The workshop Mechatronics meets Heritage Conservation Science, 27th June 2017 at UVIC-UCC during International Workshop on Higher Education,  was really interesting, with catching oral presentations and different demostrations “in vivo” of some mechatronics devices. You can see the oral presentations and demostrations here.

Book of abstracts IWHE2017 Mechatronics meets Heritage Conservation Science

Science and technology applied to Cultural Heritage experienced a progressive advance during the last decades with a subsequent growing of the interest in analytical devices employed for the characterization of a wide range of materials, decay processes or conservation treatments. Nonetheless, such a kind of approach largely depends on the availability of funding to acquire high-tech devices. Usually, most of the latter are not intended for artworks diagnostic and or monitoring, thus implying additional costs for calibration and training purposes. Software copyright and hardware restrictions typical of industrial-oriented devices, concur in affecting an economically sustainable approach to technology.

On the other hand, the recent proliferation of open-source, user-friendly and low-cost hardware and software, as well as the enhancing of digital accessibility to knowledge and expertise, has increased the flexibility and capabilities in design and production of analytical devices. An innovative bottom-up approach to technology is facilitating the worldwide diffusion of the “maker culture”, with proliferation of hacker-spaces and fab-labs also within the academic environment. The recent advances in user-friendly, open and low-cost software and hardware are increasing the number of technologies based on the ‘knowledge sharing’ concept, allowing users to develop their own apparatus devoted to a multiple of purposes.

The aim of this workshop was twofold:

• getting the interest of Cultural Heritage professionals, operators and administrators on the opportunities that sustainable technology could offer to overcome economic obstacles,
• promote alternative technological solutions whose reliability is often underestimated, or simply unknown; expose to mechatronics professors, researchers, students and professionals, the field of science and technology applied to Cultural Heritage as a potentially receptive context, so to propose them to design and prototyping innovative solutions.

Photo Gallery of Mechatronics meets Heritage Conservation Science Worksop on 27th June 2017