from_puglia_mechatronics

From Puglia Mechatronics: 100 masks per minute

by News

A mechatronics production chain started from Puglia in a full emergency during the pandemic. MBL Solutions, an Apulian excellence of mechatronics and robotics, wanted to make its contribution to the Country, with the help of robotics and automation.

MBL Solutions designed and built a Made-in-Italy robotic machine for the production of surgical and FFP2 masks, capable of producing 100 masks per minute, for a total of 144,000 per day.

All this was achieved in just three months, with the collaboration of 20 companies in the advanced mechatronics production chain. A truly virtuous example, considering that, among other things, the manufacturing sector has been among the hardest hit by the economic crisis.

The result was extraordinary and saw the construction of dozens of mask production plants.

The production chain project also involved the engineering of a “fully integrated” production line, which also included sterilization (for the certification of medical masks) and the final packaging of the masks, completely automatical and with the assistance from only one direct line operator per work shift.

Cesare De Palma, President of the Mechanical Section of Confindustria Bari-Bat, said: “The model that has been applied by MBL Solutions for the mask production systems is the only way forward: that of interaction and professional collaboration to create a fluid system and to grow our companies by responding to the multiple needs of the market, which today does not allow vertical specialization.”

Ceasre De Palma and his organization are actively contributing as very valuable Stakeholders to the NewMetro Project since its start.

Source: https://www.affaritaliani.it/puglia/covid-dalla-meccatronica-pugliese-100-mascherine-al-minuto-686716.html?refresh_ce

Robots undertake the installation of optical fiber cable

Robots undertake the installation of optical fiber cable

by News

Internet access is becoming more and more essential. In order to bear the increasing demand for high-capacity and low-cost networks, network operators have invested in transforming their networks from 2G and 3G to 4G and beyond, while wireline access networks have moved from DSL and coaxial to fiber to the home.

Facebook Connectivity in collaboration with ULC Robotics have built a robot capable of wrapping a fiber-optic cable around an existing aerial Medium Voltage power lines (MV) that usually serve inhabited areas all over the world. In other words, they exploit an existing and widespread infrastructure to not only modernize the services they provide, but also to make possible more and more people can potentially have internet access.  The cost of this business venture is 3 to 5 times lower compared to the traditional way of optical fiber cable deployment.

Karthik Yogeeswaran, a wireless system engineer at Facebook Connectivity, said that the idea for the project came from a trip to Africa and after observing the ubiquitous power line infrastructure, which is far more widespread than the overall fiber optic footprint of the country.

The robot is made to be able to avoid and cross any obstacles it encounters on its way. Keeping the robot’s weight low makes it ideal for handling a medium voltage line, which was a major challenge for manufacturers as it would limit the amount of fiber it could carry.

In order to be able to navigate through obstacles, the robot can lift its middle section containing the fiber systems and rotate. Once the obstacle is passed, it lowers its middle part to continue wrapping. The robot has a vision system to detect obstacles and adjust its movements.

source

Road construction worker

Immersive Job Taste VR apps offer Virtual Internship

by News

Many young people in today’s labor market are out of work, and youth unemployment is a serious problem in many countries. Can virtual reality (VR) help to mitigate this problem? The technology potentially has wider possibilities to engage and be accepted by the youth.

The Virtual Internship project is developing a concept of “Immersive Job Taste”, an interactive VR experience of a workplace that aims to give a feeling of going through an average workday of a professional with elements of basic training. Instead of simply presenting information about jobs and professions, this is directly conveyed by getting the inside experience of being a trainee at a workplace. It is important to note that Immersive Job Taste is different from workplace training as it only provides a ‘peek’ into a certain profession without necessarily covering all the details and specifics.

The main target audiences of the project are young job seekers who can be aided in selecting a career path at school or a welfare center, choosing the first or a new occupation, often after a period of being unemployed.

The catalogue of the Immersive Job Taste apps includes VR experiences of a wind turbine electrician, car mechanic, road construction worker, fishery worker, and tinsmith. Each VR app includes such components as a presentation of a workplace, several typical tasks, feedback on performance, gamification, and advice on applying for jobs in the specific industry.

The project is implemented by a partnership between the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration. The scenarios and the typical workplace tasks for each profession are being developed in collaboration with local industry and professional societies. The virtual internship apps and room-scale VR equipment have been installed and used in a test mode at selected career centers in Norway since 2019.

For more information see:

https://news.media-and-learning.eu/type/featured-articles/vr-facilitating-youth-employment/

https://www.ntnu.edu/imtel/virtual-internship

 

Wind turbine electrician

Wind turbine electrician

Fishery worker

Fishery worker

Road construction worker

Road construction worker

Car mechanics

Car mechanics

A translator protective mask (1)

A translator protective mask

by News

What do you think when hearing about protective masks? Are you thinking that it keeps you safe? Maybe you feel a bit of reserved to live normally… Or they make you choke under the hot summer sun… However, in any case we should comply with the experts’ instructions! Undoubtedly, no one can claim that they provide you with comfort or it’s a humanlike habit…

It’s time to think about them in a different way!

COVID-19 pandemic brought in our lives the use of protective masks. No one was used to wear it in a daily basis, nor they were made for this purpose. The latter explains in a great extent the discomfort that their use bring. Nevertheless, right after the pandemic outburst many companies and researchers are focusing in making them more comfortable or taking advantage of its use in order to make people perceive them as a useful gadget!

A Japanese startup company (Donut Robotics) moved to this direction. More specifically, it has developed a smart mask that via the smartphone’s Bluetooth connection, it instantly translates words spoken in 9 different languages. Mask’s name is C-FACE and is designed and developed to not only protect our health against coronavirus, but it also facilitates communication by simultaneously translating the words spoken by the wearer. In this way, C-Face allows you to make calls, amplify your voice, transcribe the words spoken and translate them into nine different languages: Japanese, Chinese, English, French, Indonesian, Korean, Spanish, Thai and Vietnamese.

Bringing together entrepreneurship and innovation is a matter of thinking out of the box, after all!

Read the full article

newmetro Learning covid19

Learning from the COVID-19 crisis: teaching, learning and technology in a changing world

by News
newmetro Learning covid19

#EUDigitalEducation

Learning from the COVID-19 crisis: teaching, learning and technology in a changing world

The COVID-19 pandemic saw the widespread closure of school and campus buildings in an effort to curb the spread of the virus. More than 100 million learners, educators, education and training staff in Europe and around the world were affected. To ensure that learning, teaching and assessment could continue, digital technologies were used on a massive and unprecedented scale.

In September 2020, the European Commission intends to update its Digital Education Action Plan and work further to promote high quality and inclusive education and training in the digital age. The new Action Plan will be an important part of the Next Generation EU recovery plan, supporting Member States, education and training institutions as well as citizens in their efforts to deal with the digital change.

To ensure that the new Digital Education Action Plan draws lessons from experience during COVID-19 crisis and supports education and training through the long-term digital transformation, the Commission is launching this public consultation. 

Mariya Gabriel, Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, commented:
“Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we witnessed the largest disruption to education and training in Europe’s recent history. 100 million students, teachers and education staff globally have been affected, and many of them have turned to digital education to continue the academic year. For many, this has been the first time they have fully used digital technologies for teaching and learning. With this public consultation, we would like to understand and learn from all these experiences. We are all part of this discussion – let us work together and ensure that the new Digital Education Action Plan paves the way for truly inclusive and high-quality digital education in Europe.”

 

The consultation seeks the views of respondents on the overall impact of the COVID-19-provoked disruption on education and training systems, their expectations until the end of the crisis and in the recovery period. The consultation concludes with a set of questions on respondents’ vision for digital education in Europe.

The questionnaire has become available in all official EU languages by 9 July 2020. The public consultation will be open until 4 September 2020.

 

More information:

About the consultation and link to the questionnaire can be found here:

https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/12453-Digital-Education-Action-Plan/public-consultation

 

About the launch of the pubic consultation

https://ec.europa.eu/education/news/public-consultation-new-digital-education-action-plan_en

 
newmetro Italian Higher Technical

Italian Higher Technical Institutes maintain growth in the employment rate.

by Χωρίς κατηγορία

On July 3rd the ITS System – Higher Technical Institutes – organized the “ITS Day”. In this virtual event, the outcome of ITS were analyzed as a post-diploma training and professionalization path. The ITS System aims to make easier the access to the world of work, thanks to the synergy between companies, stakeholders and educational institutions.

Antonietta Zancan of the Italian Ministry of Education moderated and coordinated the event. Also present were: Lucia Azzolina, Minister of  Education; Marco Bruschi, Head of the Department for the Education and Training System; Maria Assunta Palermo, General Director for MIUR School Regulations; Cristina Grieco, Coordinator IX Commission of the Conference of the Regions; Massimo Esposito, Technical Inspector General Directorate for MIUR School Regulations; Giovanni Brugnoli, Vice President of Confindustria for Human Capital; as well as numerous prominent personalities of the Italian industry.

Among the many topics addressed, data were presented to highlight how ITS maintain continuous growth in the employment rate of their graduates (83% one year after graduation). The fundamental element of the ITS world is the integration between education and work: 70% of teachers come from companies, while internships and traineeships occupy 43% of the study path; classroom lessons are held at 26% in companies’ and research laboratories or laboratories for Industry 4.0 of the ITS. New Metro has the honour of havimg amongst its Associated Partners the Italian Ministry of Education, and practically all of the topics discussed were perfectly in line with the scope of work of the project.

Read the entire article https://bit.ly/2ZILMJR

Italy-is-preparing-to-make-crucial-decisions-to-revive-the-economy

Italy: renewing education is the key to re-start

by News

Italy is preparing to make crucial decisions to revive the economy.

Among the most critical challenges that the Government will have to face is that of embracing the green revolution, sustainability and enhancing the opportunities offered by digital technology.

In this context, the development of human capital is decisive for equipping professionals with skills capable of solving increasingly complex and profoundly different problems than in the past. 

This is what the Dean of LUISS Business School, Paolo Boccardelli, is writing in a recent article. LUISS Business School is one of the top management schools in Europe and, albeit most of the considerations are related to academic education, they also apply very well to lower level of education such as those which the New Metro Project is aimed at.

According to prof. Boccardelli, the training system will have to rest on three pillars:

  • digital skills
  • domain skills
  • transversal skills

The new professions will require more sophisticated skills. It is estimated that in the next twenty years 90% of jobs will require digital skills and that by 2022, worldwide, 75 million jobs will be replaced and 133 million new jobs will arise (in areas such as cybersecurity, big data, sustainability, regulation and privacy).

Quickly investing in the training of digital skills in Italian companies becomes an imperative need to face the significant and widespread digital skills gap.

Also, transversal skills such as emotional intelligence, critical thinking, analytical thinking, problem-solving, ability to un-learn and re-learn, creativity, and orientation towards innovation and entrepreneurship will be increasingly indispensable.

It appears necessary to renew the Italian educational offer in an almost radical way, in terms of content and methods.

La Repubblica – Affari & Finanza, June 29th, 2020

Italian companies - upskilling, re-skilling and hiring trends

Italian Companies: upskilling, re-skilling and hiring trends

by News

In Italy, more than half of the companies offered their employees online courses during the lockdown, with great satisfaction also for the workers who took part in it and who declared they preferred the e-learning methods to the traditional ones, for flexibility and convenience of avoiding travel.

This is what emerged from a survey carried out by Infojobs on 109 companies, mainly SMEs.

The same survey showed that workers want to focus more on upskilling, while companies would like to shift the focus of reskilling training.

Above all in Italy reskilling (i.e. investing in enhancing the potential of people to face better changing scenarios) will be a central trend in 2020, with particular attention to training in the resilience of the workforce, the ability to withstand future and partially changing scenarios unpredictable.

In a survey conducted by Deloitte, Italian companies have declared the top three of the trends for which to invest both in training and in hiring:

In the first place, the desire to learn, flexibility and curiosity: in fact, as many as 68% of Italian companies say that their talent acquisition strategy is concentrated on the selection of “great learners”.

In the second place, the sense of belonging: all companies agree that the creation of a sense of belonging, personal relationships and an organizational culture positively impacts productivity.

In the third place, dealing with the well-being of people in the company: Italian companies believe that it will be crucial to integrate well-being in the way work is designed.

Read more https://bit.ly/3gHNvVG

Public-private apprenticeship the Swiss model

Public-private apprenticeship: the Swiss model

by with No Comment News

One of the major concerns of the Fourth Industrial Revolution is that artificial intelligence and automation – robots – will eliminate jobs, both blue-collar and white-collar roles in various industries.

But robots can never replace life, breathing, human thinking entirely in the workplace. The real challenge of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, therefore, is not robots, but adequate training for humans to carry out the available jobs. Reskilling is one of the primary needs and challenges of our era, and many of these skills cannot be learned in the university classroom.

A new model is needed, and apprenticeship – in which Swiss companies have been committed for a long time – is something that global companies should also consider.

Many Swiss companies have adapted their apprenticeship models to increase their talent pool abroad by offering apprenticeship programs in the United States.

During the National Apprenticeship Week in Washington, DC in November, the Embassy of Switzerland showed how the Swiss-style apprenticeship model can be adapted for various companies and sectors and how it can be useful to people of all ages and backgrounds with principles of lifelong learning.

At the World Economic Forum’s Future of Work Summit in New York, which took place at the same time as the National Apprenticeship Week, companies and leaders examined the scale of the expected changes in the workplace of the future – changes that can only be addressed from public-private partnerships. There is a surplus of educated people who do not yet have the skills to meet the needs of companies, companies with jobs that don’t have qualified candidates. With apprenticeships, the government and the private sector can work together to train and reallocate workers quickly, efficiently, and adequately to fill these gaps, while offering opportunities for smart but underutilized communities.

 

Source: https://bit.ly/2ZMPBN9

Education for future generations the impact of COVID-19

Education for future generations: the impact of COVID-19

by News

What could the long stop due to the crown-virus emergency mean for education?

Stopping could be what the industry needed to rethink how we educate and question what we need to teach and what we are preparing our students for.

Most of the students in educational institutions today come from generation Z, a generation that has grown up in a truly globalized world. This generation (under 25 years) will likely reflect on their education following a truly global pandemic, with many facing cancelled exams, sporting events and even graduation.

This generation is defined by technology and expresses itself through apps such as Messenger, Snapchat and WhatsApp. Still, it is also a generation that sees the power to work collaboratively the way to solve the most significant challenges in the world: climate change and mental greeting are at the top of their list.

Generation Alpha, the children of millennials, is the most racially diverse generation in the world, and one in which technology is simply an extension of its consciousness and identity, with social media as a lifestyle. To date, they are perhaps unaware of the impact of the global pandemic on their education.

The world of education, therefore, wonders what students should prepare for in the future. According to a World Economic Forum report, 65% of elementary school children today will work in types of jobs that don’t exist yet.

Let’s see how education must change to be able to better prepare young students for what the future might hold:

 

  1. Educating citizens in an interconnected world: COVID-19 has confirmed how globally interconnected we are.
  2. Redefine the role of the educator: the role of educators will have to move towards facilitating the development of young people as contributing members of society. Resilience and adaptability will be crucial for the next generations who enter the job.
  3. Teach the necessary life skills for the future: some of the essential skills that employers will seek will be creativity, communication and collaboration, along with empathy and emotional intelligence.
  4. Unlocking technology to offer education: educators around the world are experimenting with new possibilities of doing things differently and with greater flexibility with consequent potential benefits related to access to education for students across the globe.

More importantly, we hope that for Generation Z, Alpha and the generations to come, these experiences of isolation and remote learning away from their peers, teachers and classrooms serve as a cautious reminder of the importance of our human need for social direct interaction.

Source: https://bit.ly/3grKvwo