Robot Valley conquers Genoa: success for the second edition
The second edition of “Robot Valley. Robotics, Arts and People” attracted over 2.000 attendees. The event, organized by the RAISE project, once again engaged the Genoese public, offering opportunities for discussion and exploration around robotics, artificial intelligence, and emerging technologies.
Held from April 10 to 12, this year the event had the honor of being selected by the Ministry of Enterprises and Made in Italy (MIMIT) as an official event for the National Made in Italy Day, celebrated annually on April 15—a prestigious recognition that confirms its importance in the landscape of Italian technological and cultural excellence.
Once again, the venue was Villa Durazzo Bombrini in Cornigliano, the cultural hub of Genoa’s western district, which for three days was animated with talks, robotic demonstrations, interactive workshops, scientific update sessions, guidance activities, meetings with institutions and innovation experts, and the Innovation Showcase organized as part of the RAISE up mentorship program. This showcase offered a high-profile platform for 13 selected technologies to present themselves to entrepreneurs and businesses with potential interest.
In addition to highlighting the goals and progress of the various RAISE project “Spokes” through 13 events including roundtables and talks, the “Robot Valley” program also featured a strong artistic component, once again exploring the connections between new technologies and the languages and forms of art.
Genoese artist Alessandro Piano created a special installation for the event titled “Alter Ego Maxi RAISE”, a fiberglass sculpture with a hollow body housing a small saltwater aquarium. The aquarium, in turn, contained Alter Ego BIG LUDO, a “daughter” sculpture retrieved and displayed after spending 9 months at sea, its surface bearing various microorganisms as evidence of life in submerged environments. Another highlight was “Angel Robot”, a holographic installation by Venetian artist Marco Nereo Rotelli in collaboration with digital designer Antonio Alfano. Located in a container provided by the Elital group and installed in Genoa’s central Largo Pertini, the immersive experience showcased a graceful “mechanical angel” that conveyed, with expressive power, the importance of fostering a relationship between humans and machines. Visitors were also offered short poems generated by AI, inspired by the words and themes of Genoese poet Edoardo Sanguineti – providing a further reflection on how the fusion of different artistic languages can open new interpretative paths when applied to the world of technology.
The digital photography exhibition “Raise the Future” was also hosted at Villa Bombrini. Co-created with Artificial Intelligence by the National Research Council (CNR) in collaboration with the RAISE Communications Team, the impactful images immediately conveyed the research and technology transfer activities initiated by the project, illustrating inclusive and sustainable scenarios of a future in which robotics and AI collaborate in various human activities and contribute to improving quality of life and the environment.
The robotic demos also garnered strong interest, with over 800 visitors. Researchers from the Italian Institute of Technology and the University of Genoa alternated in presenting the functionality, applications, objectives, and future developments of various robots. The RICE group from DIBRIS (University of Genoa) presented social robots Buddy and Navel—currently used primarily in schools and for engaging with children—as well as Pepper, a social assistive robot that will soon be tested in the geriatrics ward at San Martino Hospital in Genoa. Meanwhile, the Italian Institute of Technology demonstrated the assistive social robot R1 and the quadruped robots Spot (developed with Boston Dynamics) and Go1 Unitree, already used in monitoring and search-and-rescue operations in high-risk areas.
Finally, there was a wide range of educational workshops aimed at schools, organized by the Science Festival Association in collaboration with the School of Robotics and the CNR Institute for Educational Technologies, registering a total of 680 attendees. The workshops included:
– “Programming is Child’s Play!” (by the Italian Institute of Technology);
– “Robo-sport: Let’s Program Champion Robots Together!” (by the School of Robotics in collaboration with CampuStore);
– “FantasIA: From Words to Artificial Imagination” (by CNR – Institute for Educational Technologies);
– “Algorithms and Digital Snakes: Discovering Reinforcement Learning” (by MaLGa Machine Learning Genoa Center, University of Genoa – Department of Civil, Chemical, and Environmental Engineering);
– “Co-creating with Artificial Intelligence: The New Frontier of Images and Art” (by CNR – Institute for Educational Technologies).
