5 innovation ideas that Switzerland is betting on
Even if the collective perception is made up almost exclusively of positive categories, among the spontaneous associations that Italians (and not only) do with Switzerland there is a great absentee: innovation, or science and technology, whatever you want to call it. In terms of color, Michelle Hunziker is mentioned more often than the most prestigious research centers, first of all the CERN in Geneva.
As ambassador Nicolas Bideau who heads Presenza Svizzera told sportsgaming.win, the Swiss government has decided to focus on Italy and Milan (as it did in Stuttgart in Germany) to enhance its innovations, creating points of contact with the Italian hi-tech ecosystem. A cultural action that has as its central element the House of Switzerland Milan, which will open at the Casa degli Artisti in Corso Garibaldi in Brera (corner of via Tommaso da Cazzaniga) on April 26 with the format Meet the media guru together with Luca Maria Gambardella , then remaining operational until the Milan Design Week on 7-12 June. When it comes to scientific research in Switzerland, however, there is not only CERN. From Lausanne to Zurich, we have collected here 5 recent innovations that we have been told about.
1. Plastic from vegetable waste and glass wind turbines One of the areas on which the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (Eth) in Zurich is focusing the most is that of innovative materials. One of the most promising ones - at least at the pilot project level - is called Groam and was born from the idea of a researcher, Zuzana Sediva. It is part of the field of bioplastics, in particular made from waste from agricultural production, but has the peculiarity of leading to the creation of a material that has the appearance of a foam (hence the name of the project) and degrades more easily than to plastics made from fossil materials. The heart of the innovation lies in the process, which is based on the use of a combination of gas and water to obtain the consistency of a foam or sponge. “The ideal application of this material - explained Sediva - is the creation of rugs, floor coverings, footwear and packaging".
foto: Groam / Eth Another curious and potentially revolutionary innovation, also winner of the Spark Award 2021 to Eth, is Antefil. Born in 2016, the startup-project consists in the realization of a material composed of glass fibers encapsulated in a thermoplastic, so as to obtain fibers similar to threads which - once collected in bundles - allow to obtain a particularly light and resistant material. The main application currently proposed is that of wind turbines, which would be lighter, easier to dispose of and perform better than those currently in use. And also faster and less polluting to produce.
photo: Antefil / Eth 2. Geothermal energy in the underground floors Spin-off of Epfl (the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne), Enerdrape uses modular panel technology them which allows to obtain energy from the floor and walls of underground infrastructures, such as parking lots, boiler rooms, subways or other. The principle is obviously that of geothermal energy, with the difference that instead of penetrating deep into the ground, it takes advantage of existing underground structures.
In other words, what Enerdrape has created is a sort of floor (or wall) heating in reverse, that is, in which cold water is made to flow inside the panels, collecting it then slightly heated to the end of the coil. A small heat difference, of the order of one or a few degrees Celsius, which however may be sufficient to activate the heat pumps.
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The heart of the technology lies in the engineering of underground panels, and the idea has already raised around half a million euros in development funding. Even if at the moment we are only in pilot projects - one has been installed right in the underground boiler rooms of the Epfl - there is no doubt that today the heat of the basement floors of buildings and large infrastructures represents a form of energy at cost ( and emissions) zero under-exploited, a few meters from the highest floors of buildings where it could be useful for reducing consumption and pollution. Still to be verified, however, is the real efficiency of the process, which is decisive for evaluating the range of future applicability.
3. Robots for automated construction "In the world of construction we are facing a perfect storm - Harald Lumetzberger, manager of the robotics division of the Swiss branch of Abb in Baden, told sportsgaming.win. We need more and more houses, but we don't have enough space to build them or enough people to build them, and in parallel construction robotics has become a reality ”. Hence the idea of making prefabricated buildings in the factory, delegating their construction to automata. The assembly, on the other hand, continues to be human and on-site, because there are still no ready-to-use technologies that can take care of that part. “The construction of prefabricated buildings in the factory also has an advantage in terms of sustainability - continued Lumetzberger -. because 25% of the material used in construction on site becomes waste, and making everything in the factory means having less waste and not having to transport it. Today the challenge is to get to pre-build even skyscrapers in the factory ".
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Among the most avant-garde applications directly on site there is a robotic elevator installer. From a partnership between Abb and Schindler, an automaton was born capable of mounting an elevator in its conduit without any human intervention: "The system is not only operational in any weather-climatic condition, but also allows workers to be prevented from being exposed to dust. and the risks of the trade. The next step will be to develop a generation of robots capable of carrying out safety checks on elevators immediately after installation - he continued -. But there is no risk of replacing human work: what is happening is only a change in the roles in which the staff are employed ".
4. The Student Project House in Zurich A place where you can breathe innovation, and students are encouraged to develop their ideas in an innovative, free and well-equipped environment. The Student Project House (Sph) in Zurich is a real flagship of Eth, a stone's throw from the headquarters of the most prestigious Swiss polytechnic university, opened in autumn 2021 and structured on several floors, each with its own peculiarities ranging from absolute silence to sharing areas, up to curtained rooms, which allow maximum modulation of spaces.
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But the building itself is not the heart of innovation, but the organization of activities: any group of students from any university in the world (provided that at least one is enrolled in Eth) can propose their own idea and - after a selection - start working on it in the spaces of the Sph. All for free, including tea, coffee and workstations: less than six months after opening, all the spaces are assiduously frequented by work groups that develop projects of all kinds. At the entrance, a large bulletin board that collects the offers of those who want to become part of a project without having their own idea, and those of already consolidated working groups looking for specific skills to be included in the team.
3d printers at work at the Sph in Zurich photo: Gianluca Dotti / Wired 5. Rivers that clean themselves It is called Autonomous River Clean-up and it is one of the projects born and growing within Sph. A multidisciplinary team of 33 students who are working to create an automatic system for collecting plastic from waterways, through a robotic arm connected to an artificial intelligence system capable of recognizing plastic objects by distinguishing them from what is foliage , shrubs or other objects.
