From a chess robot to AI applications: technologies for electronics enthusiasts

Robots and artificial intelligence applications, solutions for electric mobility, and advanced graphics systems. These are just some of the technologies presented by semiconductor company STMicroelectronics at Maker Faire Rome. At its exhibition space, the company showcased devices and offered ideas and inspiration for electronics beginners, students, start-ups and makers, as well as industry professionals.

Through projects, demonstrations and workshops, visitors had the opportunity to learn about prototype development, the creation of graphical user interfaces, and even play chess against a robotic opponent. In the RoboChess demonstration, developed in cooperation with Anders and the University of Ljubljana, chess enthusiasts could challenge a computer that independently determines its moves and uses a robotic arm to move the pieces across the chessboard.

Visitors to the fair, held at the Gazometro Ostiense area in Rome from 23 to 25 October, were able to take a closer look at STMicroelectronics technologies and products enabling:

• Sensing: with advanced MEMS sensors, vibration monitoring, autonomous Internet of Things (IoT) nodes, and intelligent systems based on computer vision.
• Thinking: through Edge AI on STM32 platforms, embedded artificial intelligence applications, advanced graphics with TouchGFX, and intelligent robots developed using the latest STM32 platforms.
• Moving: with solutions for motor control, battery management, electric mobility and robotics.

The ST-Arduino Social Robot project was also presented for the first time, combining computer vision, artificial intelligence, motor control and actuators. The project was developed in cooperation with Arduino.

The company’s experts also organised a number of workshops. Particular emphasis was placed on learning how to develop prototypes using tools such as AutoDevKit, STM32CubeMX, STM32CubeMX2, STM32Cube AI Studio, Zephyr and STM32duino, as well as on creating graphical user interfaces with TouchGFX technology.

Some of the workshops were organised in cooperation with STMicroelectronics partners, including Anders, Arduino and Daos, as well as the start-up Durcal.