From Nanosatellites to Orbital Factories: The Infrastructures of the Space Economy

The GPS navigator has become indispensable, but how do a trip, the experience of the territory and our social-cognitive skills change? Does this tech mediation with our "immediate neighbour" imply any risk?

Disruptive, fascinating, controversial: blockchain is one of the most talked-about  technologies of recent years, from cryptocurrencies to the web3. Two different but revolutionary leaders have ushereda new era: the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto with Bitcoin and Vitalik Buterin, the wunderkind who invented Ethereum

The group designs and manufactures valves, actuators, fittings, gas systems and fire protection solutions. Its innovative solutions are applied for the hydrogen industry, mining and mobility infrastructure to the most strategic areas of the world

The Italian tech group produces the electronic components for devices capable of monitoring urban, rural and fragile territories. Technology meets sustainability, with several active projects around the world and strategic partnerships

It seemed like a fantasy, but now it is reality: machines that mimic the faculties of the human mind have arrived and are here to stay. Sam Altman has made Artificial Intelligence available to everyone, thanks to OpenAI. His creature, ChatGPT, poses questions to humans, which “Pioneers of the future” will tackle with the help of a neuroscientist and a totally unexpected guest.

A small object from which everything started, a few millimetres of technology that 50 years ago made computing available to the general public: it is the microprocessor and its inventor is Federico Faggin. An idea that revolutionised forever the way of living, working and connecting for billions of people on the planet. For Pioneers of the future we talk to the Italian engineer, now engaged in a tireless activity of dissemination

Generative AI will reach ‘human’ performance levels by the end of the decade, but it imposes a paradigm shift accompanied by unknowns in every sphere of economic, political and social activity and organisation. The university presents itself as a reliable interlocutor up to the challenges that individuals and societies will face in the very near future

If our economy is already a space economy, our society is as well. Cyber security is strategic for the 8,000 satellites in orbit, while enemy states and hackers are on the prowl. Matteo Lucchetti, director of Cyber 4.0, tells Infra Journal: “Space is a useful but vulnerable economic domain. The most threatened sector is the government sector”

A brilliant student who overturned all preconceptions and, starting from the heart of the Mediterranean Sea, established herself in the world as a pioneer of space and the emerging space economy: the story, ambitions and projects of Chiara Cocchiara, an award-winning aerospace engineer with a penchant for the red planet

Flexible, versatile, efficient and durable: it is called perovskite and, according to researchers, it is the perfect material to produce photovoltaic energy from any object that is reached by light, even non-natural light. Annalisa Bruno, a professor working with the laboratory team that is developing its properties to achieve industrial applications, tells us about it

Electrification leads to increasingly digitised, networked (V2X, V2I, V2V...) and self-driving vehicles and infrastructures. Vehicle mobility is increasingly becoming an attractive attack surface for malicious actors and software: here are the major vulnerabilities to watch out for, for the safety of roads and drivers

Recharging times still are a critical issue in a travel experience by electric car. Three possible solutions are being studied to improve the EV-cars performance and to boost the spread of a more sustainable mobility: dynamic wireless charging, battery swapping and solid-state batteries

Hedwig Maria Eva Kiesler, long known only as an actress, decided to help humanity defeat Nazism with her studies in the field of telecommunications. Together with musician George Antheil, she invented a remote communication system for torpedoes, which today is considered as the basic foundation of modern wireless Internet connection technologies

Superconductive electrical networks, made from an innovative material, could enable both electric and hydrogen fast charging along motorways. A flexible, versatile and large-scale solution for mass users, resulting also from Cern research

What is it and how does the third-generation World Wide Web work, the heralded revolution facilitated by blockchain, promising to put the user back at the centre of the Net

A former student of Electronic Engineering, assistant manager at an amusement park, became a serial entrepreneur and founded a revolutionary brand: Atari. Following the Pong’s success, Nolan Bushnell was the perfect conjunction ring of the History, which changed entertainment and lifestyle, developing out of nowhere a billionaire industry, such as video games

“We explore the limits of technology to push it to the limit and master it”, Sergio Savaresi, professor at Politecnico di Milano, states after the success of the PoliMove team that set the speed record in Las Vegas in a competition against nine AV teams. “But the road to autonomous driving is still long on our roads”

Programmed to navigate in crowded environments such as car parks and airports, Ottobot is Ottonomy.IO's autonomous retail delivery vehicle already present in Europe and North America. The start-up selected for the Aeroporti di Roma Innovation Hub comes from the United States and is the new story for Infra Journal's 'Rocket' column

The robot taxi is almost a reality: Google, Amazon, Baidu and other companies are developing autonomous vehicles in several cities around the world

Unmanned aerial aircraft are increasingly being used by officers and local police for land monitoring, traffic management, accident solving

Jan Koum and Brian Acton are WhatsApp’s co-founders, the most used instant messaging app in the world. Remaining faithful to their ideas, at the height of a time shaped by advancements in digital technology, in 2009 they started developing the app that later was acquired by Facebook itself for 19 billion dollars, five years later an interview gone wrong

Artificial intelligence applied to handling: the idea of the BagsID start-up, selected for ADR's Innovation Hub, was created out of a misadventure of its founder, Marlon van der Meer. We tell the story on Rockets, Infra Journal's column dedicated to innovative ideas

Intelligence and computer vision software allow aircraft turnaround to be optimised, reducing waste of resources and time, ultimately ensuring better passenger service. Assaia participates in the Aeroporti di Roma Innovation Hub and is a ‘Rocket’ story

The first instalment of Infra Journal's 'Rocket' column features Pixies, the AI-powered robot that collects waste, recycles and recharges at a solar-powered smart bench. Andrea Saliola and Pier Paolo Ceccaranelli’s start-up participates in the Aeroporti di Roma Innovation Hub programme

Etymology does not lie: “meta” is a convergence between different dimensions. It is necessary to understand our times, unless we are entertained by provocations, anecdotes and other crypto-ludic varieties. Or slightly more

Adaptive and intelligent public lighting can be a key to sustainability in overcoming the energy crisis. Here's how 'simple' poles can provide not only light and at the same time consume fewer resources

Increasingly electric and connected cars have led the figure of the mechanic to evolve into a mechatronics technician and to diversify the repair figure roles. The parent company will be increasingly involved in the IT component

This technique was discovered in the 1940s, and is nowadays used in arid nations to stimulate rainfalls. More than fifty countries have already used it, and many others are planning to give a chance too

High-performance electric cars are already a reality, but there are several unknowns about the future of the sector, starting with reliability

At the dawn of Urban air mobility (UAM) there are already hundreds of ongoing projects of electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft worldwide, but some are closer to the finish line. Here is a selection of four of the most promising ones

Seeing a truck travelling without a driver might not be so unusual in the future. Communication and semi-automated driving technologies are already making it possible to create fleets of trucks connected to each other and to the infrastructure to reduce consumption and emissions, increasing efficiency and safety

Innovative companies, start-ups and researchers are pooling resources, energy and expertise to create electric hypercars, which can also function as flying vehicles. From scale models to already approved ones, here are five state-of-the-art projects

From Turin to Bari, from Merano to the MaaS projects in Rome and Milan: cities in Italy are also moving toward introducing modern, flexible and sustainable self-driving public transportation services. Here are the experiments at the cutting-edge

Beyond the extreme vision of immersive virtual reality, the physical and digital worlds are increasingly integrating, transforming our idea of travel, mobility services and transportation

A new option in public transport systems, which provides unexpected ways to integrate and interconnect with existing mobility infrastructure and neighborhoods

The new frontier of innovation in ground transportation is Hyperloop, the "train of the future" conceived by Elon Musk. It will allow travel at 1,200 km/h in a depressurised tube through magnetic levitation. But the technological challenge is still open

Digitalisation and management of big-data pave the way for new perspectives in the infrastructure sector. Monitoring systems and diagnostics can be integrated into traffic management systems, providing countries with modern and efficient structures. Universities can do much more than simply teaching new skills*

2022 will be a year of decisive importance for measuring the ambitions of the principal private companies aiming to colonise orbits around Earth in space in a new way

From SpaceX to Blue Origin, more and more private companies invest and believe in space as a journey but also as an achievement. What will its future implications and limitations be?

While drone delivery is now a reality, today the biggest challenge involves both last-mile and transoceanic distribution