Speck&Tech Talks “(A)I, Robot” con Angelo Cangelosi e Leonardo Cavagnis

Talk 1 – “Cognitive Robotics: From Babies to Robots and AI” con Angelo Cangelosi (University of Manchester -UK)

Can robots learn languages like humans?
This talk dives into Cognitive Robotics, where AI, Psychology, and Neuroscience join forces to teach robots how we think, learn, and communicate. Using iCub and Pepper robots, researchers explore how babies acquire words, gestures, and even abstract concepts like numbers. But it’s not just about words: robots also develop a Theory of Mind, learning to interpret human intentions and build trust. The discussion goes beyond tech, tackling ethics, AI’s limits, and the future of human-robot collaboration. Can machines truly understand us? Let’s find out!

Talk 2 – “Edge AI: Bringing Intelligence to Embedded Devices” con Leonardo Cavagnis (Arduino)

Artificial intelligence is no longer confined to the cloud. Thanks to Edge AI, we can now run AI models directly on embedded devices with limited power and resources. In this session, we will explore the full pipeline of developing a Tiny Machine Learning (TinyML) model, from data collection to deployment, addressing key challenges such as dataset preparation, model training, quantization, and optimization for embedded systems. We’ll explore real-world use cases where AI-powered embedded systems enable smart decision-making in applications like predictive maintenance, anomaly detection, and voice recognition.
The talk will include a live hands-on demonstration on how to train and deploy a model using popular tools like Google Colab and TensorFlow, and then run real-time inference on an Arduino board.

Come partecipare

L’evento si svolgerà in lingua inglese. Per partecipare di persona è obbligatoria la registrazione.

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I relatori

Angelo Cangelosi is Professor of Machine Learning and Robotics at the University of Manchester (UK) and co-director and founder of the Manchester Centre for Robotics and AI. He was selected for the award of the European Research Council (ERC) Advanced grant (funded by UKRI). His research interests are in cognitive and developmental robotics, neural networks, language grounding, human robot-interaction and trust, and robot companions for health and social care. Overall, he has secured over £38m of research grants as coordinator/PI, including the ERC Advanced eTALK, the UKRI TAS Trust Node and CRADLE Prosperity, the US AFRL project THRIVE++, and numerous Horizon and MSCAs grants. Cangelosi has produced more than 300 scientific publications. He is Editor-in-Chief of the journals Interaction Studies and IET Cognitive Computation and Systems, and in 2015 was Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Autonomous Development. He has chaired numerous international conferences, including ICANN2022 Bristol, and ICDL2021 Beijing. His book “Developmental Robotics: From Babies to Robots” (MIT Press) was published in January 2015, and translated in Chinese and Japanese. His latest book “Cognitive Robotics” (MIT Press), coedited with Minoru Asada, was recently published in 2022 (Chinese translation in 2025).

Leonardo Cavagnis is an experienced embedded software engineer, interested in IoT and AI applications. At Arduino, he works as a firmware engineer, developing libraries and core functionalities for boards while also focusing on communication and engaging with the
community.

Associazione Culturale Speck&Tech

Speck&Tech è la community “digital” del Trentino. Fondata il 1° marzo 2016, è stata registrata come “Associazione Culturale” il 18 aprile 2017. La sua mission è quella di creare una comunità di persone unite dalla passione per la tecnologia e l’innovazione, che vogliano scambiare idee e conoscenze su queste e argomenti correlati, principalmente tramite l’organizzazione di eventi mensili (oltre 100 negli ultimi anni): https://speckand.tech/events.
Generalmente gli eventi sono composti di due talk di mezz’ora sullo stesso tema, in italiano o inglese, seguiti da 5 minuti di domande e risposte. Alla fine della serata, networking a base di speck, focaccia e birrette per tutti i partecipanti.
Tutte le informazioni su: https://speckand.tech/