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“We have decided to support the RomeCup, because it is an excellent initiative for promoting scientific and technological knowledge and will help to contribute to the orientation of young people in a rapidly growing sector in which Italy has top-level competences," declared Engineer Susanna Del Bufalo, Manager for Information and Promotion of Projects at ENEA, the national agency for new technologies, energy and sustainable economic development.
The Romecup 2011, which will be held in Rome on March 14-16 at the Istituto tecnico industriale Galileo Galilei and the Rome City Hall, in Campidoglio, will include an exhibition on the excellence of Italian Robotics. The Enea robotics unit will showcase the Venus – autonomous under water robot prototype, an submarine for defense and prevention. Enea researchers will be present throughout the three-day event to explain the characteristics of Venus to students and visitors.
Other state-of-the-art robotics projects will be displayed by various excellences such as the Istituto Sant'Anna (Pisa), the Campus Biomedico (Rome), the Museo civico (Rovereto), and the Robotics in School Network (Rete Robotica a Scuola) with their simulation of three-dimensional Comau robotic cells.
A highlight of this year’s edition will be the Agreeement on an Educational Robotics Network that will be signed on March 16 at the Rome Campidoglio by the main players in Italian Robotics.
VENUS is an autonomous vehicle for underwater applications, including surveillance, defence, environmental monitoring, oceanography and archeology. It weighs 40 kgs. and includes sensors, stereo video cameras, depth sensors, compass, panoramic sonar, side-scan sonars and hydrophones. Moreover, the vessel has limited costs, a three-hour autonomy and can move at 2 knots (3.7 km/h) at a maximum depth of 50 meters.
VENUS represents that basic element of a composite system including cooperating and coordinated vehicles, a school of autonomous submarines developed for Project Harness to inspect and survey underwater areas.
