OBITUARY: MARCO SOMALVICO (1941-2002).

Marco Somalvico who introduced artificial intelligence, robotics, as well as, later on, home automation into Italian academic curricula and research, died on November 17, 2002. In 1991, the city council of Milan, Italy awarded Somalvico the Ambrogino d Oro prize as outstanding citizen. Apart from robotics, Somalvico research included automated problem solving, parallel problem solving (especially using cellular automata), automated program synthesis, natural-language processing, machine vision, multiagent systems, computer-aided design, expert systems, home and urban automation, virtual museums, man3machine interaction, and AI systems of assistance to the disabled.