Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SmartPatch (Use of a cost effective smart skin sensor system for remote Structural Health Monitoring and post event structural damage assessment in Soft Urban Targets and Critical Infrastructures Protection)
Reporting period: 2014-07-01 to 2014-12-31
Remote and real time Structural Health Monitoring is able to play major role in Soft Urban Targets and Critical Infrastructures Protection, both in prevention of structural failure and, in case of extraordinary events so as explosions or earthquakes, in Post Event Damage Assessment.
But to date efficient Structural Health Monitoring Systems are most often very cost intensive custom installation and therefore reserved to highly selected targets.
Our objective is to make Structural Health Monitoring more affordable and so to increase the number of monitored infrastructures in an exponential way. Therefore we are to finalize the development of our Smart Skin Sensor System: a low cost structural integrity surveillance solution, which is easy to implement at any life stage of a construction and surveys four main parameters (strain, temperature, tilt and seismic activity) but is also open to external sensors integration.
But to date efficient Structural Health Monitoring Systems are most often very cost intensive custom installation and therefore reserved to highly selected targets.
Our objective is to make Structural Health Monitoring more affordable and so to increase the number of monitored infrastructures in an exponential way. Therefore we are to finalize the development of our Smart Skin Sensor System: a low cost structural integrity surveillance solution, which is easy to implement at any life stage of a construction and surveys four main parameters (strain, temperature, tilt and seismic activity) but is also open to external sensors integration.
Over the last 6 month our project SmartPatch sensor system has accelerated development in a very impressive way. Thanks to the SME Instrument Phase 1 Grant we had the possibility not only to deepen technical aspects, so as GUI software design and Mesh Network functionality, but also to develop an detailed business plan, including risk management and financial need analysis. We did win the Business Plan competition “StartCup Piemonte e Valle d’Aosta 2014” (the regional business plan competition) and did also win the National Price for Innovation 2014 (Category Industrial).
Thanks to the promotion coming from these prices and, more importantly, from being funded under Horizon 2020, we do receive very strong interest from both industry regarding our product (for pilot installations followed by regular installations) and investors regarding our project and are moving strongly ahead to finalizing first agreements.