Robotics research at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia

Since 10 years, the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (Italian Institute of Technology, IIT in short) has been 
investing in developing robotics research. It funded the development of a number of platforms shaped as humanoids, 
quadrupeds, plants, and devices with targeted application in surgical and rehabilitation. In the short term, 
robotics for surgical and rehabilitation are thought to be closest to the market. In the medium to long term, we 
will see the appearance of humanoids in the factory and the household. Especially for the household application 
cost reduction and advanced AI are paramount . Our bet is that the use of new materials especially designed for 
robotics would give competitive advantage to the platform developers by allowing the design of affordable yet 
reliable - high performance - robots. On the AI side, we are simultaneously researching in computer vision, 
human-robot interaction, control theory, and machine learning to deliver the autonomous skills required to these 
robots. IIT is strengthening this research with conspicuous investments geared towards the realization of one of 
kind robotic platform equipped with state of the art AI skills.