A robot docent is now guiding visitors through one of Turin’s most storied palaces.
At Palazzo Madama, the former seat of the House of Savoy, a four-foot-tall robot named R1 has been leading tours through the first-floor rooms, where paintings, tapestries, and furniture from the palace’s royal past are on view. The machine, white and wheeled, has arms, an extendable torso, a cluster of cameras, and a battery life of about two hours. Visitors can speak to it directly, ask for more detail, or move on to the next stop.
R1 explains how the House of Savoy crossed the Alps in the 11th century, built power in the region, and eventually produced the first king of a unified Italy in the mid-19th century. It is part of a project led by the Italian Institute of Technology under Project Convince, which received €4 million ($4.7 million) in European Union funding. The aim is not to replace human staff, but to test whether a robot can adapt to a real museum environment, learn from mistakes, and navigate safely among visitors and artworks.
That setting matters. Palazzo Madama is busy but measured, with shifting visitor flows, a large and loosely structured layout, and fragile objects that leave little room for error. The building’s unreliable Wi-Fi has also made it a useful proving ground, forcing the robot to operate with a degree of independence. According to Lorenzo Natale, the project coordinator, the system can detect when R1 loses its bearings, use its camera to reorient itself, and continue the tour.
The robot has already completed 30 tours in December 2025, suggesting that the experiment has moved beyond novelty. It also places Palazzo Madama within a broader shift in museum interpretation, where institutions from Versailles to the Palais Populaire in Berlin have explored digital and robotic tools as supplements to human expertise. The Smithsonian introduced an interactive robot docent, Pepper, in 2018. R1 may be the latest example, but it is part of a longer conversation about how museums can use technology without surrendering the authority of the gallery floor.
