A technology with a big heart defeated the competition during the finals of National Robotics Championships 2026which took place on 11 and 12 May in the coastal setting between Cattolica and Rimini. The prestigious event, promoted directly by Ministry of Education and Meritsaw eighty-four schools from eighteen Italian regions battle it out.
Among the 120 competing teams and the seven fierce finalists, the winners in the category “Play and excite” it was the Albert Einstein Scientific High School in Molfetta. The Apulian delegation, called “Einstein Robot” and led in the field by the students Ilaria Tedeschi, Mattia dell’Olio and Sergio Tamborra under the coordination of the referring professor Giacoma Anna Salvemini, won over the technical jury by bringing home a historic gold medal and the prestigious inclusion in theNational register of excellence.
IRIS anatomy: between artificial intelligence and mythology
The fulcrum of this scientific and social success is called IRIS (Interactive Robot for Inclusive Support)an educational android born from the intuition of Professor Salvemini and physically assembled and programmed by a transversal team of twenty students from six different classes. The work fuses sophisticated algorithms with a profound humanistic sensitivity: the name recalls both the ocular membrane that protects the sight from chaotic stimuli and the mythological iris that unites distant worlds.
The device integrates aLED interface to show visual emotions, sound feedback via buzzer and a empathetic synthesized voicedeveloped on the conversational AI platform Piper and trained with logic of machine learning. At the base of the structure they were placed twenty stones with symbolic value engraved with key words such as respect, empathy, listening and understanding, designed to give a soul to the circuits.
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From the STEAM laboratory to field testing
The victory of IRIS has its roots in an interdisciplinary educational path that united the modules of the National Plan called “I robot” managed by tutor Sara Minervini and the Machine Learning course curated by Professor Ruggero Sguera. The project also embraced civic education and the values of the Constitution and Agenda 2030 against gender stereotypessupervised by Professor Maria de Bartolo.
The strength of IRIS was its immediate practical application. Thanks to an official agreement with the “You care about me” cooperativethe robot is came out of the school laboratories to interact live with autistic children. Through reassuring patterns and play “Simon lights”the automaton offered a predictable and affectionate communication channel, eliminating states of anxiety. The final applause from the school director Giuseppina Bassi sealed a success that arrived on the eve of the birth of the Territorial Training Hubs for Artificial Intelligence.
