Bruno Siciliano, robotics professor at the University of Naples Federico II, and Fabio Puglia of Oversonic discuss why humanoid robots such as RoDyMan and RoBee may help people and machines work together in research and industry.
Siciliano describes RoDyMan, a humanoid pizza-making robot, as both a technical challenge and a way to explore how people relate to robots. Its benchmark was the manual skill of a pizzaiolo, with the further aim of preserving that craft for future generations. Pizza also connected the project to Naples and gained added visibility after it was recognized as UNESCO heritage.
Puglia says RoBee brings together cognitive computing, system integration, and technologies developed for industrial applications, drones, and automotive systems. Siciliano argues that a humanoid body can make interaction more natural and use two arms in spaces designed for people. RoBee uses wheels, which he notes are more practical than walking on many floors.
Siciliano says collaborative robots could support people on tasks that still require human dexterity, and that some industrial tasks may eventually be shared or interchangeable. RoDyMan showed why this requires deliberate engineering: two industrial arms could not perform a pizzaiolo's dough-tossing motion, so the team had to reconsider actuation, mechanics, materials, gearing, and sensors. He describes this approach as anthropic robotics, designed around human interaction, including physical interaction.
Siciliano says operators first need to understand how to use a humanoid, while a robot's ability to interpret field data can change the relationship. People and machines can adapt tasks together instead of assigning the whole cycle to the robot. He gives customer service as one possible use, where a robot could retrieve targeted answers from a complex database.
Siciliano argues that intelligence and robotics work best in combination, coordinating sensing and movement. He describes a shift from information technologies toward interaction technologies, including efforts to reproduce practical skills rather than store only static data. Puglia adds that AI must process the messiness of real environments and produce outputs a robot can carry out.
Briefs summarise talks and interviews; timestamps open the video at that moment. Claims in a talk are the speaker's own.
Paolo Denti, co-founder of Oversonic, discusses safe, human-centered humanoid robots for industrial and healthcare work at the World Technology Congress, following remarks from Dominica and Jodi.
Paolo of Oversonic Robotics explains the company’s approach to humanoid robots for industrial work and healthcare at a Bloomberg Tech event in London, with host Bloomberg Live and a demonstration by robot R.O.V.A.
