Robotics, Virtual Reality, and Agents and their Body: A Special Issue in Memory of Marco Somalvico

On 17 November 2002, Prof. Marco Somalvico passed away suddenly and prematurely. We are past the fifth anniversary, but Marco has never ceased to be a major influence, indeed a cherished human presence as well in one’s memories, for his disciples, collaborators, and colleagues who knew him. Some of these have undertaken the initiative of several commemorative issues, hosted in a number of journals, and covering research in both artificial intelligence, and robotics. This involved a painstaking refereeing process; still, for every article in these special issues, at least one of the authors knew Marco Somalvico. The special issue you are holding in your hands stands out, within this initiative, in that it is focused on robotics. In 1998, Marco Somalvico was awarded the Joseph F. Engelberger Robotics Award for Education, and he also was among the founders of the Società Italiana di Robotica Industriale. His group started research in robotics at the Technical University of Milan since 1971. Moreover, he was one of the first two scholars who introduced research in artificial intelligence into Italian academia. Several international scholarly journals are participating in this memorial endeavour: the issues in the Journal of Intelligent and Fuzzy Systems and in the International Journal on J Intell Robot Syst DOI 10.1007/s10846-008-9220-y