Rapid Prototyping

We help our partners create early prototypes of technology to enable technical verification and quick decision making. Rapid prototyping services at AICOS include software and hardware, as shown below:

 

/3D Printing

AICOS’ Digital Fabrication Lab is the bridge that allows filling the gap between ideation and production of small series. Relying on state of the art machinery and on a skilful and competent workforce with competence in Human-Centred Design, we can offer a complete service to enhance ideas and make them tangible. Ready for use at our Digital Fabrication Lab are state of the art 3D printing machines offering several different techniques that can guarantee both the manufacture of detailed parts to test pre-production, with layer thickness starting at 32 micrometres, as well as the more traditional fused deposition models that create plastic parts to rapidly test and iterate evolving ideas. Our Digital Fabrication Lab also features other machines to enhance or build prototypes using silicone moulds, polymer injected parts for small series and thermoforming vacuum machines to offer a wider range of possibilities.

Lab equipment:

> ProJet 2500 Plus Form 2

> Ultimaker 3 Extended

> Formech 450 DT

> Vacuum chamber for silicone moulding

> Benchtop injection moulding machine

 

/Applications

Application prototyping enables concept or assumption validation without spending valuable development time in a actual product.  At AICOS we have the capability of working in prototypes focusing on Design and/or Functionality: Design prototypes help to understand user interactions and how information is displayed within an application; Functional prototypes aim to perform early validation of technical requirements to prevent additional issues in later stages of development. We have the know-how to work in several different technical fields enabling us to provide full-stack support, ranging from Mobile and Web Applications to Back-end solutions.

 

/Electronics

Making use of a proprietary hardware development ecosystem, AICOS’ rapid prototyping service eases the creation of sensing electronics to measure different phenomena. By doing so, we can easily understand if movement, environment, or spectral data is meaningful in order to realize a certain event. Additionally, our competence in electronics design and embedded development, together with state-of-the-art lab infrastructures, allows us to create, assemble, and test electronic devices designed to meet specific purposes.

Therefore, we can assist our partners realizing new ideas or creating small series for proofs of concept, which can be later used for usability tests, assumption validation or to further explore business models. Furthermore, AICOS’ know-how in certification, pre-compliance, and supply chain enables us to help our partners establish scalable production runs, smoothing the transition between prototyping and production phases.

 

/Machine Learning

AICOS is continuously working on software components for data acquisition, feature extraction and machine-learning classification. These modules can easily be connected and represent the building blocks of our machine learning pipelines. By being highly flexible and customizable, they allow rapid testing of different machine learning strategies, in order to build classification models tailored to meet our clients’ needs. 

 

/Networks

AICOS’ networking rapid prototyping service is based on the WiBACK technology. It is built with low-cost, off-the-shelf hardware, integrating WiFi, Bluetooth Low Energy, and GPS interfaces. Added to that, the latest WiBACK node can be powered directly from the power grid or through solar energy. These features, added to WiBACK’s self-configuring and self-managing features, allow for fast deployment in a wide range of scenarios (i.e., rural and urban) aiming at different applications (e.g., digital farming, industry 4.0, ICT for development). Given its flexibility, AICOS is able to further extend the WiBACK solution, providing fast prototyping services upon our customer’s specific needs and requirements for networks and communication.

 

For any additional information, please contact us using the inquiries form.