Raffaello D'Andrea inducted into National Inventors Hall of Fame
Raffaello D'Andrea, Professor at the Institute of Dynamic Systems and Control at the Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering, has been inducted into the US National Inventors Hall of Fame. The robotics expert receives this recognition for the development of an autonomous robot-supported merchandise management system.
With acceptance into the National Inventors Hall of Fame (external page NIHF) in Washington, D.C., Raffaello D'Andrea is in select company. Since 1973, almost 600 inventors have been honored worldwide. The prerequisites for acceptance are an invention that contributes to the progress of science and industry and a US patent. Among the honored are famous inventors as Rudolf Diesel or Louis Pasteur.
From 2003 to 2007, D'Andrea, together with entrepreneur Mick Mountz and IT specialist Peter Wurman, developed the robot-supported merchandise management system called Kiva. He led the systems architecture, robot design, robot navigation and coordination, and learning-based control algorithms development. In 2012, Kiva Systems was acquired by Amazon and later renamed Amazon Robotics.