Workshops and robotic demonstrations: strong public engagement at the educational heart of Robot Valley Genova 2025
The three-day event dedicated to the discovery of robotics and artificial intelligence, held as part of Robot Valley Genova 2025, successfully came to a close, drawing a remarkable turnout of schools and families.
A total of 680 participants took part in the educational workshops, while the robotic demonstrations attracted 815 attendees, confirming the growing interest in emerging technologies and their impact on everyday life.
The educational workshops, reserved for schools on April 10 and 11 and open to the public on April 12, were among the most engaging events of the festival. Four different formats were designed to bring children and young people closer to programming, educational robotics, and creative expression through artificial intelligence.
The workshop “Programming is Child’s Play!”, organized by the Italian Institute of Technology, offered younger participants an introduction to robot languages, showing how programming fundamentals can be learned through play.
The School of Robotics, in collaboration with CampuStore, led the “Robo-sport” workshop, where participants programmed robots to tackle small sports challenges, stimulating logical thinking and teamwork.
With “Algorithms and Digital Snakes”, the MaLGa Center at the University of Genoa introduced older students to the concept of reinforcement learning, demonstrating how robots can learn through interaction with the environment and feedback.
Finally, the CNR – Institute for Educational Technology offered two different workshops focusing on generative artificial intelligence: for schools, “FantasIA”, dedicated to transforming words into images using AI; and for the public, “Co-creating with Artificial Intelligence”, an opportunity to explore the new frontiers of digital creativity.
Alongside the workshops, the much-anticipated robotic demonstrations took place throughout the event, curated by the Italian Institute of Technology and the University of Genoa. Research teams made their expertise and advanced prototypes available to visitors, explaining the development process of the robots and their potential future applications.
Among the highlights were YAPE, a robot designed for environmental monitoring, and R1, capable of interacting naturally with humans. VERO, a quadruped robot equipped for cleaning and sustainability tasks, also sparked great curiosity. Visitors were also able to engage directly with robots such as Pepper, Nao, Buddy, Navel, Spot, Horus and Pelan from the RICE lab at the University of Genoa—concrete examples of the diverse applications of contemporary robotics.
The educational area of Robot Valley reaffirmed the importance of scientific outreach as a bridge between research and society, promoting technological culture among younger generations in a dynamic and inclusive environment.
