Author: Daði Áslaugarson, Head of IT for Strætó Iceland and Use case leader of UC-1 in Energy ECS
The DroneZones project, or UC-1 of the Energy ECS consortium, is complicated with many hardware and software components being developed by several partners spread across Europe. While development has been progressing well and online meetings have been fruitful, meeting in person with all the components in a well-equipped lab is a gamechanger. Key component developers met in Politecnico di Torino for three beautiful days in June to start integration testing and to experience how the components affect each other in real environment, such as sensor interference with the 3 different types of precision sensors, and the total Energy harvesting environment from the novel shingled PV cells to battery.
Needless to say, the work done in and out of the excellent Politecnico Lab proved to be worth the time. Successful integration of PV and external electronics, charging the battery, and combined sensor data collection gave the group a boost of confidence and laid the grounds for the next phases of each individual task. But the extra something that comes out of meeting in person was at least as valuable as the actual integration and testing. Many of the participants attending had not met earlier except online, so working together side by side for three days, having dinner together and the “mandatory” social event one of the evenings changed the dynamics of the group, that had already been cooperating for whole two years. The result is a closer collaboration of peers that know and understand each other on another level than is possible with online meetings. The project profits greatly from this as well as the participating individuals and companies / institutions as personal networking creates real connections between people that not might, but will result in more cooperation in the future, both for this consortium and for other endeavors down the road.
To conclude, I’d like to quote our amazing hosts from Politecnico di Turin, Marcello, Marco, and Gianluca: “Staying in the same place at the same time with different knowledge and skills is a kind of “mantra” for the PIC4SeR Centre as we work on interdisciplinary systems and technologies.
We were so happy the have all of you here together being convinced that was the right idea and occasion to “push” forward the integration and part of the project as always happen when we work together with passion and competence.
We hope to see all you back here for the next steps.”
All in all, an extremely successful workshop, and to be repeated at least twice in the last year of the official Consortium time period.
Learn more about Politecnico di Torino Lab
