Since 2024 I have built products for startups in Amsterdam, and since 2000 I have worked at Ditta Currà, in Mileto. Here is what I did, in plain words. You can also search by word.
Robot
Olivabot
founderFebruary 2024 – present
Robotics
AI on the device
firmware
drones
Robots for olive groves, and the company my contract work runs through. Olivabot B.V. was set up in July 2024. They are laboratory prototypes, not a product for sale.
The AI works right on the robot, with no internet: it recognises what it sees, uses a language model that runs locally, and turns what it senses into movement. It runs on a Raspberry Pi 5 with a dedicated chip, the Hailo-10H.
Gibbon Bot: a robot with 24 degrees of freedom, meaning 24 independent movements, built to climb trees. I wrote the software inside it, in C++ on an ESP32, for the motors and sensors, and a controller in the browser over Bluetooth for tests in the groves.
Design, 3D printing, and assembly of mechanisms for trees: motors, batteries, bioplastics.
Drone surveys with a multispectral camera over olive groves and orchards: a 3D reconstruction from the photos, and indices that measure how healthy the vegetation is.
Basil Bot: a four-axis arm with a camera, for which I did the hardware and the software inside it. It is also Marin Marian’s thesis in artificial intelligence at VU Amsterdam.
I supervised Arina Fayzulina’s thesis in artificial intelligence at VU Amsterdam: spotting diseases on olive trees from images.
Twelve bachelor theses in 2025, six briefs, with VU Amsterdam and the University of Twente: wind turbine, shape-memory alloys, compressors, a Stirling engine, walking robots, an aerostat.
A portable nitrous-oxide detector, the “laughing gas” kind, for police. They had a working benchtop unit and a portable mock-up that did not work. I re-engineered the portable unit end to end — architecture, parts, battery, the software inside it — and delivered it: more than 8 hours on one charge. Police in the United Kingdom used it on duty.
Architecture, choice of parts, the electronics, and a Li-ion battery with its control circuit.
Software inside the device, in C++: it reads the sensors, shows the data in real time, watches the battery, and talks over Bluetooth, with the existing protocol extended to the new hardware.
embedded and IoT engineerSeptember 2024 – July 2026
Sensors
telecommunications
cloud
Sensors for water filtered through mycelium, in the lab and outdoors. They run on a battery and the readings show on a web page.
Sensors for mycelium water filtration: they measure dissolved solids, air, temperature, and humidity.
Raspberry Pi and microcontrollers, programmed in Python and C++. They talk over Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and LoRaWAN (a long-range radio), including the outdoor LoRaWAN gateway. Batteries and waterproof housings.
The data is processed on the device, then stored in a database (PostgreSQL) and shown on a web page with live and past readings. The project had support from the Province of Noord-Holland.
Motion sensing for a rehabilitation glove, from a feasibility study to prototypes tried with patients and healthcare staff. The movements are recognised right on the device.
A small AI model (TensorFlow Lite) runs on the microcontroller and recognises hand movements from the motion-sensor data, processed in C++.
Battery-powered sensors the size of a ring, linked over Bluetooth in a network (a mesh).
A web page and an API (Django) for session data. Hand tracking with the camera (MediaPipe) is meant for physiotherapists.
Software inside the device for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, with remote updates (OTA), and support in the meetings about getting the product into production.
A spider-shaped robot for uneven farm ground. I chose the motors, designed the robot in 3D, and printed the parts. The software inside it, in C++, controls the movements (PID control) by combining the data from the joint sensors and a motion sensor. First movement within the first month.
Waterproof housings and batteries for outdoor sensors.
Six mechanical engineering degree theses with VU Amsterdam and the University of Twente: a rover with suspension for rough ground (rocker-bogie), a six-legged robot and its energy management, buoys with sensors for canals, a gripper for drones, and toroidal propellers.
Ditta Currà, in Mileto, in the province of Vibo Valentia. My grandfather opened it in 1963 and my father runs it today. I have worked there since 2000.
We sell hardware, building materials, and heating and air-conditioning systems.
We help choose, install, look after, and repair pellet stoves, boilers, air conditioners, and solar thermal.
Each system is worked out for the house: the area, the volume, the temperature, the flue.
From 2026 I also look after the digital systems: the website with its request queue, an assistant that answers from the public pages, and the archive of jobs turned into a dashboard of zones, travel cost, and margin.
A lecture on building a prototype step by step, within the rapid-prototyping course for innovative product design, BSc Mechanical Engineering. How to build working prototypes and minimum viable products for early-stage companies and, more generally, for new products.
teacher of mechanical sciences and technologiesschool year 2022/2023
Teaching
mechanics
At a technical high school, with about one hundred students. I taught materials, machines, robotics, energy, sustainability, structures, and embedded systems.
Design
AKKA Technologies
mechanical designer2020
Mechanical design
CAD
Consulting for an oil-plant engineering client in Milan.
I kept in touch with international stakeholders about the specifications, checked CAD drawings, and designed structures and parts. A few months, through the first lockdown.