An overview of AI research in Italy

This contribution is aimed at providing an overview of the main Italian research areas and activities. In this chapter we first analyze the collaboration structure of Italian research, that involves more than eight hundred scholars and researchers from both the University and the Industry and, from a network perspective, it appears to be scale-free. Then, we briefly illustrate the main subjects of investigation and applications. AI research in Italy traces back to the '70s with an increase in the last twenty years and spans the main research AI areas, from automated reasoning and ontologies, to machine learning, robotics and evolutionary computation.