Frontier solutions for workplace safety

Along the Innovation Mile, Sant'Anna's Institute of Biorobotics studies the answers starting from nature, which already has the answers to all human needs: here we study the possibility of exploiting the octopus's ability to lengthen its tentacles ten times or the cricket's ability to make jumps more than ten times its height. This is where the soft endoscope was born, which ascends the intestinal viscera with the same movements as the caterpillar, guided by an external magnet, and which today represents a far less invasive alternative to traditional chronoscopy. The Institute of Biorobotics adopts a model that focuses on the application of research, with a strong emphasis on entrepreneurship: there are more than 40 spinoffs, more than one each for the thirty lecturers.

The focus is on small and medium-sized enterprises, from which emerges a latent demand for technology and innovation: 'The small ones are more dynamic, they have understood that innovation is necessary, but they have fewer resources and, therefore, they need quality projects, innovation that really reaches the market. In this logic, the network structure of Artes 4.0 implies more effort, but it integrates skills, without duplicating them," emphasises Antonio Frisoli, president of the Pontedera competence centre, which integrates artificial intelligence and the other digital technologies of Factory 4.0 with advanced robotics, emphasising the importance of training in frontier technologies, but also of training in the management of innovation processes.

The intuition came from Giovannino Agnelli, when he was chairman of Piaggio: the area's small and medium-sized enterprises needed to break free from dependence on Piaggio's mono-supply, to change their culture, a new relationship with research and the university was needed to trigger innovation. Thus on the Innovation Mile, together with the competence centre, PonTech was developed, an incubator for innovation and technology transfer that launched an expansion of the business to the circular economy, in a logic of developing small vertical skills of excellence that could act as a driving force for the local economy.

Thus was born the landfill management project with energy production that in part goes to power sports facilities in the area. But there is also a startup like Nemesys that pursues efficiency in hydrogen production with a double patent: one for a membrane for high-efficiency alkaline electrolysers and a more recent one that allows batteries to be recharged with low-pressure hydrogen.

In the adjoining PontLab - a materials analysis laboratory with a turnover of four million euro with around forty researchers and 300 client companies - the first recycling process of waste plastic was carried out, that which in waste separation ended up being burnt: now it has been transformed into balls that are used for the body of Piaggio's Mp3, noise barriers and vases for domestic use. Always in the logic of excellence skills for the circular economy.

On the other hand, Pontedera is no stranger to transformation. A territory historically disputed between Florence and Pisa, a border and trade area, it has grown as a fertile ground for innovation and creativity, which has seen the development over the centuries of textiles, pasta and the transport industry, from Nobile's dirigibles to the Vespa that helped make post-war Italy travel. Now think of a new 'reconstruction'. The competence centre's latest announcement, with the emblematic title of 'Restart Italy', aims to develop the adoption of digital technologies for SMEs and public administrations, with the ambition of becoming the pivot of a national ecosystem. And Artes 4.0 is already looking at 5.0 from a European perspective by connecting to continental Innovation Hubs.