New Honors College partnership to bring smart robotics technology to student coursework

A partnership between the Virginia Tech Honors College and Piaggio Fast Forward will bring smart robotics technology to honors students tasked with envisioning solutions for real-world problems caused by climate change.

Students will explore climate change scenarios in collaboration with Piaggio Fast Forward on the Blacksburg campus beginning in the spring.

In No Blue, No Green, an honors studio course led by Enric Ruiz-Geli, professor of practice and an architect, students will choose a scenario centered around the impact of climate change that will serve as a basis for their projects. From there, students will engage, research, design, and challenge Piaggio Fast Forward with new solutions and applications for its technology as incorporated in their chosen projects.

"We utilized [the robots] as a way of thinking about how new technology can be introduced in a positive way, and that it's very important to recognize new technology and utilize it while still preserving the well-being of the planet that we live on,” said industrial design major Adler Dills.

The course will enable students to propose conceptual solutions, scenarios, and speculations for real global warming sites, explored through a transdisciplinary and project-based methodology. Performance, video, policy, models, drawings, literature, music, engineering, and scientific formulas can all be used to explore these scenarios, allowing students from any discipline to engage in the collaboration that will serve as the backbone for their climate change solutions.

Emily LiaBraaten, another student in the course, said: “No Blue, No Green is an outlet for me to push past the boundaries of my very structured policy curriculum. ... I was forced into a more ambiguous and creative, yet exploratory space.”

How the gitaplus and gitamini robots provided by Piaggio Fast Forward will be used in the course is up to the students. To Ruiz-Geli, they are a “platform,” mobile stages that engender constant questions to which students learn to develop answers. This hands-on work will push the boundaries of what's possible with smart mobility tech.

"The Honors College is a place where students can be immersed in industry, and we are aligning ourselves with leading industry to ask: What is autonomy? For humankind, what does this mean? We're going to have other agents or entities around us, and these entities are going to make decisions, record data, and so on - and these are the best conditions for a partnership with CEO Greg Lynn at Piaggio Fast Forward,” said Ruiz-Geli.

Piaggio Fast Forward is a Boston-based company founded in 2015 and funded by the Piaggio Group, the Italian manufacturer and creator of the iconic Vespa scooter. The company’s vision is to bring intuitive, efficient, and sustainable robotics solutions into the entire human-built environment while supporting the local mobility needs of businesses, communities, and individuals.