IP Smart

Professor André Conti Silva from Feevale University participated in IP Smart 2019 - Smart Products and Product Development. The two-week intensive course took place at the Riihimäki Campus at Häme University of Applied Sciences (HAMK), Finland, between the end of January and the beginning of February. The course was taught in English by professors from HAMK partner universities for groups of engineering students of the Finnish institution with the participation of a Russian exchange student.

The program aims technology development and this year Conti was invited to lead the creative process of students with Design Thinking sessions. In the end, they will develop robots to participate in the Amazing Robotic competition, organized by the Finnish Society of Electronics and Information Technology. "The participating teams will present their work at an open exhibition in Helsinki in November and the winning team will get a prize of € 10,000," explains the professor.

According to Conti, the classes were divided in technical - specific subjects of engineering, taught by Finnish and German teachers - and the preparation of the project with Design Thinking classes, taught by the professor from Feevale. "It was two weeks of creation and electronic projects development happening at the same time. At the end of them, the students presented their project views and the large group discussed them. So, they will develop their projects and will present their prototypes next April in Germany. There, there will be the second stage of IP Smart, with the objective of consolidating the projects into final products, which will be taken to the final event of Amazing Robotics in Finland.

According to Conti, the classes were called design of "project sessions". "This is because we always made an opening with the explanation of theoretical aspects of design and then we used tools and processes to project each step of the robots. It was very interesting to realize that students understood the Design Thinking project model quite quickly once it is guided by the challenge and collaboration, the same concept of Finnish teaching methods and of what we have been practicing in the design courses of Feevale, "he says.

Seeking for new joint projects

Professor Conti visited the HAMK Campus in Hämeenlinna with the goal of finding ways of approximation between our researches and the companies from Brazil and Finland. "The idea is gradually to find projects of the companies so that they can be developed in partnership with the universities, taking advantage of the expertise of professors and the infrastructure of laboratories. This would make easier the transit of technologies and business not only between companies and universities, but internationally between Finland and Brazil, "Conti adds.

About Smart IP 

IP Smart -  Smart Products and Products Development consists of a two-week intensive course that aims to develop products with differentiated and intelligent design. It is taught in English by teachers from different countries to teams formed by students from different countries too. After this stage, distance meetings are held to continue the projects proposed by the teams. Feevale University has been participating in IP Smart since 2013 at HAMK University.