Did you know that the term robot comes from Czechoslovakia and means “forced labour”? Robots are now a fixed presence in our lives but we know very little about them: that’s why we decided to dedicate an issue of our magazine to robotics.

To better understand how robots work and what awaits us in the future, we took a step back into the past. We couldn’t not start from Isaac Asimov, the visionary father of robotics: his writings contain many fascinating details and, decades later, they can still teach us a lot about the man-machine relationship.

Just to improve our relationship with automatons, the Genoese startup Hiro Robotics has created a robot capable of seeing just like a human being. The robot is called Hiro and is equipped with a new generation vision control system that allows it to interact with the objects around it: we have analyzed how it works.

Will robots ever come to life? We looked for an answer by analysing the Xenobots, the first living robots ever designed. A team of researchers from Tufts University and the University of Vermont assembled frog embryo cells into a structure that can move independently, repair itself and even carry a small load. Applications could be numerous: from collecting microplastics to cleaning blood vessels.

These are just a few previews of what you can find in our magazine…because behind every great invention, there is the Patent!