Ground rover
EttorOne
A ground rover with four steered wheels. Each wheel is steered through its own servo, pushrod and steering link.
Advancing intelligence, engineering autonomy.
The Intelligent Systems Lab (ISL) is a robotics and AI group at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata”. We build autonomous vehicles and the perception, navigation, planning and control that let them work.
The lab is supervised by Daniele Carnevale, Associate Professor in Automation and Control (ING-INF/04) at the Department of Civil Engineering and Computer Science Engineering (DICII).
- Aerial
- Ground
- Surface
- Underwater
Prototypes
Surface vessel
Karin
A surface vessel built on the ONR Tumblehome hull (model 5613, 1/48.94 scale), with two propellers and two rudders.
Quadruped robot
DottorCane
A quadruped built on the Unitree Go2 EDU, with a Jetson Orin AGX and a Livox Mid-360 lidar on board. It was the ground robot of the team that won the Leonardo Drone Contest in 2024 and 2025.
Our open-source work is on GitHub.
Research Areas
- Robotic perception
- Localization and mapping
- Navigation
- Planning
- Control
- AI and machine learning for robotics
Awards
The Tor Vergata team has finished on the podium five times in a row at the Leonardo Drone Contest, where Italian universities compete on AI for unmanned systems. Many members of the team were or are part of ISL.
2
2021
2
2022
3
2023
1
2024
1
2025
- 2025
1st place
Sixth edition, at Italian Tech Week, ahead of Politecnico di Milano and the University of Naples Federico II.
Team: Simone Mattogno, Alessandro Tenaglia, Roberto Masocco, Lorenzo Bianchi, Alexandru Cretu.
Source: Leonardo
- 2024
1st place
A drone and the quadruped robot DottorCane working as one team, at DronItaly in Bologna.
Team: Simone Mattogno, Alessandro Tenaglia, Roberto Masocco, Lorenzo Bianchi.
Source: Tor Vergata University
- 2023
3rd place and Jury Prize
Behind Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna and Politecnico di Torino. The jury rewarded the team’s human-machine interface.
Team: Simone Mattogno, Alessandro Tenaglia, Roberto Masocco, Lorenzo Bianchi, Giorgio Manca, Federico Oliva, Shima Akbari.
Source: Tor Vergata Engineering
- 2022
2nd place, tied
Level with Politecnico di Torino, behind Politecnico di Milano.
Team: Simone Mattogno, Alessandro Tenaglia, Roberto Masocco, Lorenzo Bianchi, Fabrizio Romanelli.
Source: Tor Vergata Engineering
- 2021
2nd place
Second edition, behind Politecnico di Milano and ahead of Politecnico di Torino.
Team: Simone Mattogno, Alessandro Tenaglia, Roberto Masocco.
Source: CorCom
Publications
- 2026
- 2026Range-Only SLAM: A Multihypotheses Extended Kalman Filter With Modulated Federated Information Sharing
IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology
Localization, SLAM & Sensor Fusion - 2026
- 2023
- 2023
Media & Press
Flightline Weekly
Tor Vergata University Triumphs at the 2025 Leonardo Drone ContestMachinery Market
Tor Vergata University wins Leonardo Drone ContestLeonardo
Leonardo Drone Contest: Tor Vergata University wins the 2025 editionWired · Branded content
Drone Contest: dalla robotica collaborativa nasce la sinergia tra università e impreseCorriere TV · Video
Drone contest a Torino, sfida tra sette ateneiRaiNews / TGR Lazio · Video
Il drone oltre l’ostacolo
Team
Daniele Carnevale, Ph.D.
Lab supervisor. Associate Professor in Automation and Control (ING-INF/04).
School of Engineering, Department of Civil Engineering and Computer Science Engineering (DICII), University of Rome “Tor Vergata”.
- Office
- Via del Politecnico 1, 00133 Rome. Information Engineering building, office A4-06
- Phone
- +39 06 7259 7428
- Lab
- +39 06 7259 7713
- Fax
- +39 06 7259 7427
- daniele.carnevale@uniroma2.it
- Website
- Personal page
Current members
Let’s build something that works.
We aim to connect academia and industry through hands-on projects and shared research interests. Tell us what you have in mind.