Inauguration of the Phänomena Exhibition

On Friday, 13 March, the partner-only inauguration of Phänomena took place. At the official ceremony, moderated by Bettina Zbinden, the speakers were: Urs Müller, General Manager of Phänomena; Helen Baumann, President of the Zürcher Forum; Björn Lindner, representative of Planzer Transport AG; Roger Bachmann, Mayor of Dietikon; Silvia Steiner, State Councillor of the Canton of Zurich; and Guy Parmelin, President of the Swiss Confederation.

The touring exhibition opened to the public on 14 March 2026 and will run until 8 November 2026, visiting seven Swiss locations (programme: https://www.phaenomena.ch/it/on-tour).

USI is participating in the initiative with the Software Institute thanks to SNSF Agora funding obtained by Dr Roberto Minelli and Prof. Paolo Tonella, creating an interactive autonomous driving installation titled "Stay on Track!". PhD student Samuele Pasini also contributed to the project.

The installation allows visitors to design their own circuit via a touchscreen, and the track is automatically projected onto the floor. Thanks to artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms, scale-model autonomous cars do their best to navigate the constantly evolving tracks.

"We are honoured that our installation was chosen to inaugurate Phänomena officially and that the first user was the President of the Confederation, Guy Parmelin, who tried modifying the circuit, changing the weather conditions, and experimenting with the limits of scale-model autonomous driving." said Roberto Minelli, Academic Coordinator of the Software Institute.

The initiative is part of USI's mission to promote new technologies and encourage young people to study scientific subjects and, in particular, informatics.