PRISMA Lab

𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗻𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝘆 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝘂𝗺 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲 ▯ The European House-Ambrosetti
𝗞𝗲𝘆𝗻𝗼𝘁𝗲 𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗿 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗳. 𝗕𝗿𝘂𝗻𝗼 𝗦𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗹𝗶𝗮𝗻𝗼

Yesterday, at the Technology Forum 2026 in Stresa, Prof. Bruno Siciliano delivered the keynote “𝗪𝗘𝗟𝗖𝗢𝗠𝗘 𝗧𝗢 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗔𝗚𝗘 𝗢𝗙 𝗣𝗛𝗬𝗦𝗜𝗖𝗔𝗟 𝗔𝗜” within the session “𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗡𝗘𝗪 𝗜𝗡𝗗𝗨𝗦𝗧𝗥𝗜𝗔𝗟 𝗣𝗔𝗥𝗔𝗗𝗜𝗚𝗠 | 𝗧𝗢𝗪𝗔𝗥𝗗𝗦 𝗔 𝗛𝗨𝗠𝗔𝗡‒𝗥𝗢𝗕𝗢𝗧 𝗘𝗖𝗢𝗦𝗬𝗦𝗧𝗘𝗠?”.

The keynote explored the current inflection point of Physical AI, driven by the convergence of advances in the robotics ecosystem — including compute power, connectivity, battery innovation and falling hardware costs — with recent progress in AI for physical systems, such as robotic foundation models, simulation and data-driven learning.

The talk highlighted how the next phase of AI will increasingly concern action in the physical world: not only processing information, but enabling systems capable of perceiving, adapting and interacting with real environments. In this context, human-robot collaboration becomes central across industrial, logistics, healthcare and manufacturing domains.

Particular attention was devoted to the open challenges in advanced robotics, especially in manipulation, tactile sensing and dynamic adaptation in humanoid robots. While the humanoid form factor remains attractive because human environments are designed around the way people move and interact, deploying humanoids in complex real-world settings will still require time.

During the keynote, prof. Siciliano also addressed the role Europe can play in promoting a human-centric vision of technology, where robotic and AI systems are designed to adapt to individuals while respecting their needs, dignity and privacy.

𝗘𝘂𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗲, 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗛𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗥𝗼𝗯𝗼𝘁 𝗖𝘂𝗹𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 🇪🇺

The article by Riccardo Oldani published in 𝑊𝑒 𝑅𝑜𝑏𝑜𝑡𝑠 explores some of the key challenges in European AI and robotics research through the lens of euROBIN project, the Horizon Europe-funded network of excellence aiming to build a shared ecosystem of robots, software, and methodologies.

Among the Italian contributors featured in the article are Alberto Finzi, head of the AI and Cognitive Robotics research line at PRISMA Lab, and Riccardo Caccavale, both involved in euROBIN activities through the CREATE Consortium.

One of the main goals of the project is “to make it possible to transfer and reuse technologies developed in laboratories, overcoming the fragmentation that still slows down research today,” explains Finzi. Robotic solutions often remain tied to the specific prototypes or platforms on which they were originally developed, making them difficult to replicate or integrate with other systems.

In this context, learning becomes a central element of the project, especially through approaches that allow robots to acquire and transfer skills more naturally across different platforms. One of the most relevant aspects discussed is learning by demonstration, which allows robots to observe human operators and emulate the sequence of actions required to complete a task. This approach could make robotics more accessible even to people without programming expertise.

On the research side, one of the main challenges concerns the transfer of robotic skills across different platforms. “We want skill transfer to be as simple as possible,” Finzi explains, “and to study techniques not only for training, but also for transferring behaviors and capabilities from one robot to another.”

Finzi also stresses the importance of a “human-centered” approach, in which robots are expected to recognize human intentions and plan their actions accordingly, especially in collaborative environments where humans and machines share spaces and activities.

Riccardo Caccavale discusses the contribution of neurosymbolic systems, where reasoning capabilities and data-driven learning are integrated within the same robotic framework. “We combine the ability to explicitly represent knowledge, typical of symbolic systems, with neural network learning,” Caccavale explains. “This allows us to obtain robots capable of ‘reasoning’ about their own actions.”

The final part of the article focuses on cascade funding and on the coopetitions promoted within euROBIN: collaborative competitions in which research teams are evaluated not only on their own performance, but also on their ability to integrate and reuse software modules developed by other groups. An approach designed to encourage interoperability, knowledge sharing, and collaboration across the European robotics community.