COLLABORATIVE ROBOTICS: BELVEDERE SPA AND PECCIOLI TOWN COUNCIL SUPPORTED SPIN OFF MEDIATE ROBOTICS OF BIOROBOTICS INSTITUTE FOR THE MOBOT AUTONOMOUS SHOPPING CART GETTING AROUND THE VILLAGE

To use MoBot, you just download an app and use your phone to move the robotic autonomous shopping cart from the store to your front door. On September 29, the autonomous robot carts were presented at the International Robotics Festival in Peccioli and they are now allowed on roads of this village near Pisa. Designed to carry items through small towns and rural areas, MoBot will help Peccioli’s citizens and users in daily shopping, assisting them with a variety of tasks. MoBot is highly adaptable (to sense forces due to impact and quickly react), capable to handle short runs and carry heavy loads. It is small enough to work in a narrow space but it can be adjusted to changed conditions.

MoBot fully complies with the safety standards for human-robot collaboration. It was developed by Mediate, a spinoff of Sant’Anna School Biorobotics Institute, with the support of Peccioli Town Council and Belvedere Spa. The collaborative robotics sector is expected to increase roughly tenfold between 2015 and 2020 thanks to AI enabling rapid advances in robotics and vision technology.

“You designed them the way we thought they would be”, quoted Gastone Ciuti, researcher at Sant’Anna School Biorobotics Institute, when gathering information from the citizens engaged in the tests.

“We hope we can rely on technology for a better future. This robotic cart will help us to revitalize our village; I have been thinking about an advanced shopping cart since the inauguration of our multi-storey car parking in 2001 and this project (project outcomes will be placed under the public ownership) will introduce us to the revolutionary innovations implemented in the Biorobotics Institute” said the Mayor Renzo Macelloni.