Alberto Broggi (born December 1, 1966, in Parma, Italy) is an Italian scientist in the fields of robotics and computer vision. He is a professor of Computer Engineering at the University of Parma in Italy and serves as General Manager at VisLab srl, a spinoff of the University of Parma that was acquired by Silicon-Valley company Ambarella Inc. in June 2015.^[1] Broggi's research has focused on vision-based perception systems for vehicles, including autonomous navigation, advanced driver assistance systems, and intelligent vehicles. His work contributed to several milestones in autonomous vehicle development, from early road experiments in the 1990s to participation in international autonomous driving competitions and large-scale real-world demonstrations. In 2017, he was awarded the IEEE Medal for Environmental and Safety Technologies.

Before beginning his academic career in computer vision and autonomous vehicles, Broggi developed software and video games for the ZX Spectrum home computer during the 1980s. Several of his games were commercially released in Italy, including Bug Zum, Red Cap, Alo Bao, Zap-Lap, Hal Ant, and Ini-Rip.^[2] His early ZX Spectrum software activity is also documented in Spectrumpedia, an encyclopedia dedicated to the ZX Spectrum, in its section on Italian software authors.^[3]

Broggi's research activities began in 1991–1994. His group, together with the Dipartimento di Elettronica at Politecnico di Torino in Italy, built their own hardware architecture named PAPRICA (PArallel PRocessor for Image Checking and Analysis), based on 256 single-bit processing elements working in SIMD fashion, and installed it aboard a mobile laboratory (Mob-Lab) to develop and test initial concepts in the field of intelligent vehicles.^[4] In 1996, Broggi's group worked to develop a real vehicle prototype named ARGO—a Lancia Thema passenger car equipped with vision sensors, processing systems, and vehicle actuators—and developed the necessary software and hardware enabling it to drive autonomously on standard roads.^[5] Broggi's research group, known from then on as VisLab, gathered all their findings into a book, which was later also translated into Chinese.^[6]

When Broggi was with the University of Pavia, his research was extended and applied to extreme conditions such as automatic driving on snow and ice: in 2001, VisLab led the research effort to provide a vehicle named RAS (Robot Antartico di Superficie) with sensing capabilities so that it could automatically follow the vehicle in front.^[7] In 2010, Broggi's group embarked on the VisLab Intercontinental Autonomous Challenge (VIAC), driving four vehicles autonomously from Italy to China with no human intervention.^{[6,8,9,10,11,12]} Soon after this, Broggi was awarded a second ERC grant (Proof of concept) to industrialize some of the results obtained and successfully tested on the VIAC vehicles.

On July 12, 2013, VisLab tested the BRAiVE vehicle in downtown Parma, negotiating two-way narrow rural roads, pedestrian crossings, traffic lights, artificial bumps, pedestrian areas, and tight roundabouts. The vehicle traveled from the Parma University Campus to Piazza della Pilotta in downtown Parma, completing a 20-minute run in a real environment with real traffic at 11 am on a working day that required absolutely no human intervention. Part of this test was driven with nobody in the driver's seat, marking the first time this was ever done on public roads.^[13]

In 2017, Broggi received the IEEE Medal for Environmental and Safety Technologies, one of the highest recognitions awarded by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), with the citation: "For leadership in vehicular environmental perception, and for setting worldwide milestones in safe and reliable intelligent vehicles."^[14] In 2018, Popular Mechanics included the US patent US 8,139,109 B2, titled Vision system for an autonomous vehicle, co-invented by Alberto Broggi, Gary Schmiedel, and Christopher K. Yakes, in its list 15 Patents That Changed the World, highlighting patents that had a significant impact on technological development.^[15]

The content is taken from the article "Alberto Broggi," created by users of the English Wikipedia and checked on 7 September 2017. The topic is categorized under scientist.