Torino City Love is a digital initiative of solidarity and open innovation aimed at mobilising Torino City Lab partners and other businesses from Italy and beyond to offer or co-develop innovative solutions, actions and skills to support citizens and businesses based in Torino-Piedmont during the COVID-19 emergency (March-July 2020).

The initiative has been developed in the wider framework of Torino City Lab, the open, permanent and widespread innovation laboratory of the City of Torino running from October 2018 and which aims to support companies in co-development and testing of innovative frontier solutions in real conditions on the territory and in response to urban challenges.

What is Torino City Lab?

Torino offers itself and its assets to test breakthrough solutions in any domain of public interest to shape the City of the future. Frontier technologies at the service of quality of life and environmental and social sustainability at the city scale. Currently Torino City lab promotes specifically co-development and testing in the following areas:

• AUTONOMOUS MOBILITY SERVICES with a focus on autonomous vehicles and drones for the transportation of people and things.
• INNOVATIVE URBAN SERVICES enabled by 5G technologies: city applications of artificial intelligence and collaborative robotics, Internet of Things, augmented and virtual reality.

Torino City Love: focus and values.

The main priorities addressed through Torino City Love have been the following:

• Develop and spread  innovative learning solutions;
• Combat social isolation;
• Promote a culture of open innovation and social inclusion for all.

Torino City Love catalyzed innovative solutions from businesses and other organizations in response to urgent social needs. Not only helped to find answers and trigger free resources/technologies for citizens, school, public authorities and entrepreneurs… it conveyed and further developed a strong sense of community among TCL 60 partners and improved the social impact value of testing activities in Torino City Lab.

Modalities of participation, areas of interest and proposals received.

It was possible to participate in Torino City Love through an application form or email. The proposals had to fall within the following areas of interest: Work & School, Health, Training,  Information & Digital Services and other. More than 90 innovative social inclusion solutions were collected and implemented.  

CISCO, TIM and MICROSOFT were the main testimonials of the initiative.

The Microsoft partner has promoted virtual school trips through the platform "Skype in the classroom". Students and teachers from Turin primary and secondary schools connected from home could interact with experts onsite at local Museums.

The partners Vertical and Dktk3d have promoted the Educational 3D path of MAO -Museum of Oriental Arts. A digital gamified reconstruction of the Museum which allowed students to digitally discover some of the most inspiring rooms and get closer to the oriental treasures.

About 200 students have been  involved and 20 teachers through 30 virtual trips/digital tours/training activities from primary and secondary schools.

The TIM partner has pomoted remote-controlled robots for distance communication at hospitals. Thanks to the use of robots - produced by DOUBLE3 and connected to the TIM network and made available to the Regina Margherita and Sant'Anna hospitals and to the CasaOz headquarters -  children, parents and all other operators of the structures concerned were enabled to maintain daily human contact during the lockdown period and/or improve contacts among specialists working in other structures.

The CISCO partner has promoted Telepresence System for Elderly Residences: to allow elderly people living in social residences and isolated from the outside to connect in video with relatives with extreme simplicity and quality.

Torino City Love project is all this and much more.

Watch the video of Torino City Love here.