ADVISORS

aGrisù S.r.l is an innovative start-up and academic spin off of the University of Turin.

Established in 2013 and incubated by 2i3T, a business and technology incubator, it aims to create simple and affordable tools to monitor the absorption by the human body of atmospheric pollutants.

aGrisù originally began the studies in 2011 - thanks to a group of talented PhDs of the medical sciences department (the Founders) - that started to study pulmonary ventilation, cardiovascular physiology and their correlation.

After intensive research, the Founders developed a mathematical algorithm that calculates the specific human absorption of the major environmental pollutants.

In 2012, the first experimental version of “Lacentralina” (our monitoring unit) took shape.

The device included: temperature, humidity, oxygen (O2) sensors and a ZigBee module to show data on a separate dashboard.

In the same year, the Founders began the registration process to get the first international patent of the algorithm (in Europe and in the USA).

In 2013, the development of its native APIs permitted to launch two Android Apps available for free on the Play Store: “airGrisù” and “airGrisù PRO”.

airGrisù provides information about the air quality breathed in the place where the user is located. This highly intuitive and professional App allows to visualize daily information about the pollutants monitored in a pre-selected area.

airGrisù PRO is an advanced version that, in addition to the previous data, also provides the index of atmospheric pollutants absorbed by the Human body in relation to the current activity of the user.

Our philosophy of shared knowledge made the aGrisù app free to download because our philosophy is to promote easy access to information in order to promote a correct behavior in favor of an environmental sustainability.

2014 sees the second and updated version of Lacentralina.

In addition to the temperature and the humidity sensors, the new equipment could monitor atmospheric pressure, human presence, formaldehyde and volatile organic compounds (VOC).

In the same year, studies were conducted to evaluate the relationship between pulmonary ventilation and heart beat rate frequency during physical activity.

During 2015, the team devoted themselves to the development of the environmental monitoring unit, providing changes and improvements to both the algorithm and the sensors’ stability and reliability.

Only one year later, in 2016, the third version of Lacentralina was created.

aGrisù makes both indoor and outdoor monitoring units.

Lacentralina can be now remotely controlled and can detect the presence of 11 specific pollutants, relate them with the human presence, compute and send the data wirelessly, triggering alarms in case of overexposure: both acute and chronic.

The pollutants sensors included are:

- Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC),

- Ammonia (NH3),

- Carbon Monoxide (CO),

- Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2),

- Ethanol (C2H5OH),

- Hydrogen (H2),

- Ozone (O3),

- Particulates (PM2.5-PM5-PM10),

- Carbon Dioxide (CO2),

- Nitric Oxide (NOX)

- Sulphur Dioxide (SO2).

Furthermore, the environmental sensors added are able to provide information about seismic activity, motion of the unit, environmental light and noise, temperature and humidity, atmospheric pressure, altitude of placement and UV radiation.

Lacentralina 3-16-I and 3-16-O were included in BiosPHera 2.0 project, a big project of scientific and technologic research and environmental monitoring coordinated by the Polytechnic University of Turin, Aktivhaus and the University of Valle d’Aosta.

aGrisù S.r.l. participated to this project installing two monitoring units into an itinerant home to control both environments: indoor and outdoor.

At the beginning of 2017, aGrisù has completed Lacentralina 4-17-1 creating an industrial version with reduced dimensions and a new hard case.

This new unit can monitor indoor environments and detect the presence of specific pollutants like Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC), Ammonia (NH3), Carbon Monoxide (CO), Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2), Ozone (O3), Particulates (PM2.5-PM10) and Carbon Dioxide (CO2).

The involvement of aGrisù in BiosPHera 2.0 and the participation to numerous public research calls have brought great visibility and many awards and recognitions. Today, we cooperate with leading companies worldwide specialized in home automation, energetic and alert systems in the industrial and domestic field.

Now, aGrisù is keeping on developing ideas and projects following the same philosophy: to increase awareness in people through a shared knowledge.

Curiosity: what does aGrisù mean? Grisù is the italian word to indicate firedamp. Firedamp is the flammable gas found in coal mines. Hystorically it was the first ambient gas monitored due to its danger.

To monitor firedamp a little bird in a cage was used. When the bird stopped singing the miners had to get out of the mine.

So the bird was the first ever monitoring unit used.

The "a" in front of the Grisù word has a privative value.

Curiosity 2: Grisù is also the title of an animated television series character. It was created by brothers Nino and Toni Pagot (best known as the creators of Calimero – another famous cartoon’s character). It first appeared in a 1964 black-and-white animated series of commercial shorts, part of the television program Carosello.

The character also named a series of books for children. The protagonist of the series is a young dragon named Grisù that, despite being the youngest of a large breed of dragons, the Draconis, dreams of becoming a firefighter.