Bench Talk

by Marcel Consée

I’m at the age where my own time as a student is long gone, but the children still aren’t old enough, so visiting a university is a special occasion. Even in a different country, where my knowledge of the language is perfunctory at best, an institute of higher education feels familiar. The combination of the scent of books and the thrill of learning seems to be the same all over the world.

On September 27, the mood in Politecnico di Torino, one of Italy’s leading academic institutions in the engineering area, is exciting. Professor Massimo Violante, the centre of attention, is too busy to get nervous. As he’s checking the final setup of the CLIK (Contamination Lab & Innovation Kitchen) Lab, the students arrive as well as the guests, including university management, industry sponsors (mainly Mouser Electronics), and local press people.

Figure 1: Professor Massimo Violante at the inauguration of CLIK. (Source: Stiffan Consulting)

The CLIK inauguration ceremony begins with speeches. Emilio Paolucci, the university’s Vice Director of Technology Transfer, emphasizes the significance of CLIK: “An incubator for ideas growing into reality.” As an interface between academia and entrepreneurship, CLIK provides students with not only the opportunity to develop electronic systems but, also, with opportunities to learn how to present them in an appropriate way.

During the ceremony, most of the state-of-the-art technology and instrumentation present is made available by industry sponsors (especially Mouser Electronics). Experts from Mouser Electronics also demonstrate the Mouser know-how, and advise the students on the creation of technical blog posts and articles.

Figure 2: Mark Patrick, EMEA Technical Marketing Manager at Mouser Electronics, strongly underlines the importance of cooperation with a professional industry partner. (Source: Stiffan Consulting)

Figure 3: Marcel Consée, EMEA Technical Content Specialist, on the creation of reader-friendly blog posts. (Source: Stiffan Consulting)

Figure 4: Students at work. (Source: Marcel Consée)

The projects of the inauguration contest focus on anything helpful in the laboratory—on the basis of Raspberry Pi and Alexa (a speech recognition framework). The purpose of each project is as follows:

• Project Butler 2.0: Correctly classifies items via voice and sorts them for storage as well as for correct disposal.
• Project FindBox, does what its name says: Indicates where a certain item is to be found.
• Project RAX: Operates as a video/audio conferencing tool that has the potential to be useful in conferences and daily research work.
• The Tutorial Developer Assistant (ToDAy): Aids with creating teaching and presentation support.

After two days of developing, the projects were in varying stages of completion. However, even without working prototypes, the student groups had to present their progress.

Figure 5: Presentation of results. (Source: Stiffan Consulting)

With some effort, at least three of the projects will be developed further and demonstrated in a more complete stage at Maker Fair Rome. We’re excited!