This article is published in number 8 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until February 23, 2021
I have always suspected that plants were brilliant: Barbara Mazzolai tried it, and explained it. Barbara Mazzolai is one of the most important scientists in our country. She is director of the Micro-BioRobotics Center of the Italian Institute of Technology and does research in the field of bio-inspired robotics, which aims to create new technologies starting from the study of invertebrate plants and animals.
On these issues he has published nearly three hundred scientific works and the book The ingenious nature. How and why plants will change (and save) the planet with Longanesi, who has just entered the five finalists of the Galileo 2021 prize for scientific dissemination. What is bio-inspired robotics? It is the discipline that designs robots in imitation of living beings. Professor Mazzolai is the mother of Italian biorobotics, and is the most important of the scientists of this subject in Italy. We are used to thinking of robots in human form, but for example, there is the silicone octopus Octopus, designed by Cecilia Laschi of Sant’Anna di Pisa, soft and therefore less dangerous in interaction with humans, or Robofish, which is moves with ease in the water.
Barbara Mazzolai’s book makes it easy to understand a fascinating and wonderful thing: that even – indeed perhaps above all – brainless living beings, essentially plants, are capable of brilliant solutions.
Also from this concept was born the Plantoide, the robot invented by his laboratory: the first robot in the world inspired by the roots of plants in their movements, which was created for soil exploration and is very useful for agriculture and environmental monitoring. By now the value of his Plantoide is undisputed, but in 2008, when Mazzolai began to bring the idea to conferences, it was warmly received by his colleagues. She doesn’t care because she’s too busy. Since I have read it, I will never be able to detach a twig from a hedge.
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