Piaggio Fast Forward is a leader in following technology, building robotic solutions designed to collaborate with people.
Arthur LaVita, Senior Director of Software Engineering, shares everything you need to know about their Engineering team!
In this Video
Arthur discusses:
- Who is Piaggio Fast Forward?
- Details on the Engineering team
- Interesting Projects & Challenges
- The tech stack
- The interview process
- Why now is a good time to join
Video Transcript
Arthur LaVita: My name is Arthur LaVita. I am the Senior Director of Software Engineering for Piaggio Fast Forward.
Who is Piaggio Fast Forward?
Piaggio Fast Forward is a technology company. Our main product is human-centric robots, and that is really the differentiator for us. We don’t just worry about how robots do a job; we want robots to operate in a human world and as close as we can to what humans are used to. So, we do quite a bit of extensive focus on those studies first before we try to design products or functionality.
Details on the Engineering Team
Piaggio Fast Forward is about 62 employees, and half of that is engineering, which is a pretty impressive divide. The engineering is really broken up among mechanical, electrical, and software quality engineering (SQE). We have the software team, which is broken up into many disciplines around firmware, cloud, and mobile apps.
And, of course, there’s a robotics team which really focuses on AI and a lot of the algorithms that we utilize for the functionality around the environments that we travel. It is a very broad technical group.
Interesting Projects & Challenges
One of the projects that is really challenging for us right now is looking into having an autonomous robot navigate the factory. An end product, like a motorcycle, will come off the line and land on a robot, which will then navigate the factory to get to a different station, like a fueling station or a quality control station.
Workers no longer need to worry about taking these vehicles; they can just sit on a tablet and send it. That will come with a traffic manager because factories are very active—you have forklifts, humans, and pallets getting delivered. The robot will have to be able to navigate these dynamic environments with the technology on the robot itself.
That has been a very challenging and fun part of this year for us: to be able to solve these problems, go into environments to learn more, and then tune the product so that it can adapt. The whole thing is to make sure we do it in a way that doesn’t add a lot of infrastructure to a company. Corporations see that as a big negative; if they have to install lights, LiDARs, and sensors across the building so the robot knows where it is, it starts to turn customers off. We have to be able to minimize our footprint for these customers so it becomes highly adopted.
The Tech Stack
The tech stack across all these teams is very wide. We use C, C++, Linux, and bare metal for some of the platforms. We use the Jetson JetPack by NVIDIA, and we also use React and React Native. We code in iOS and Android native as well.
Our robotics team is incorporating more and more AI into our robots. They are constantly bringing more machine learning pieces onto the robot side so that it becomes more intuitive to navigate changes to the environment. Also, customers can put in safe zones, and the robot will obey these zones even though they look open, understanding how to identify them and know dynamically how to adapt.
The Interview Process
For the first part of the process, candidates meet with the Human Resources team just to understand the day-to-day and what they are looking for. The next phase would usually be with the hiring manager, someone like myself.
What I tend to do is want to discuss not exactly what is in the resume, but what you left out of the resume that couldn’t fit. Tell me more about yourself because I am looking for complements to the team. I know the team members I have and I want to know how to complement them. It is more important to develop a diverse team with a multitude of skill sets than it is to find “cookie cutters.”
I also give them time at the end to ask me questions. A lot of times the process focuses on us, but I want to fulfill their interests. I am okay if a candidate, after asking a bunch of questions about the facility and the work, decides this is the right fit for them. It helps them understand that this is where they want to be. At the very end, we get into a technical review. It’s all about the “mustard”—we need people who can do specific competencies—but we get to that at the end because it’s usually more specific and requires more time. We want to make sure that by the time we enter the technical review, this is where both of us want to be.
Why now is a good time to join
I just covered a lot of technology stacks, and we only talked about the robot, but we are doing so many more projects. We are working on radar sensors and have done projects for companies like Disney. There are quite a few companies we are supporting with all the technology stacks you would see in a big company, but in a small company setting.
The value of a small company is that you’re going to get to do many more things, touch more technologies, and come out of your comfort zone. There are just so many projects. You could be on a radar project and also be working on a robotics project or a Disney project; I have individuals who work on all three. It doesn’t get old; there is always something new.
As we get into 2026, there are more opportunities now for projects we didn’t even consider at the beginning of the year because people are coming to us asking if we can take on even more. It’s great in the sense that you’re going to be part of a multitude of different things to try out and learn while you’re having fun.
