am actively involved in robotics competitions for the advancement of the state-of-the-art in robotics and AI, and for introducing students to research topics in these fields. In 2023 I co-founded the LCASTOR team, which participates annually to RoboCup @HOME competitions.

Before, I was a Post-Doctoral Research Associate working in the TARICS project, and a PhD student advised by Prof. Marc Hanheide in the “Lindsey, the tour guide robot” project. I graduated from Sapienza University of Rome with a MSc in “Artificial Intelligence and Robotics” and from the University of Bologna with a BSc in “Computer Science and Engineering”.

latest news

Mar 19, 2026	Our paper Who leads the story? Comparing autonomous vs. adult-supported child-robot interactions by Dotun Olutunbi et al. was presented at ACM/IEEE HRI 2026 in Edinburgh, together with a HRI LBR paper on dynamic consent in public service robots: Cato et al.
Jan 15, 2026	Secured a BBSRC FoodBioSystems DTP PhD project on “Autonomous Robotics for Animal Welfare and Environmental Monitoring” (2026-2030)!
Sep 1, 2025	I have served as Area Chair for the ACM/IEEE HRI Late-Breaking Reports track, as Associate Editor for IEEE/RSJ IROS, and in the Program Committee for ECMR.
Jun 15, 2025	Our paper Modelling robot navigation recovery policies from non-expert users’ demonstrations in-the-wild by Ahmad Faris et al. was nominated for the Best Paper Award at the International Conference on Robotic Computing and Communication (RoboticCC) 2025 🏅!
Mar 1, 2025	Two new grants awarded as Co-I: “ProPick: Using eye-tracking and AI to enhance the Performance Of fruit Pickers” (£87,380, EPSRC LINCAM AgriTech Cluster) and “Perfecting the Pick” (£7,000, UoL QR fund)!

selected publications

RAL

Do not make the same mistakes again and again: Learning local recovery policies for navigation from human demonstrations

Francesco Del Duchetto, Ayse Kucukyilmaz, Luca Iocchi, and 1 more author

IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 2018

Bib Code

@article{del2018not,
  title = {Do not make the same mistakes again and again: Learning local recovery policies for navigation from human demonstrations},
  author = {Del Duchetto, Francesco and Kucukyilmaz, Ayse and Iocchi, Luca and Hanheide, Marc},
  journal = {IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters},
  volume = {3},
  number = {4},
  pages = {4084--4091},
  year = {2018},
  publisher = {IEEE},
}

Lindsey the Tour Guide Robot-Usage Patterns in a Museum Long-Term Deployment

Francesco Del Duchetto, Paul Baxter, and Marc Hanheide

In IEEE International Conference on Robot & Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN), 2019

Bib

@inproceedings{del2019lindsey,
  title = {Lindsey the Tour Guide Robot-Usage Patterns in a Museum Long-Term Deployment},
  author = {Del Duchetto, Francesco and Baxter, Paul and Hanheide, Marc},
  booktitle = {IEEE International Conference on Robot \& Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN)},
  year = {2019},
  organization = {IEEE},
}

FRobAI

Are You Still With Me? Continuous Engagement Assessment From a Robot’s Point of View

Francesco Del Duchetto, Paul Baxter, and Marc Hanheide

Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 2020

Bib Code

@article{del2020you,
  title = {Are You Still With Me? Continuous Engagement Assessment From a Robot's Point of View},
  author = {Del Duchetto, Francesco and Baxter, Paul and Hanheide, Marc},
  journal = {Frontiers in Robotics and AI},
  volume = {7},
  number = {116},
  year = {2020},
  publisher = {Frontiers Media SA},
}

RAL

Learning on the Job: Long-Term Behavioural Adaptation in Human-Robot Interactions

Francesco Del Duchetto, and Marc Hanheide

IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 2022

🏅 Bib

@article{del2022learning,
  title = {Learning on the Job: Long-Term Behavioural Adaptation in Human-Robot Interactions},
  author = {Del Duchetto, Francesco and Hanheide, Marc},
  journal = {IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters},
  volume = {7},
  number = {3},
  pages = {6934--6941},
  year = {2022},
  publisher = {IEEE},
  award = {Finalist for IROS 2022 Best Paper Award on Cognitive Robotics by KROS}
}

HRI

Who leads the story? Comparing autonomous vs. adult-supported child-robot interactions

Dotun Olutunbi, Riccardo Polvara, Thomas Davies, and 3 more authors

In Proceedings of the 21st ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), 2026

Bib HTML

@inproceedings{olutunbi2026who,
  title = {Who leads the story? Comparing autonomous vs. adult-supported child-robot interactions},
  author = {Olutunbi, Dotun and Polvara, Riccardo and Davies, Thomas and Hamilton, James and Kargas, Niko and Del Duchetto, Francesco},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 21st ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI)},
  pages = {139--148},
  year = {2026},
  publisher = {ACM},
}