Robotics: the first ever festival in Pisa, with Bocelli

Florence - Pisa city of technology, is preparing to become "robot town" thanks to the first International Robotics Festival, scheduled to take place from September 7 to 13, 2017, thanks to the participation of all the local institutions. The event is promoted by the Municipality of Pisa, the Arpa Foundation, the BioRobotics Institute of the SantAnna High School and the "E.Piaggio" Research Center of Pisa University. The program includes events dedicated to the "robotic culture" and to art in its many different forms and expressions. On the musical side, there are two notable events on the bill, one of which stars none other than Andrea Bocelli, the honorary president of the Arpa Foundation (one of the promoters, and the main sponsors, of the Festival). Andrea Bocelli has decided to help boost the international visibility of this event with the opera concert "A Breath of Hope: from the Stradivarius to the Robot" in which he will work on stage with a robot, for the very first time in his career. The event in question will be a charity concert, scheduled for 9 pm on Tuesday September 12 at Teatro Verdi in Pisa. It will feature the robot YuMi, interacting with Andrea Bocelli, soprano Maria Luigia Borsi and the Lucca Philharmonic Orchestra. The main sponsor of the evening is ABB.Pisa is the natural and favored setting of the festival: the city boasts one of the largest international communities of operators and the highest number of activities regarding robotic system research, development and application in the world. Historically, it has hosted research projects of the highest level in the field of IT, a strategic subject for the development of robotics and, in particular, for its applications connected with industry 4.0. The many faces of the festival, which combines scientific conventions and meetings with moments of entertainment of the highest level, in world premieres (such as the concert by Andrea Bocelli and soprano Maria Luigia Borsi "directed" by the humanoid robot YuMi, supported by a "human" orchestra director on September 12 at Teatro Verdi) and appointments of a more informative nature, were presented in the press conference held today in the Municipality of Pisa, in which representatives from the four promoting institutions took part. Robotics at the service of man is the idea behind this first edition of the event. Indeed, robots will be responsible for freeing humans from the most tiresome tasks, for intervening with precision and reliability on the human body, for improving the quality of life of the differently abled, allowing them to move with a freedom never imagined before, and even for helping to overcome the gap between the north and south of the world. Pisa will present robotics in all its shapes and forms, summarized in the origin of this Slavic word which means "forced labor, servitude", always exclusively for the benefit of man. The festival program includes seminars, conventions, demos, exhibitions, artistic displays, educational workshops for students (from elementary school upwards) all designed to provide a complete, updated panoramic view of the research, production and applications emerging in the field of robotics which, loyal to its mission, offers itself to serve man. A mention must go to the first "sell-out" of the Festival, that of the educational robotic workshops, organized by Great Robotics, a spin-off of the BioRobotics Institute of the SantAnna High School, hosted at Stazione Leopolda. Over one hundred children will strive to create their first "robotic hand" and will then have the chance to practice their skills in the "educational robotics" workshops, as the project of the same name - sustained by the Tuscany Region - is already engaging the majority of the schools in Tuscany.