Prof. Vito Cacucciolo  vito.cacucciolo@poliba.it

Fiber pumps for wearable fluidics

We developed the first pumps in the form of 2-mm thick rubber tubes. The tube is now the pump, enabling fluidics for thermally active clothing and soft robots

Read in full on Science

Electroadhesion soft grippers

Strong and fast grippers for delicate objects enabled by the understanding of peeling mechanics in electroadhesion
Read article in full

Soft pumps and fluidic muscles

World-first fully stretchable pumps enable thermally active wearables and fluidic artificial muscles

Read in full on Nature

Soft Grippers Review

Our review on the fast-growing field of Soft Robotic Grippers

Read in full on Advanced Materials

Omnigrasp Srl

Omnigrasp creates electroactive soft robots to solve automation with difficult objects: food, textile, biomedical

Learn more on Omnigrasp.com

Current positions 

Associate Professor at Politecnico di Bari, Italy since 2023

CEO of Omnigrasp Srl since 2022

Research affiliate at MIT, US since 2022

Curriculum vitae             Google Scholar profile

Background and titles 

 2023 ERC StG grantee from European Research Council

2017 PhD from Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna Pisa, Italy (Prof. C. Laschi)

2017 – 2021 Scientist at EPFL Soft Transducers Laboratory (Prof. H. Shea)

2020 – 2021 BRIDGE Fellow (SNSF – Innosuisse)

Robots have the potential to free humans of wearing labour, replace humans in dangerous tasks and augment human abilities. Vito’s long-term goal is to understand physical intelligence and use it to create adaptive materials, human-centred robots, and smart wearables.

Vito has been the driving force behind the development of the world-first stretchable pumps for use in fluidic artificial muscles, soft exoskeletons and smart wearables, published in Nature in 2019. Vito’s improved electroadhesion soft gripper for delicate and fragile objects can now pick up over 1.5 kg, 1000 times its own weight.