Eco-trendsetter, the new era of the electric car and AI on display at H-Farm Re-innovation

Sustainable, safe, digital, intelligent, exciting: these are the five fundamental components of new vision of mobility in which Audi Italia believes. «Very different characteristics that are permeating an automotive sector that is quite self-reliant in its technological know-how, but which today is opening up to forms of contamination and osmosis with other sectors never intercepted before.»

Here are the words of Fabrizio Longodirector of Audi Italia, at the opening of Re-innovationthe closing evening of the sixth edition of the project WeGeneration held within the H-Farm Campus, the innovation platform where solutions for entrepreneurship, training and startup development find the best synthesis. A project in which Audi surgically selected a series of eco-trendsetter capable of best illustrating the new relationship between technology and the environment linked to mobility.

WeGeneration students tackle innovations related to sustainability

Obviously, the first eco-trendsetter on the list can only be there new generation of students, the first to represent the entrepreneurs of tomorrow. Five students from different Italian universities took part in the training Innovation for sustainability at the H-Farm Campus. Here, Andrea, Nicolas, Veronica, Alberto and Martina met with various professionals and entrepreneurs promoting ecological transformation with the aim of developing new ideas and becoming narrators of their generation.

Among the professionals of sustainable progress we find Carlo Carraro, professor of environmental economics at Ca’ Foscari University and vice-president of IPCC. His speech aimed to offer an economic perspective on the ecological transition. «Renewables, efficiency and electrification dominate the energy transition. The turning point is technological progress: its diffusion will be accelerated by the drop in prices of the main low or zero emission technologies.”

Following is the contribution of Donata Columbrojournalist and data humanizer, thanks to his story on the importance of analysis, interpretation and communication of data: «We all have in mind the numbers of the catastrophe, but not those of salvation. Innovation starts from the bottom and starts from need: the data needed now has the concept of care at its centre. Data only matters if someone takes care of it. Curation includes all the ways we evaluate, regulate, and give meaning to data.”

Even more pragmatic was the intervention of Niccolò Calandrico-founder and CEO of 3Bee, who was able to accompany the five students to discover high-impact projects related to IoT, AI and big data environmental: «In a healthy ecosystem there can be 500 species of animals, 1,000 of plants, 10,000 of pollinators, 100,000 of insects and 1 million of bacteria. Thanks to AI we can process large amounts of data in natural ecosystems, so as to find effective solutions to protect biodiversity. This is what we are doing at 3Bee.”

Alex, the avatar generated by artificial intelligence

Obviously the WeGeneration of this sixth year of collaboration between H-Farm and Audi was supervised by a mentor who knows its dynamics and interaction methods. Over time the young writer alternated in the role Giacomo Mazzariol, Sofia Viscardiweb creator and writer, content creator and music producer Klausup to the multifaceted YouTuber Marcello Ascani, who accompanies the boys for the second year. Together with them the five students of WeGeneration created Alexa virtual learner powered byGenerative Artificial Intelligence.

During the project, they selected the different information collected during the seminars mainly focused on car electrification, the future of mobility and the circular economy. To these were also added the issues related to carbon neutrality of production sites, artificial intelligence put at the service of the planet ei big data focused on sustainability. Information which, fed to the artificial intelligence developed by OpenAI and uploaded to Alex, allowed the avatar to answer questions posed by the public on the issues linking mobility/technology/environment.

Bio-inspired robots

Audi’s research in choosing the most influential eco-trendsetters of this period has gone into sectors that – at first glance – have little to do with cars. The first is called Barbara Mazzolai: she is a biologist and a researcher, I would say unique. As director of the Bioinspired Soft Robotics Laboratory at the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa, you created the first robot inspired by plants. His presence is soon explained by one of his mantras. «The frontiers of research allow us to imagine new ways to achieve sustainable progress». His research has resulted in completely different and biodegradable robots capable of interacting with living beings and the environment, without however damaging it.

Robots designed following i principles of naturestarting precisely from the materials, designed for new application scenarios and therefore capable of implementing the technology transfer that only the search for new and never explored areas can provide. A modus operandi which completely changes the approach from specialist and sectoral to multidisciplinary And open minded. Research that has led, for example, to the creation of robots that behave like seeds. Designed for environmental monitoring andprecision agricultureonce they penetrate the soil the material that covers them can interact with mercury, CO₂, temperature or humidity and produce data. These, once read by the drones, show the situation on the ground in a detailed manner. The idea is to help the operator where he cannot reach through a technology that has no impact on the environment.

Helping the thought transition go viral

Another exceptional eco-trendsetter is Andrea Moccia, founder and director of Geopop. Its container has become one of the reference points of the scientific publication on the web and social media. Its peculiarity lies precisely in combating the contraction of time typical of videos on social media with a significantly longer, more complete and authoritative communication. Thus, his videos lasting several minutes, sometimes up to 10, they surf on the main social platforms now hyper-inflated with very short videos lasting just a few seconds. A circuit balance that every Geopop specialist sees walk in balance on a string with the perennial risk of falling into banality if the topic is too simplified, or into boredom if the topic is treated in a too complex way.

Having said this, for Andrea Moccia the dissemination of topics related to current technical events can have all the potential to become viral and take charge of that thought transition which stands at the head of any new paradigm linked to sustainability. A term he prefers to replace with durableborrowing it from the French expression development durable. It is no coincidence that in the two-year period 2022/23 Geopop was one of the channels on TikTok that particularly stood out with over 2,200,000 followers. Young people from Gen Z who without a word agreed to watch videos that were many minutes long. A success that pushed Muccia to want to promote Geopop also foutside the Italian borders. Watching silently outside the Campus Library is a flaming woman Audi SQ8 e-tronsymbol of the exciting performance that electric mobility can offer.