News

POLITECNICO di TORINO - SALA CONSIGLIO DI FACOLTA'
"Micro e Nanotecnologie: spunti di collaborazione POLITO – CSHR IIT@POLITO"

Il settore delle micro e nanotecnologie riveste oggi, e ancor più in futuro, un' importanza strategica per la ricerca di base e per l’innovazione tecnologica in campo industriale a tal punto che la Comunità Europea ha promosso il settore al rango di Key Enabling Technology.
Il Politecnio di Torino e l’Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia hanno da anni investito nel settore attraverso i Laboratori di Materials and Processes for
Micro and Nanotecnologies (M&P4MN) e attraverso il Center for Space Human Robotics.
Il workshop si prefigge lo scopo di far incontrare alcuni gruppi operanti nel settore delle micro e nanotecnologie nell’ambito della collaborazione tra il Politecnico e il Centro IIT@POLITO e di poter far nascere spunti per futuri progetti e collaborazioni.
In particolare l’incontro si configura anche come un momento di riflessione nell’ottica di un potenziamento delle infrastruture dell’Ateneo e di IIT@POLITO per poter meglio cogliere le sfide sempre più cruciali della ricerca nel prossimo futuro.

Programma

Monday, 8th April 2013

At 11:00 a.m. Ground floor, meeting room - CSHR (IIT), Corso Trento 21, 10129 Torino

Martian Terrain Traversability Analysis from Orbital Imagery

The Mars Science Laboratory mission is the first to take into account terrain traversability during the landing site selection phase.  The HiRISE camera installedon the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter provides images of extraordinary resolution and clarity.

Applying machine vision techniques on these images made it possible to quantify the difficulty of moving a rover on the Martian surface and compute traversability maps.

These maps have been used to compare the landing sites candidates by simulating the entire surface mission and determine which ones met the success criteria established by the project.

Once the Gale Crater Landins site has been chosen, traversability maps have been used to refine the landing ellipse position and are currently used to define strategic paths between science targets.

At 06:30 p.m. Sala Consiglio di Facoltà - Politecnico di Torino, Corso Duca Degli Abruzzi, 24, 10129 Torino

Dove le strade non hanno nome

Al momento attuale Marte è un mondo insopitale sia per esseri umani che per un robot.  Lo scorso Agosto il Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity è sbarcato a Gale Crater. Come è stato possibile costruire, spedire e gestire un rover di una tonnellata in un posto così lontano? Quali sono le difficoltà a muovere e gestire questa missione? Come pianifichiamo le attività giornaliere? Come è possibile mantenere i contatti con il rover? 

Paolo Bellutta 

He has been a member for the past thirteen years of the Computer Vision group at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He has developed several vision systems for ground vehicles and is part of the team of rover drivers for the Mars Exploration Rovers and Mars Science Laboratory. He has done extensive analysis of Martian terrain as applied to rover mobility and was part of the MSL landing site selection team.

Friday, 1st March 2013 at 2:30 p.m.

CSHR Seminar - Mesoporous Nanostructures for Energy Conversion and Storage

Prof. Thomas Bein, Department of Chemistry, University of Munich

CSHR - Corso Trento 21, 10129 Torino – Ground floor, meeting room

Videoconferencing available

"In our research program we strive to achieve synthetic control over the creation of functional nanostructures and investigate their physical properties. Periodic porous materials such as zeolites, templated mesoporous materials or metalorganic frameworks offer a multitude of opportunities to create such nanostructures. This is based on their compositional and topological diversity, the well-defined dimensions of their nanoscale pore systems, and the great variety of possible interface design within the pore system and on the external surface.
We have recently developed a highly flexible new preparation strategy for the formation of various titania nano-morphologies, based on fusing preformed ultrasmall titania nanocrystals with surfactant-templated sol-gel titania acting as a structure-directing matrix and as a chemical glue. In this "brick & mortar" approach, the “mortar” acts as a reactive precursor for the further growth of the crystalline phase seeded by the nanocrystalline “bricks”. This synergy leads to a significantly lowered temperature needed for crystallization and the preservation of the mesoporous structure. It also allows us to build various hierarchical structures such as titania inverse opals penetrated by titania mesopores, because we can significantly reduce shrinkage effects. Coatings with a broad variety of periodic mesostructures can be tuned by varying the surfactant and the fraction of the “bricks”, and thicknesses ranging from a few nanometers to several micrometers are accessible. These mesostructured and crystalline films are being employed as active layers in thin dye-sensitized solar cells exhibiting high conversion efficiency due to short diffusion paths. We also investigate additional sensitizing approaches such as extremely thin absorber layers (ETA) and alternative solid hole conductors. Moreover, we find that the ultrathin crystalline walls of the mesoporous brick & mortar titania feature extremely fast lithium insertion kinetics." (http://bein.cup.uni-muenchen.de/)