The challenge was launched by Cecilia Stajano, who invited Ms. Mimma by e-mail to attend the third edition of the International City of Rome Robotics Award and – much to her surprise – she accepted. Notwithstanding her age, Ms. Mimma is a whiz at e-mail thanks to the Grandparents on the Internet course that she attended at the Newton School in Rome.
And as promised, there she was at the Robotics Trophy in the Rome City Hall. She was perfectly at ease among the hundreds of young school children involved in the RomeCup 2009 finals. With the help of Romano Santoro, who presented and coordinated the competition, Ms. Mimma even tried a free kick with one of the robots as the picture shows!
The photo shows her next to Luca Iocca, Researcher at the Computer Studies Department of the “La Sapienza” University of Rome. In the forefront, you can see the humanoid athletes that participated in the first Roman Robo-Olympics between university teams from various countries.
Has Ms. Mimma announced a challenge, too? We will have to wait for next year … and maybe witness the first competition featuring robots programmed by the students of the university for elders participating in the 4th edition of the Robotics Award!
