Maker Faire Yearbook 2023
Projects
Found 65 Results
Chewing: sei come mangi
Faire: Rome
Maker: Alessia Riente
Chewing is a process of vital importance for our well-being and to ensure proper digestion of food. In addition to its primary function of breaking down food into smaller pieces, chewing plays a crucial role in promoting optimal assimilation of nutrients and promoting the overall health of our digestive system. From the beginning of the digestive process, chewing plays a significant role in preparing food for the subsequent action of digestive enzymes present in the gastrointestinal tract. By properly chewing food, we break it down into smaller particles, allowing digestive enzymes to act more efficiently on them. Furthermore, chewing favors the interaction of food with saliva, which contains enzymes capable of starting the decomposition of carbohydrates. This process facilitates the digestion and absorption of nutrients as they pass through the digestive system.
Slow and thorough chewing allows our brain to receive satiety signals in a timely manner, thus reducing the risk of overeating. This is particularly important for those who wish to manage their body weight or adopt healthier eating habits.
Several factors can influence the functionality of chewing. For example, some conditions such as temporomandibular dysfunction (TMD) or dental malocclusions can impair the ability to chew properly. Additionally, habits such as smoking can have a negative impact on oral health and masticatory function.
In the scientific literature, several techniques have been described that use electromyography (EMG) technology to analyze mastication. However, these techniques are mainly aimed at detecting the presence of the masticatory act or at classifying foods based on the electrical signals generated during chewing. To date, there is no electromyographic device that is able to provide a complete assessment of an individual's chewing performance, in order to define a personalized chewing profile that allows the user to become aware of their chewing habits and, possibly, make of the changes.
In this context, "Chewing" is presented, an innovative device that represents a solution for evaluating chewing style in a non-invasive way. Chewing analyzes chewing considering different aspects of the process, such as the time dedicated to chewing, the number of chews performed, the energy used, the time of a chewing cycle and the pace of work. Thanks to this detailed analysis, it is possible to evaluate the chewing process itself, taking various aspects into consideration, and to define chewing profiles.
Medical procedures on virtual patients.
Faire: Rome
Maker: VETRO (Virtual Experience with Tactile RObotics)
The project proposes an innovative interaction between physical and virtual reality using Weart's touchDIVER and the Oculus Rift S visor. The operator uses the touchDIVER and the visor to immerse himself in the virtual environment. A robotic hand replicates the movements of the physical hand, allowing interaction with virtual objects, including a CT-reconstructed abdominal section. The touchDIVER provides haptic feedback of force, temperature and texture. The aim is to offer an innovative medical simulation experience for surgeons, doctors and students, facilitating practice and learning.
MyzharBot v5 – A fully 3D printed intelligent ground robot
Faire: Rome
Maker: Pizza Robotics
MyzharBot v5 represents the latest version of my autonomous robot, showing significant progress. This version boasts a fully 3D printed structure, combining aesthetics with functionality. Equipped with a formidable NVIDIA Jetson embedded PC, it harnesses the power of AI processing to extract intricate 3D details from its surroundings thanks to a state-of-the-art Stereolabs 3D camera. This data allows the robot to make decisions about its route and determine the optimal speed, ensuring maximum safety for those around it. By intelligently analyzing what kind of obstacles it "sees", MyzharBot v5 dynamically adjusts its trajectory, making it a versatile and reliable companion in different scenarios.
SENTINEL
Faire: Rome
Maker: Feel-ING SRL
The SENTINEL project aims to promote wellness in the workplace providing an ad-hoc platform to monitor psychophysics pitfalls that could threaten workers’ and teams’ security. Being in the context of Internet of Things (IoT), it exploits wearable and comfortable devices (such as smartwatches, smart clothes or sports bands) and emotive artificial intelligence algorithms.
MaCh3D Material Testing (r)Evolution
Faire: Rome
Maker: MaCh3D
For those transforming raw materials into final products and for materials developers, MaCh3D is a Smart Material Testing platform made of an innovative hardware allowing an easier, safer and faster testing procedure, and a cloud platform for material intelligence, enhanced by AI for processes control and materials and processes optimization.
Smart Material Testing directly at manufacturing floor will accelerate materials innovation and grow trust in new materials and applications.
MaCh3D, (r)Evolution in Material Testing!
Il pendolo e la meraviglia
Faire: Rome
Maker: Antonio Ianiero
Since 2012 I have built various machines that shares the common feature to make unexpected and surprising things.
For the Maker Faire Rome events of 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2022, I created an exhibition in my booth showcasing some machines that I called "Thaumachines." The purpose was to popularize the beauty of Science and to inspire visitors to explore the same boundaries between Science, perception, and Art that I once explored myself.
Many of those machines were based on the careful and coordinated use of oscillatory motions.
- Double pendulum
- Multipendulum
- Harmonograph
- Laser sound visualizer
This year, I will present an expanded version of the exhibition by transforming the harmonograph into a mechanical oscilloscope and creating a three-dimensional laser visualization of sounds.
Alice – Between The Mirrors
Faire: Rome
Maker: Freie Maker e.V.
Freie Maker e.V. is maker community from Aachen, Germany. Freie Maker wants to let people get access to technologies, through DIY, OpenSource, and learning by doing. With Alice - Between The Mirrors, we want to give people a playful way into quantum technology basics. This is mostly achieved with led games, with technology hidden behind an artistic, natural surface. Albeit games can be also played without learning about the quantum technology aspect, they should at least encourage people to rebuild this artistic open-source objects for their homes.
Mycastellium – From Mushroom to Masterpiece
Faire: Rome
Maker: Orietta Bartalini
Mycastellium is the perfect project for people who want to open their minds into a sustainable environment. This project is entirely made of a sustainable material called mycelium: an ideal substitute to plastic. We created this lamp combining nature inspired designs and advanced technologies. Our project took time and dedication as we collaborated to reach our goal. Mycastellium’s aim is to spread awareness about sustainability. Help us transform our world step by step; every little step counts!
Never Alone
Faire: Rome
Maker: Agata Aurilio
Therefore, it was decided to design two devices that would allow an early diagnosis of a possible heart attack in progress and the presence of breast lumps.
The device’s aim is to be a proposal for change for the development of
territorial assistance in the National Health System. The "house", our home, becomes the first place of treatment, where we provide for an early diagnosis of certain pathologies.
The first device function is to analyze the possible symptoms of a heart attack in progress. The second allows constant and autonomous cancer screening.
GALDEANO, DIY Calculator with simbolic math
Faire: Rome
Maker: Angel Cabello
The heart of the machine is an esp32 with 4 Mb of SPI RAM. The PCB is a custom one, as it is the keyboard. The display (320x240) is an ili9341 with a touch sensor (resistance). It runs a custom micropython distribution with LVGL graphics with the math engine (Eigenmath) as a module. The program runs in the data partitions and it is easily customizable and extensible.
BirdWatch AI – Embedded Bird Watching Solution with TensorFlow
Faire: Rome
Maker: Enrico Stulin
BirdWatch AI is an innovative project that combines a passion for bird watching with the power of artificial intelligence. Our birdhouse with automatic recognition leverages TensorFlow to offer an unprecedented birdwatching experience.
The BirdWatch AI project encompasses the mechanical design of a bird feeder equipped with a Full HD camera (a 12-megapixel IMX708 sensor with HDR), with the primary aim to capture images and videos of visiting birds. Using TensorFlow's automatic recognition algorithm and image manipulation with OpenCV, BirdWatch AI accurately identifies the bird species present, providing detailed and engaging information for birdwatching enthusiasts.
As an open-source project, BirdWatch AI invites developers, enthusiasts, and the curious to collaborate, make modifications, and improvements. This open and collaborative aspect of the project encourages the sharing of knowledge and skills and contributes to the growth of artificial intelligence and birdwatching.
BirdWatch AI not only offers the opportunity to observe and learn more about local avian wildlife but also makes a significant impact in several areas:
Environmental education and awareness: Through our project, we aim to educate the public about bird species and their ecological importance. By presenting our sighting records and relevant information about bird behaviors, we strive to promote environmental awareness and care for biodiversity.
Contribution to scientific research: In collaboration with ornithologists and researchers, we share data collected via BirdWatch AI to contribute to understanding migratory habits, distribution patterns, and bird population dynamics. Our technology provides a novel approach for efficient and effective data collection.
Technological innovation: BirdWatch AI represents an interesting integration of nature observation and artificial intelligence. We are proud to demonstrate how the application of TensorFlow has enabled the automatic recognition of bird species, opening new perspectives for the use of AI in wildlife conservation and observation.
At Maker Faire Rome, we will present a working prototype of our birdhouse, illustrating how we use TensorFlow for automatic bird recognition. We will also display a selection of recordings that demonstrate the effectiveness of our technology. We are excited to share our project with the audience at Maker Faire Rome, inspiring others to explore the universe of birds through technological innovation.
The sustainability through the student Teams of the Politecnico of Turin
Faire: Rome
Maker: Politecnico di Torino
The Politecnico di Torino presents the most important students Teams involved in sustainability, ecological aspect, low consumption, mobility, recycle, reducing environmental impact and promoting circular economy.
The Politecnico of Torino involves the students in Teams with a mission: “learning by doing” with the goal to grow up a new generation of engineers able to accept challenges and solve problems.
The main goal of the teams is a practical training of the future engineer: to design means to compromise between an idea and what is actually buildable.
The Politecnico would like to present 10 teams that from 15 years make innovation participating to international competitions and events.
The Politecnico would like to have a big space to expose theire prototype; cars, bicycle, motorcycle, boats, mobile robot, scaled airplane, recycling computer and more other.
Lifeshell, una soluzione per i terremoti
Faire: Rome
Maker: CNR IBE - Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche Istituto per la Bioeconomia
LifeShell is a wooden desk capable of resisting building collapses, providing a safe shell.
It is a safe shelter equipped with life-saving accessories, engineered for schools, houses, enterprises.
It is ecological, economic, recyclable and released under the creative commons license.
In 2023 – 2025 a funded project will develop the aesthetic and ergonomic design, we will test the desk impact resistance, we will gather a collection of hints from students on their ideal desk, we will keep sharing the project for free and without patents with a bottom-up and citizen science approach.
Circular Farm la fattoria urbana circolare
Faire: Rome
Maker: Antonio Di Giovanni
Circular Farm is an urban farm, inspired by the circularity of nature.
In our circular agricultural process we produce Oyster mushrooms reusing the coffee grounds from the bars and other product like medical mushrooms, micro-vegetable, flours, eggs, worm humus and compost.
Our process is innovative, because we use a vertical systems of cultivation in the shipping containers, out of land.
In addition to the production of mushrooms, our company produces micro-vegetables and vegetables from hydroponic cultivation systems (aquaponic system) and with a synergic garden.
From the mushrooms substrate, we make a compost pile and thanks of the aerobic fermentation we produce hot water that we use in winter time for heating our greenhouse.
In our Circular Farm space we organize educational tour for schoosl, experience, workshops and training for the people that want to replicate our circular system.
LAGOrà
Faire: Rome
Maker: IIS Galilei Artiglio
The LAGOrà project aims to make students passionate about science and technology starting from problems close to them and making them active protagonists of the monitoring process. In fact, the boys built instruments (control units for detecting atmospheric pollutants, pH meters, phreatimeters, handcrafted microscopes) to evaluate the state of health of Massaciuccoli Lake, and contributed to producing solutions and fundamental data for setting up campaigns of environmental remediation aimed at raising awareness among citizens and institutions, establishing a vicious circle of collaboration, citizen science and good practices.
One Health Lab
Faire: Rome
Maker: Università di Siena
The bioeconomy is not only the set of activities of food, bio-energy, and bio-materials production, but
includes all activities that transform biological resources into other products. In many cases, as in the
forestry sector and in many areas of biomaterial production activities, no processes are involved
biotechnological but biophysical or biochemical, which makes the technical and scientific skills of the Laboratory
absolutely suited to this time of crucial transition, accepting the challenge of integrating the
bioeconomy and the circular economy into a new concept known as the circular bioeconomy. The Demonstrator
to be implemented by the Macronode@UNISI ensures the marriage of innovation (generation of know-
how), quality and sustainability in a multidisciplinary and multiproduct vision (use of know-how)
proposing and using green and bio-based solutions: a model that aims at real circularity, a unicum
in the eco-sustainable life sciences sector nationally and internationally. The experimental laboratory
will be organized as a Bioeconomy Innovation Lab with the aim of creating a platform for the
development of products derived from a waste, capable of making the process of formulating a new
product and put it on the market, connecting the raw material and subcontractor industries, as well as offering the
ability to carry out quality control testing, stability, material studies and realization of product
prototypes.
Wi-Fi Enabled Stratum-1 GNSS Time Server Built From Scratch
Faire: Rome
Maker: Cristiano Monteiro
My hands-on approach to dissecting IoT from the inside led me to fulfill a long-time dream of having an on-site Stratum-1 Network Time Protocol (NTP) server. NTP is the decades-old synchronization protocol that keeps networked computer clocks accurate.
The best-case scenario for an NTP server is being fed from a Stratum-1 time source, that is, for instance, connected to the source of a VERY accurate time, usually an atomic clock (also called, Stratum-0).
A good amount of Stratum-0 time sources is constantly floating over our heads! The GPS satellites, each one carrying at least two cesium atomic clocks (accurate up to 1 second every 300 million years).
The idea of using GPS as a time source is not new, there are dozens of commercial products available doing precisely that. But my goal is to make it cheap, accurate, self-contained, dual-powered (mains and batteries), wireless-enabled, and portable to use on the field in my HAM Radio activities. Powered by the ever-expanding universe of microcontroller units, this goal is closer than ever.
Current functionalities:
- Internal RTC synched from GPS satellites constellation (backed by CR2032 battery)
- Dual voltage powered
- Backup battery for the whole unit (18650)
- NTP and RDATE (RFC868) protocols supported
- WiFi functionality as a client or access point
- Syslog logging
- Configuration webpage for WiFi and Syslog, saving to persistent storage (LittleFS)
- Informative display with a timestamp, satellites in view, accuracy, wifi server, IP address
- Dual function button, short press switch information on display, long press disables WiFi
- Status at a glance, with dedicated 5mm LEDs for GPS lock, PPS signal, and WiFi status, as well as visible internal LEDs for charging and GPS module statuses
Gli alimenti del futuro: tra biodiversità, economia circolare e agritech
Faire: Rome
Maker: Benedetta Pizziconi
Foods of the future: between biodiversity, circular economy and agritech:
An accurate nutritional regimen stands as a pivotal health determinant among all life-ages.
Within this context, promoting nutritional biodiversity and foods capable of guaranteeing both productivity and high nutritional value as well as in the context of climate change, represent one of the main challenges of our millennium.
Environmental sustainability and waste reduction in the food supply chain are issues consumers are becoming increasingly sensitive to. For years UCBM has been working on those subjects, in particular:
i) Identifying better resistant crop varieties to adverse environmental conditions or varieties with peculiar nutritional characteristics.
ii) Refining green methods to extract bioactive molecules with high-added value for their potential employment in nutraceuticals, cosmeceuticals, etc., from secondary raw materials that so far only assumed a low or negative economic value within the supply chain
iii) Developing sensor-based and robotic systems to identify the health status of the plant to allow an intervention of greater precision in the various agricultural processes, to optimize the production and the harvesting of the edible parts.
At the Maker Faire, some projects, and experimental tools by the research groups in Food and Nutrition Science will be exposed, biomedical measurements and instruments and advanced robotics.
Sport-graf
Faire: Rome
Maker: IIS Edoardo Amaldi Roma
Sport-graf is a device capable of detecting the electrical activity of the muscle through the application of three electrodes on the skin, treated with the Arduino UNO board and a wave amplifier.
The device consists of a breadboard housing the components of the power supply and amplification circuits. The amplifier is powered, through a dual generator, by a lithium ion battery.
The chip amplifies the signal (INA128P) coming from the three electrodes and supplies an analog output read by the analog port of the Arduino, which, thanks to the serial plotter, shows a graph with the trend of the contraction and distension activity of the muscle fibres.
Progetto – E-Tyres
Faire: Rome
Maker: Polo Scolastico Superiore "Volta" - Castel San Giovanni - Piacenza
Use of piezoelectric sensors on tyres, rims, or on the road or rail to generate electricity during movement in a completely green and free way without drawing energy from the vehicle. Energy harvesting application with great potential. Working prototype with sensors applied to the rear wheel of a bicycle available to the public for demonstration.
SKID – Skin care detector
Faire: Rome
Maker: Cassandra Serantoni
Skin is the organ responsible for protecting us from external agents (i.e. radiation or pollutants) whose state of health can be maintained using specific cosmetics.
Characterizing the skin biotype is complex and expensive, and therefore the type and effectiveness of cosmetics are individually evaluated empirically.
We have therefore created SKID, a tool which, by analyzing the light emitted by the skin, is able to detect quantitatively, quickly, and at low cost its functional characteristics, identifying the skin biotype and following its modifications over time.
Prototype for Glasses-free Live 3D Vision
Faire: Rome
Maker: ICTP Scientific FabLab
We present our "altiro3D" prototype for a glasses-free real-time 3D vision based on a new C++ library developed to generate light-fields (or Native) 3D images or videos from a single webcam and in real-time, plus the use of a free-view LCD display such as the slanted lenticular device: "Looking Glass Portrait". Details at: https://github.com/canessae/altiro3D
Università e Innovazione: Scienze e Tecnologie Alimentari in Sapienza
Faire: Rome
Maker: Scienze e tecnologie Alimentari - Università degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza
An emerging sector of scientific research in Sapienza is increasingly oriented towards the development of the Agro-Food sector and in particular of the topics related to biotechnology (microbiology and technologies), food quality and safety, food chemistry and nutrition, management and the sustainability of agri-food supply chains. Teams of researchers are involved in several projects, financed at different levels by the European Community, by the MIUR and MASAF Ministries, by the Regions and directly by industry, for developing applied research and technology transfer.
Water Sampling Drone, campionamento delle acque.
Faire: Rome
Maker: IIS Marconi Galletti Einaudi Domodossola
Water Sampling Drone is an automatic surface water sampling system based on the STM32 microcontroller. The improved collection system allows you to manage multiple samplings during a single mission and thanks to a multi-parameter platform (pH, Temperature, Dissolved Oxygen, Conductivity, solid state detector for muon measurement) data on the quality of the water for each withdrawal point. The collected water is then stored in special test tubes and can be used for subsequent chemical-biological analyzes in the laboratory. The system is equipped with a GPS independent from the drone control one to allow the replicability of the sampling and the georeferencing of the data: the coordinates and the acquired data are memorized on a micro-SD and simultaneously sent via radio to a computer on the ground.
