Of high-tech companies, and fablab potential in Trivandrum
Last month I visited Trivandrum for the Swatantra17 Conference. I already wrote about that event, but I saw more in Trivandrum.
High-tech, dynamic, companies…
The puzzled guy in the picture above is me in the offices of Tachlog, trying some Virtual Reality games and other applications by TiltLabs. That same day, I also visited the offices of Livares.
I had a great time with all those people. Personally, what I liked best in each company was:
- Livares: their use of Free/Open Source Software to get a “distinct competitive advantage over many of their competitors”
- Tachlog: how they are using Open Hardware in irrigation and other embedded systems applications
- TiltLabs: their Mobile Games and Virtual/Augmented Reality projects
but they all do much more, as you can see by yourself on their websites.
and a Fablab with a great potential
Before leaving Trivandrum, I walked by pure chance into the office of FabLab Kerala, inside the Trivandrum Technopark. After all my work in the Digital DIY project, I couldn’t I miss such an occasion to have an idea of the current “Maker’s landscape” in Kerala.
The Fablab works on too many great things to report them all here, so let me just focus on a couple of things. One is the support they provide, on demand, to local hospitals:
That picture (higher resolution version here) shows an actual size 3D-printed model, made straight out of a tomography, of the real skull of some child affected by some serious bone cancer. By looking at that model, surgeons were able to prepare, before operating, and without any guesswork or hurry, a much better prothesis than what they could have done otherwise.
During my visit, I also learned that the machines of that FabLab, all available for booking, are not utilised as much as they could.
Put together this fact with the picture of that skull model, and what do we get? A confirmation of the question I asked a few weeks ago: wouldn’t it be great if fablabs, in India or anywhere else, were helped to use ALL their spare capacity to produce what poor or sick people need?
Who writes this, why, and how to help
I am Marco Fioretti, tech writer and aspiring polymath doing human-digital research and popularization.
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