Il settimanale del 1 settembre 2026 - Fablab

[music] While enrollment for courses at our university is underway, in these August installments of the university and city weekly magazine , [music] we show you some of the many centers of excellence at the University of Siena. [music] My name is Patrizia Marti. I teach design at the University of Siena. I am the rector's delegate at the Fablab. Here we are in the Fablab of the Santa Chiara Lab. Well, the Santa Chiara Lab is a major project of the University of Siena, it's an interdisciplinary innovation center that started in 2016, so we're almost 10 years into its activity. And the Fablab is one of the strategic projects of the Santa Chiara Lab and is a co-design laboratory. Fablab means digital manufacturing. It's a movement that was born in the United States, and in the United States they say that the Fablab is the Fabulus Lab, that is, the fabulous laboratory where anything can be done . This is the slogan. What we can see in this laboratory are essentially projects, hybrid solutions in which there is a physical component and a digital component. Over time, the laboratory has obviously specialized not only in certain topics, but has also advanced certain technologies. Artificial intelligence could not be missing among these technologies and therefore we also work with this digital world. Well, in this room we specialize mainly in the use of 3D printing. Here, as you can see, there are 3D printers of various types, both deposition printers which are classic printers in which the machine deposits material to create objects or reproduce objects, or much more advanced printers. Here is a stereolithography printer, it is a resin printer that allows us to make very high quality prints. These prints are used, for example, in the medical sector, where absolute precision is important , so we can also reproduce, for example, human organs, and we can manufacture some instrumentation that can be used, for example, in a rehabilitation program, and so we work a lot in this sector. We also use these technologies in some specific projects . Here you see some interactive jewels. This is one of the Fablab's flagship projects, born in collaboration, precisely, by doing co-design and co-creation with a group of deaf women. These jewels are able to recognize environmental sounds, sounds that are useful, for example an alarm, a doorbell ringing, someone calling a person who can't hear, er, a dog barking, and these sounds are notified either with lights or with vibrations, or this is a jewel that changes shape, and obviously they are also notified on an app that says what sound it is. This project is important, let's say, not only to demonstrate a solution, but to think about disability differently. Disability is not a lack to be filled, it is a difference. And this type of disability allowed us to think creatively about a solution and so instead of thinking about a device that I have to hide so as not to show a disability, we thought about jewels, beautiful things that people wear with pride to embellish their bodies. So break down the stigma. This this is one of the missions, no, of this laboratory. So think about accessibility and inclusion in a creative, aesthetically appealing way, with the goal of breaking down the stigma of disability. I'm Letizia Vaccarella, a research fellow at the dispo who works here at the Santa Chiara Fablab. Well, what you are about to see is the output of a European project, of an AAL funding line, a funding line that promotes projects for active aging, so let's say that the main target of this technology is precisely elderly people. The idea behind the project and the problem we tried to solve is that of access to cultural heritage. Very often, older people, for various reasons, whether physical or cognitive disabilities, but also simply lifestyle-related, do not have access to museums. So the idea was how can we take the museum out of the museum. So we built what we call the Magic Casket. It is basically a storytelling activity that is guided and can be guided by museum facilitators and is divided into themes. So, as you can see, in this case, we created thematic lines, reproduced objects, but above all, we worked with a multisensory approach to provide the opportunity to have different stimuli, stimulate different senses, and thus engage older people in storytelling activities that could also activate memory, recollection, and therefore socialization, even with respect to personal experiences. In this case, the reproductions you see come from two museums in the Buon Convento area, specifically the Museo della Mezzadria Senese and the Museo d'Arte Sacra. Well, the works were scanned and reproduced in resin to achieve a good balance between size, detail, and therefore a pleasant feel . They have also been validated and evaluated with blind people and for this reason we decided to structure these narrative paths through different stimulations, so as I was telling you, the scans and reproductions, but we also inserted music, therefore the possibility of activating the memory of the narration through musical stimuli, also adding Braille inside the discs in order to make people autonomous in interacting with the object. We added some fragrances, thus giving us the possibility of using smells as reinforcement for memory recovery during the facilitation and storytelling process . We are continuing to develop this project as well as continuing lessons and assessments with older people. We also made a second version which, as you can see, is much more compact, it is much smaller and this makes it easier to transport. The operation is the same, even if we have simplified the technology, because the idea is that this will then become a solution that can truly be used by anyone. So, in this case we basically rely on a tablet that can be inserted inside the body and therefore allows interaction. As in the other case, all objects have been somehow integrated with audio content, so the interaction remains simple, it remains like that in the other in the previous version. We take the reproduction, we put an important family of feared warriors in all closed and portrayed in the act of listening to her lover, in fact she looks at him kindly, wide-eyed, ecstatic and her mouth hints at a slight smile. The hands are clasped. In this case too, the stimuli are multisensory, so fragrances have also been included in addition to the prints, so let's say these parchments that can be unrolled where the work can be seen. The peculiarity of this project is that while in the other project the contents were built together with the museum, so they are, let's say, formal contents in a certain sense, even if descriptive and narrative, in this case even the activity of building the contents was delegated to a choral activity, so the project envisaged that different people built contents that were customized, let's say, with respect to the works that were chosen to represent. We are in the Kitchen Lab of the Santa Chiara Lab. It is a kitchen laboratory that combines the technologies of a professional kitchen with advanced digital technologies such as 3D food printing. Well, in this kitchen we transform food in an innovative way with a focus on sustainability and creativity. Well, one of the projects we're carrying out is in collaboration with Professor Kai, who is a colleague in botany who is responsible for a series of laboratories called Farming Labs. Why are we doing all this? Because the pasta we produce at the Kitchen Lab is good for us because we've measured that the amount of bioactive components remains until the end of the processing, that is, until the pasta is cooked. Therefore, it's good for us and good for the environment because we recover something that would otherwise be wasted. Another very innovative project of the Kitchen Lab is the concept of edible data. What do we do? Since the Kitchen Lab works to support sustainability processes and projects, um, let's make some desserts. These sweets, the shape, the color of these sweets is associated with data regarding the sustainability of cow's milk production compared to plant-based milk , so soy milk, rice milk, and almond milk. What do we do? Um, we use data regarding land use, water use, CO2 emissions and eutrophication processes and we transform them into model height, model color, model angularity and simply by looking at them you can see that cow's milk has a much greater impact because the sweet is taller, darker, more angular. while the others have a less impactful color, have softer lines and therefore we invite people to taste them. Let's try the scents, flavors, and aromas that come from these sweets and try to encourage more sustainable behaviors towards the environment. My name is Flavio Lampus, I am a research sign writer at the Santa Chiara Fablab of the University of Siena, and I present to you this project: an avatar that is able to understand and speak both Italian and the Italian Sign language. This project was born to meet a need, a need which is that of inclusion. Hmm. It is one of our laboratory's inclusion projects . Since 2019, Italian has been recognized as one of the official languages ​​of the Italian state and will therefore be increasingly present in official contexts, let's say, even in slightly more formal contexts. This project we did was developed with the University of Siena, the Fablab, and a company called Questit. Well, it's made up of two parts, so a visual graphic part that you see here with the avatar and a part that's behind the artificial intelligence. In this demo that you can see here, I basically ask the avatar questions in sign language and then the avatar gives an answer using sign language and also giving an answer in written Italian and, if desired, also with audio, so to have total inclusiveness. For the artificial intelligence part, we created a dataset ourselves because at the time, well, we've been doing this project for 2 years, it didn't exist, so we created a dataset with which we trained the machine to be able to, um, understand sign language. The graphic part. For the graphic design, we relied on the collaboration of groups of deaf people who helped us both in the co-design phase and in a more technical, practical part, where they wore motion capture suits and signed, then donated the signs to the avatar you see here. I'm Giociliani, a PhD student in Made in Italy design, and this is an avatar designed to guide and orient students at the University of Siena toward professionals, services, events, and projects related to well-being and mental health. This is because the academic community often encounters difficulties during their studies, and they may begin to suffer from anxiety, stress, or depression, and don't know who to turn to. So we want to provide a tool that puts them in direct contact with the university psychologist, giving them the option to book an appointment directly through their avatar and also offering the contact details of the dedicated offices. The interaction is conversational, it can be both text and voice. Hi, I'm Francesca, the virtual assistant who directs students to the support best suited to their needs, providing information on university services, available support staff, and ongoing events and projects related to well-being. If you're going through a difficult time and don't know who to talk to, the counseling service is a safe and confidential space. If you feel you need psychological support, I can help you schedule an appointment with the university psychologist. How can I help you today? Hi, I'd like to book an appointment with a psychologist. So, as you can see, definitely a date. To do this, you need an institutional email address. You can proceed by filling out the form below. University psychologists will obviously receive a form. I'll fill out the various fields and be able to book an appointment with the psychologist directly, or I can ask any other questions and receive appropriate answers. Speaking of projects related to the medical field, this is a project we did in collaboration with Professor Goracci of the University of Siena and Professor Franchi of the University of Florence, and we developed orthodontic aligners to correct Class III malocclusions and underbite in children. Um, what's the problem with this kind of these kind of tools? Here, this is a commercial mask that is used to correct this type of malocclusion. And, as you can see, it's a very heavy mask, made of metal, with rigid plastic that can create, uh, let's say, irritation on the skin. and then it is very large, so even small children have difficulty wearing such a large mask, also because for this therapy to work, the mask needs to be worn for about 10 months of therapy duration and for at least 10-12 hours a day, so it is a very long period and our goal was to increase compliance, that is, adherence to the therapy by children. So what did we do? Since these are masks, we decided to transform the masks into superhero masks. So here you see an embellishment of the superhero mask. But the interesting thing about this project is that this mask contains sensors that tell us how long the child wears this mask. And we associated the mask with a game, a video game where there are four superheroes wearing the same masks, so there is an identification with the superhero. The more the patient wears the mask, the more coins he earns to buy tools that the superhero needs to solve the game's challenge. And coincidentally, this game lasts exactly 10 months, that is, the entire duration of the therapy. This is a very important project. We've done several clinical trials, um, that have gone very well. We have obtained an Italian patent and a European patent, and now we hope to be able to turn this into a whole system and transfer the technology to make it a commercial product, thus truly supporting this type of therapeutic path. [music]