Alberto Broggi


Alberto Broggi is General Manager at VisLab srl and a professor of Computer Engineering at the University of Parma in Italy.

Research in computer vision, hardware, and AV

Broggi's research activities started in 1991–1994. His group together with the Dipartimento di Elettronica, Politecnico di Torino, Italy, built their own hardware architecture and installed it on board of a mobile laboratory to develop and test some initial concepts in the field of intelligent vehicles.
In 1996, Broggi's group worked to develop a real vehicle prototype and developed the necessary software and hardware that made it able to drive autonomously on standard roads.
Broggi's research group gathered all their findings in a book, which was then also translated in Chinese.
When Broggi was with the University of Pavia, his research was extended and applied to extreme conditions : in 2001, VisLab led the research effort of providing a vehicle with sensing capabilities so that it was able to automatically follow the vehicle in front.
In 2010 Broggi's group embarked on driving 4 vehicles autonomously from Italy to China with no human intervention. This challenge is called VIAC, for VisLab Intercontinental Autonomous Challenge
. Soon after this, Broggi was awarded a second ERC grant 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 Parma University Campus up to Piazza della Pilotta : a 20 minutes run in a real environment, together with real traffic at 11am on a working day, that required absolutely no human intervention. Part of this test was driven with nobody in the driver seat, for the first time ever on public roads.