From Artificial Intelligence to Autonomous Driving: the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies at the Robotics Festival in Pomarance to promote scientific culture and emerging technologies among young people

The Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies took part in the 12th edition of the Robotics Festival, held on April 29, 2026, at the Teatro dei Coraggiosi in Pomarance, reaffirming its commitment to education, science communication, and career guidance activities aimed at young people in the local area.

The initiative, dedicated to secondary school students, has become a well-established event for promoting technological and scientific culture. The event was organized and directed by Professor Antonio Quarta, who has been coordinating the Robotics Project of ITIS “A. Santucci” for over ten years with continuity and dedication.

For this edition as well, the ReTiS Laboratory of the TeCIP Institute (Communication, Information, and Photonic Technologies) of the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies made a significant contribution to the scientific framework of the event, collaborating in the selection of topics and speakers with the aim of making highly relevant technological subjects accessible.

Following the institutional greetings by the Mayor of Pomarance, Graziano Pacini, and the school principal Federica Casprini, the event moved into its core sessions with a series of talks ranging from artificial intelligence to autonomous driving, as well as the latest research on human–machine interaction.

The scientific sessions were opened by Giorgio Buttazzo and Alessandro Biondi, professors at the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies. Professor Buttazzo presented the latest developments in the field with his talk “Artificial Intelligence: New Developments,” while Professor Biondi offered a critical reflection on contemporary lifestyles with “Dependence on Technological Well-being: Everything Now, Everything Owed.”

This was followed by Leonardo Tarabella, a former CNR researcher, who explored the topic of gestural music in his presentation “Gesture Control for the Generation of Electronic Music.” After a theoretical introduction, the talk evolved into a live performance, particularly appreciated by students for its interactive and experimental nature.

The day concluded with a joint presentation by Federico Nesti, researcher, and Mauro Marinoni, technical officer of the ReTiS Laboratory, who explored the prospects of autonomous mobility and applied robotics in their talk “The Road of the Future: Robotics and Autonomous Driving.”