A workshop on self-driving cars at Barbengo middle school

A workshop on artificial intelligence and self-driving cars organised by the Parents' Assembly in cooperation with the Software Institute (SI), Faculty of Informatics, was held last Friday, 19 April, at the Barbengo Middle School.

During the workshop, Roberto Minelli (academic coordinator at the Software Institute) and Samuele Pasini (PhD student in the Software Institute's TAU research group) introduced the basic concepts of artificial intelligence and explained how it can be applied to the world of autonomous driving. They also briefly discussed with the students - twelve in total - the risks and ethical and moral dilemmas raised by artificial intelligence applied to autonomous driving.

The second part of the workshop involved the students driving a miniature car on a circuit with a joystick, collecting the necessary data to then train and test an artificial intelligence model.

"After two editions of #FormulaUSI and one of Sportech, it was the first time we brought a workshop on autonomous driving to a middle school. To our surprise, the students were already quite knowledgeable and showed a keen interest in the subject! During the session, the students were able to train a model and make the car move autonomously on the track in less than two hours. I believe such activities are crucial to encourage students, even at the middle school level, to pursue technical subjects." Roberto Minelli told us.