RUI PAULO PINTO DA ROCHA

Dr. Rui Paulo Pinto da Rocha is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Coimbra, with dual affiliation at the Institute of Systems and Robotics (ISR) since 2000. His career spans 15 years of academic leadership and 19 years of active research in cooperative robotics. Key affiliations include:

• Senior Member of IEEE (since 2021)
• Chair of the IEEE RAS Technical Committee on Multi-Robot Systems (since 2018)
• Coordinator of multiple EU-funded projects including REMOORA, EuroAGE+, and SEMFIRE

Research focuses on cooperative multi-robot systems with decentralized coordination, covering:

• Swarm robotics for aquatic resource monitoring
• Marsupial robot teams with communication constraints
• 3D volumetric mapping using entropy gradients
• Human-robot collaboration in urban fires
• Multi-sensor fusion for disaster response
• Edge computing for low-power inference

Recent publications (2023-2025) demonstrate technical breadth across ROS cloud integration, semantic mapping, and human detection systems. Notable scientific contributions include:

• Development of Darwinian Swarm PSO algorithm
• Benchmarking framework for swarm exploration
• Communication-constrained coordination models
• Multi-robot patrolling optimization techniques

As an educator, he supervises 2 PhD candidates and numerous MSc students, while teaching courses on autonomous systems, industrial automation, and software engineering. His laboratory leadership includes:

• Technical management of ISR research infrastructure (2014)
• Development of RACbot-RT real-time control system
• Advancements in multi-robot SLAM frameworks