manuelbonilla.github.io

Professional

I graduated from Polytechnic University of Aguascalientes with a B.Eng. in Mechatronics. I received the M.S. in Robotics and Advanced Manufacturing from CINVESTAV under the supervision of the professors Vicente Parra and Fransico Ruiz. I was with the Robotics and Automation group of Research Center E Piaggio of the Engineering School Leonardo da Vinci at University of Pisa where I got my PhD degree on July 2015 under the supervision of professor Antonio Bicchi. My main research topics are constrained motion planning and execution for soft robots. I spent one year as a postdoctoral researcher in the same lab and one year more as a postdoctoral researcher with the Advanced Robotics group at Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia.
Before starting my master studies I was working first as a Technical Support Engineer in Trucka, and then in Gp Electromecanica as an Automation Engineer. Once I got my M.S. degree I worked for the technology center of Whirlpool Corporation as Engineer analyst, my job was to perform Multibody Dinamic Simulations. Now I'm an R&D Engineer at Robot System Automation

Publications

Design, Implementation and Control of the Velvet Fingers Dexterous Grippe, International Journal of Robotics Research 2015 (Submitted)
G. Averta, F. Angelini, M. Bonilla, M. Bianchi and A. Bicchi, Incrementality and Hierarchies in the Enrollment of Multiple Synergies for Grasp Planning, in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters 2018, Accepted for Publication.
Matteo Bianchi, Giuseppe Averta, Edoardo Battaglia, Carlos Rosales, Manuel Bonilla, Alessandro Tondo, Mattia Poggiani, Gaspare Santaera, Simone Ciotti, Manuel G. Catalano and Antonio Bicchi, Touch-Based Grasp Primitives for Soft Hands: Applications to Human-to-Robot Handover Tasks and Beyond, in ICRA 2018, Accepted for Publication.
G M Gasparri, S. Manara, D. Caporale, G. Averta, M. Bonilla, H. Marino, M. G. Catalano, G. Grioli, M. Bianchi, A. Bicchi, M. Garabini, Efficient Walking Gait Generation via Principal Component Representation of Optimal Trajectories: Application to a Planar Biped Robot With Elastic Joints, in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 2299-2306, July 2018.
M. Bonilla, L. Pallottino and A. Bicchi, Noninteracting constrained motion planning and control for robot manipulators, 2017 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Singapore, 2017, pp. 4038-4043.
C. Della Santina, Piazza, C, Gasparri, GM, Bonilla, M, Catalano, MG, Grioli, G, Garabini, M, Bicchi, A, The Quest for Natural Machine Motion: An Open Platform to Fast-Prototyping Articulated Soft Robots, in IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine, vol. 24, no. 1, pp. 48-56, March 2017.
M. G. Catalano, Grioli, G., Farnioli, E., Serio, A., Bonilla, M., Garabini, M., Piazza, C., Gabiccini, M., and Bicchi, A., From Soft to Adaptive Synergies: The Pisa/IIT SoftHand, in Human and Robot Hands, vol. Springer Series on Touch and Haptic Systems, Springer, 2016.
T. Stoyanov and N. Vaskevicius and C. A. Mueller and T. Fromm and R. Krug and V. Tincani and R. Mojtahedzadeh and S. Kunaschk and R. Mortensen Ernits and D. R. Canelhas and M. Bonilla and S. Schwertfeger and M. Bonini and H. Halfar and K. Pathak and M. Rohde and G. Fantoni and A. Bicchi and A. Birk and A. J. Lilienthal and W. Echelmeyer No More Heavy Lifting: Robotic Solutions to the Container Unloading Problem, IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine, vol. 23, no. 4, pp. 94-106, Dec. 2016
M. Bonilla [2015], Constrained Motion Planning and Execution for Soft Robots, PhD. Thesis, University of Pisa, Italy.
M. Bonilla, D. Resasco, M. Gabiccini and A. Bicchi. Grasp Planning with Soft Hands using Bounding Box Object Decomposition, in 2015 IEEE Int. Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Hamburg, Germany, Sep 28 - Oct 2
M. Bonilla, E. Farnioli, L. Pallottino and A. Bicchi. Sample-Based Motion Planning for Robot Manipulators with Closed Kinematic Chains, in 2015 IEEE Int. Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Seattle, WA, 2015, pp. 2522-2527.
M. Bonilla, E. Farnioli, M. G. Catalano, G. Grioli, M. Garabini, M. Gabiccini and A. Bicchi. Grasping with Soft Hands, in 2014 IEEE-RAS Int. Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids), Madrid, 2014, pp. 581-587.
N. Vaskevicius, C. Atanas, M. Bonilla, V. Tincani, T. Stoyanov, G. Fantoni, K. Pathak, A. J. Lilienthal, A. Bicchi and A. Birk. Object Recognition and Localization for Robust Grasping with a Dexterous Gripper in the Context of Container Unloading. 2014 IEEE International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering.
R. Krug, T. Stoyanov, M. Bonilla, V. Tincani, N. Vaskeviciusz, G. Fantoni, A. Birkz, A. Lilienthal and A. Bicchi. Velvet Fingers: Grasp Planning and Execution for an Underactuated Gripper with Active Surfaces, in 2014 IEEE Int. Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Hong Kong, May 31 2014-June 7 2014, 2014
V. Tincani, G. Grioli, M. G. Catalano, M. Bonilla, M. Garabini, G. Fantoni and A. Bicchi. Controlling the active surfaces of the Velvet Fingers: sticky to slippy fingers, in 2013 IEEE Int. Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Tokyo, Japan, 2013, pp. 5494 - 5499
E. Farnioli, M. Gabiccini, M. Bonilla and A. Bicchi. Grasp Compliance Regulation in Synergistically Controlled Robotic Hands with VSA, in 2013 IEEE Int. Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Tokyo, Japan, pp. 3015 -3022
M. Bonilla [2011], Sistema Róbotico Cooperativo en Tiempo-Real con Interfaz Bimanual Háptica. MsC. Thesis, CINVESTAV-IPN Mexico.
M. Bonilla, V. Parra-Vega, F. J. Ruiz-Sanchez. H^2IL Co-simulation of Cooperative Robots based on ADAMS, MATLAB and a haptic interface, National Congress of the Automatic Control Mexican Association, celebrated on Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco. México, October 2010

Projects

Some of the projects I've worked on are:

Personal

My full name is José Manuel Bonilla Jiménez, I was born in Aguascalientes, Mexico in 1985. I have three children: Vanessa, Paulette and Manuel.
I grew up in Aguascalientes, in 2011 I moved to Saltillo to continue my studies and 2 years later to Monterrey to work. Now I am living in Pisa.

Hobbies

I like dancing, I love Mexican regional music, tequila and spicy food. I like playing soccer, I support the best soccer team in Mexico which is the Club America.
When I have some free time from work and family I like reading. I also like traveling.