Maker Faire: From dog hair insulation to flying bikes: a tour of the inventions of the largest technology fair in Europe | Technology

“The world is not binary. You can be a generalist or a specialist, but both forms are needed to respond to the current complexity”. In this way, Kenneth Mikkelsen, founder of the consultancy Future Shifts and member of the Institute for Future Studies of Denmark summarizes the spirit of the tenth Maker Faire, the largest technology fair in Europe. For a week, Rome has welcomed 480 entities, creators, inventors, companies (large and small), start-ups, investors and 45,000 visitors to show the future of European innovation. Apart from nuclear fusion, the imminent energy revolution, according to the Italian group Eni, present at the exhibition, there are no singular breakthrough innovations in sight, but there is a mosaic of innovation whose tesserae, taken together, provide solutions to the challenges of the next few years in all areas.

Mikkelsen uses a fable to explain the future of technological development: the six blind men and the elephant. If half a dozen blinded people touch an elephant, each one will believe they are facing a different reality. Whoever is in the queue will imagine that it is a rope, whoever caresses the trunk will think that it is a snake… The six people will have a partial and limited erroneous perception of reality. According to the Danish expert, it is necessary to remove blindfolds in order to perceive reality and each one provide solutions that, together, can face the great challenges. “There are silos in our minds and that excludes a lot of people. We need to connect them, work on the systems and change them, educate ourselves for the future, understand what we are and what we want to be. Otherwise there will be no innovation,” he says.

Large companies and entities have been present at the Roman fair. But its advances, already known, have coexisted with small innovations, some of them surprising, that seek to provide new approaches and a gap in the technological landscape. In any case, they are a reflection of the sectors in which European creators walk. Here are some unique examples:

Dog hair as insulation. Alessandra Tuseo is only 24 years old. She did her thesis on thermal and acoustic insulation materials for buildings. She linked her passion with a domestic problem, the hairs left by her dog, and she discovered that these annoying remains constitute a material with better behavior, according to her, than wool fiber. “She can also be used to make clothes”, she assures her amused when she affirms that she already usually wears hair from her pet, and while she shows a hat made with that material. Her work, still waiting for an interested company, is just one example of those tiles that make up the mosaic of European innovation. Like her, dozens of entrepreneurs have shown at the fair in Rome, to which EL PAÍS has been invited, small solutions that, together, can provide an answer to big problems. This is the case of companies that recycle photovoltaic panels, plastic degraders with solar energy, greenhouses that are configured mechanically based on time, or portable spheres 30 centimeters in diameter capable of analyzing the potability of water.

The robotic waiter who reads newspapers. The largest European innovation fair could not miss the various automated solutions for routine or complex work. The Brillo waiter robot adds a few more functions to the already known preparation and service functions. While preparing a client’s claim, he asks, “Do you want me to tell you any breaking news?” Brillo has access to published information and interacts, thanks to artificial intelligence, with the client. Andrea Grillo also introduces Isaac, a robot for salvage and rescue operations. “The novelty is that it is modular and can grow or shrink depending on the needs,” explains the young entrepreneur. But the Roman fair shows robots from all areas, from the most sophisticated and human-shaped, to the simplest, some created with waste and others designed to fry, serve the product without traces of fat and filter the oil from food. Gianlucca Patrassi, an engineer, explains how this automatic fryer has been created from the open programs of the Arduino company and with materials from this same firm, accessible and common in technology classes at all high schools in Spain.

Typing without a keyboard. Micaella Galluci is a scientist at Sanofi Genzyme and has seen how an activity common to most people, such as writing a message, can be challenging for others with disabling injuries or conditions. With this base she has devised Finger Tracking, a glove designed to completely replace a keyboard. “Each finger and its movements are associated via Bluetooth (wireless transmission) to a letter or a character,” he explains. In this way, only with the joints of the hands it is possible not only to write, but also to design, execute commands, maneuver robots, play or assist the disabled.

stuff copiers. Material sciences and 3D printers are other technologies that are very present at the fair and present solutions for all areas, from construction, such as the Wasp company’s cement printer, to the manufacture of small components or surgical material and custom orthotic. “If you can imagine it, it can be created”, say the representatives of 3D Italy. Some playback devices are offered for between 1,500 and 2,000 euros. They are not designed to make cups at home, but to manufacture special components, made to measure, a technology that is basic in industry or health —for the design of specific prostheses— and that will be fundamental in the next space exploration, since it will not You can’t go back for a failed component or wait for a takeover at an orbital station.

face recognition. Artificial intelligence and its multiple applications are also present at the fair. As an example, the Digy Key devices exhibited by Moss Jorvon Lilroy. On his shoulder, the young man from Los Angeles exhibits a portable facial recognition robot in Rome, which allows this technology to be moved wherever it is necessary without the need for static stations. “It can be used for surveillance or for whatever”, he affirms without knowing that the European regulation intends, precisely, to prevent it from being used “for whatever”. On his head he wears glasses that adapt vision needs to different environments depending on the needs, as precision elements in cases of work that require it or protection for tasks that require it. But the use of artificial intelligence and images is already common in many fields, from medical diagnosis to the identification of cases of bullying through cameras that monitor student expressions, one of the fair’s proposals.

Recycling. It is another of the great fields of development of European technology. The German Matthias Mayer, director of Ifixit, defends repair as one of the main axes of technological innovation. “It has to be easy,” he says. His company shares free repair manuals and sells device-specific tools and parts. “That’s how we make money,” he explains. Mayer points out that 1,500 million mobile phones are sold each year —”There are already more than people!”, he exclaims—, that an average American has up to 28 devices and that, of the 10 kilos of technological waste that each European throws away every year, only 40% is recycled, despite the fact that each device contains up to 30 scarce and valuable metals. “Repairing is important and fun,” he says. Of the same opinion is Giacomo di Muro, who has brought to the fair his Kinetic driver, a precision screwdriver with a rotary device that allows tightening or loosening a screw with a single movement.

Art. “Technology is not just an instrument, it is a collaborator of creation,” says the artist Quayola while, a few meters away, a team prepares a performance by One Love Machine Band, a musical group of robots that began its journey through the streets of Berlin and which has become a regular element of the fair. Quayola presents a video installation with images and sounds of the sea created from technology. “It changes our way of looking at the world. It allows us to reinterpret nature and heritage through exploration,” he says.

The bike that aspires to fly. The Rome fair is a pot where everything fits, from the latest advances from large companies to the metaverse through food printing. And there is also room for dreamers. This is the case of Paz Aeroespace, which presents a bicycle supposedly capable of flying. “Up to seven meters”, comments the representative of this initiative, in whose rudimentary website a banner against the penalization of the graffiti on the walls that the supposed answers to frequently asked questions about the bicycle.

The Maker Faire, according to the organization, opens a call for creators, innovators, companies, research entities and inventors. It does not charge for the exhibition space and carries out a screening to adjust the number of exhibitors to the fifty that fit in the gigantic Gazometer enclosure, an old factory now in disuse two kilometers from Trastevere. In this way, you can find from advances in biomedicine to earrings made with recycled watches. A diverse, varied and unique market to see where European technology is heading, with more or less success.

For the president of the Rome Chamber of Commerce, Lorenzo Tagliavanti, “reaching the milestone of ten years with increasing success is a source of pride and satisfaction. The event is now a consolidated point of reference, at European level, for the world of innovation”.

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