Institutional portal - Municipality of Milan

IPA2X was tested in the Municipality of Milan to assist primary school students in crossing in front of school

Milan, October 11 2022 – This morning the boys and girls of the Arcadia school, in the Gratosoglio district, had a special assistant to cross the street: the IPA2X robot which, for the first time in Milan, helped them reach the school safely, under the supervision of a policeman. control by local police officers.

The European IPA2X project, funded by EIT Urban mobility, an initiative of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), a body of the European Union, is aimed at studying the adoption of robotic rovers to support active mobility in urban contexts to improve the safety of citizens, reduce noise and environmental pollution and contain service management costs.

The experimentation of the IPA2X robot in the Municipality of Milan involved some teachers and around fifty pupils from two classes, a fourth and a fifth of the primary school of the Arcadia Institute, which joined the initiative. The field activity was preceded by a training course on the topic of road safety and new technologies, conducted in collaboration with the local Police School.

The testing of the rover, developed by Hipert Srl and Lifetouch, took place in a real context, but with a futuristic scenario: the robot, equipped with sensors and a video camera, in fact informed the driver of the car, supplied by Skoda and equipped with connectivity and interface capable of communicating with the rover, of the presence of pedestrians about to cross and subsequently notifying the students of the green light.

The presence of the local police guaranteed safety during the experimentation and allowed us to collect useful feedback on the adaptability of the robot in the different contexts in which it could be called upon to operate. While boys and girls provided evaluations on the perception of safety during crossing and on the ease of reading and understanding the messages sent by the robot.

The design of innovative robotic tools to support road safety is one of the tools put in place to reduce the risks to which road users are subject, especially vulnerable ones. The sharing and development of know-how and experiences on existing technologies, including artificial intelligence, real time computing, the Internet of things (IoT) and 5G were the ingredients of the IPA2X project which involved the Municipality of Milan, the Municipality of Modena, the Living lab of Ljubljana, the Polytechnic of Munich, the Polytechnic of Prague, Skoda and the start-ups Hipert Srl and Lifetouch.

The three councilors involved, the deputy mayor with responsibilities for Education Anna Scavuzzo, the councilor for Mobility Arianna Censi and the councilor for Security Marco Granelli, said they were satisfied with the experiment which involved the school, the mobility management and the Police local.

"Ensuring safe access to schools – commented Anna Scavuzzo – is a priority on which we continue to work with various interventions, both structural such as open squares, car-free streets, 30 zones and school streets, and with the support of the local police and friendly grandparents. Every experimentation and possible technological innovation is certainly an opportunity to study new methods of intervention".

"Milan confirms itself as one of the most active Italian cities – declared Arianna Censi – in the field of experimentation with innovative tools aimed at improving the safety of urban mobility. Thanks to these innovations it will be possible to develop increasingly ecological, safe and intelligent solutions for urban mobility".

"The education of boys and girls to respect the rules of the road code – concluded Marco Granelli – is one of the tasks of the local police, to train responsible young people who take care of their own safety on the road and that of those who are around them. And today in Milan it was possible to do this even with a robot."