It’s easy to poke fun at some of the tics and tropes that have come to define TED over the course of its 32 years of “spreading ideas that matter.” But the fact remains that TED has had an enormous impact and the TED stage is one of the world’s leading communications and innovation platforms, now fully global, interconnected with a multiplicity of television, radio, and web-based channels, and followed by audiences that number in the tens of millions.

My robotic side kick Gita and I joined the community of the TED speakers last week in Vancouver, Canada to talk about the role of human-centered robotics in the future of light mobility: movability as we like to call it at Piaggio Fast Forward, which is to say, mobility with a playful and functionally meaningful difference. Here’s what the ludic Piaggio Dictionary at the end of FuturPiaggio has to say about movability:

Movibilità / (Movability) = a Piaggio core value since its foundation, movability means a full-spectrum approach to the problems associated with human mobility that encompasses ships, aircraft, trains, cars, buses, trains, motorcycles, scooters, mopeds, marine outboards, and even bicycles (from Bianchi, once under Piaggio ownership, to the Piaggio e-Bike).

Here are some photographs of our contribution to session nine of #TED2017 (thank you to the TED staff for these and for the professionalism of the entire production):

- April 24, 2017