Appointment with bionics, the science of robots inspired by the living world LIVE AT 14.00

Online appointment at 2.00 pm with bionics, the frontier science that studies robots inspired by the living world.

Born a few decades ago, it has changed science and technology in recent years and promises to have extraordinary developments.

The "Bionics Today" meeting, organized by the Biorobotics Institute of the Sant'Anna School of Pisa and broadcast live on ANSA Scienza, tells the story and future developments. 

"Bionics has generated new frontier research, new technologies, inspired and educated many young people", observes Paolo Dario, one of the pioneers of this discipline in Italy and Europe and organizer of the conference with Giulio Sandini, of the Italian Institute of Technology ( Iit).

The two researchers, with Patrick Aebischer, of the Lausanne Polytechnic, in June 1989 organized one of the first conferences dedicated to Biorobotics, which was then beginning to take its very first steps, opening a path destined to profoundly renew science and technology.

The new appointment is an ideal continuation of the event of 32 years ago, to reflect on how bionics has become a central discipline for developing advanced machines and systems inspired by the living world. "It is nice to have the opportunity to verify how much a new scientific and technological discipline has really produced 30 years later", comments Paolo Dario. "Before the 1989 Workshop, Bionics was an area that had aroused interest and expectations above all, it must be said. , in the military field, but which had rapidly decayed both for the perhaps excessive expectations it had created, and for a bad reputation in the scientific field that had seriously damaged its reputation. With the 1989 Workshop - continues Dario - a group of young researchers decided to resume the ranks and to deepen,with a critical spirit, but also of adventure and with an eye to the future, what could be the scientific, technological, applicative and social perspectives of Bionics ". Since then, Dario points out, "Bionics has generated new frontier research, new technologies, inspired and educated many young people through highly successful official academic courses, favored the birth of new scientific journals".

Introduced by Maria Chiara Carrozza, president of the National Research Council (Cnr), the meeting brings together some of the leading international bionics and robotics scholars and is organized in two round tables that will address the two main strands of bionic research: bodyware and mindware .

The "Bodyware and mindware" round table will be attended by: Atsuo Takanishi (Waseda University), Toshio Fukuda (Meijo University), Rodney Brooks (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Marc Raibert (Boston Dynamics), Massimo Bergamasco (Mechanical Intelligence Institute, High School Sant'Anna), Kenneth Salisbury (Stanford University), Antonio Bicchi (University of Pisa), Danilo De Rossi (Enrico Piaggio Research Center).

The "Mindware and bodyware" round table will see the presence of: Pietro Morasso (Italian Institute of Technology), Neville Hogan (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Ferdinando Mussa-Ivaldi (Northwestern University), Giuseppe Casalino (Polytechnic of Bari), Concetta Morrone (University of Pisa), David Burr (University of Florence and CNR Pisa), Ruzena Bajcsy (University of California), Tomaso Poggio (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)