When I try to determine the beginning of the "domino effect" that changed my life, the first date that I can remember is August 2001. That summer, I packed my luggage and I took one of those flights that would eventually change my live.

This one was diected to Goteborg (Sweden).

The years before I had been studying at Polytechnic of Turin with little enthusiasm; but in 2001/2002 I was supposed to spend a whole academic year at Chalmers, Sweden (have you ever heard of the Erasmus Program ? ).

When I got off of the airplane I had a wonderful feeling of freedom and curiosity: what was going to happen? I was going to meet new people, speak a new language and see different places... I will not tell you about what was for sure the best year of my life, since it has little to do with robotics. What is relevant for this blog is that I joined the Master In Complex Adaptive Systems, an International Master Program related with dynamic systems, artificial intelligence and some robotics. For the first time in a long time I started to have fun studying engineering and I have got more and more motivated. I realized the importance of hard work when you want to achieve a result and that lesson was going to be very useful in the future.

One of the courses of the Master was dedicated to autonomous robots; of course it was VERY basic, but it was enough to wake up my forgotten love for robotics. And the best is yet to come: our professor proposed to all of his students (about 20 people) to build a couple of small humanoid robot in few months and to participate at ROBOCUP 2002, the World Championship of Robotic Soccer...

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