Aerodrums

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Company info:

Name: Aerodrums
Date founded: 2011
Number of employees: 5
Location: Liverpool
We aim to democratise access to musical percussion instruments by making air drumming a reality.
aerodrums.com

Partners:

Innovation Management Partner:

Making a self-contained air drumming instrument

Challenge

We were able to bootstrap Aerodrums using readily available hardware, but this meant requiring users of our first model to own and operate a computer. The challenge is to enable people to set up and drum without a computer.

Solution

Our solution is to create an embedded IoT instrument that people can use with a mobile phone, tablet or virtual reality headset. This means solving the problem of doing high speed real time motion tracking and low latency audio rendering on an affordable IoT hardware platform. No one has tried to do this before – we are the first mover and leader in optically tracked percussion instruments.

FED4SAE Support

FED4SAE enabled us to further a collaboration with Intel; receive support from BME’s Department of Electron Devices; receive advice on the management of innovation from Blumorpho; and fund R&D. Using Intel’s Myriad 2 platform, we were able to finalise a proof of concept. We then moved on to a design-to-cost phase and completed a pre-production prototype. BME assisted us with advice on heat dissipation for LED arrays, and with characterising the behaviour of the prototype under different temperature and humidity conditions. Blumorpho helped us overcome unforeseen supply difficulties in the course of the project.

Impact

The project enabled us to de-risk the introduction of the next Aerodrums model to market, as well as reducing its cost to end users. This is key to our ambition to democratise access to percussion instruments. These fall in a category of goods that is currently difficult to use in dense housing, expensive and whose manufacturing is demanding on the environment.

When we launch the product we will be able to activate a key part of our business model, which is to offer digital goods to users of the instrument. These will include music lessons, new sounds, new instrument configurations, visual 3D “skins” and play along songs.

The above combined with the higher attractiveness to end users of a self contained instrument will allow our company to grow.

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AI VLIT

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Company info:

Name: Artomatix
Date founded: 2012
Number of employees: 26
Location: Dublin Ireland

Artomatix is an award winning software company that uses Artificial Intelligence to transform 3D artistic workflows in top creative arts studios worldwide.

artomatix.com

Partners:

Innovation Management Partner:

Artificial Intelligence based algorithm for image quality enhancement

Challenge

Streaming Video Content accounted for 63% of Internet Traffic as of 2017 and future traffic volumes forecast significant increase as a result of more internet users, more smart devices along with the demand for higher resolution content from HD to 4K or 8K UHD. The challenge of the project was to deliver high quality video experience to the user by increasing the compression and decreasing the resolution of the source stream. This will have the potential to massively reduce global internet traffic, improving the user experience and benefitting the World at large.

Solution

Artomatix goal was to develop a more efficient method to deliver high-resolution content to the user while minimising the network traffic and associated infrastructure costs. So the challenge was to enable data to be transmitted / broadcast at a low resolution and then upscaled and enhanced in real-time on the user’s device by applying “AI at the edge” to deliver that compelling user experience.

By exploiting the capabilities offered by new AI approaches and applying CNNs to image upscaling, Artomatix was able to develope an efficient high-quality hardware independent upscaling engine which can be licensed to and exploited by multiple platforms such as the TheoPlayer™ multi-platform players.

FED4SAE Support

FED4SAE has enabled Artomatix to further a collaboration with Intel; receive support from CEA and receive advice on the management of innovation and the got-to-market strategy from Blumorpho.

Artomatix have built a stripped-down version of its image-enhancement NN making it compatible with resource-limited hardware such as the Intel ® Movidius™ Myriad VPU in the Intel Neural Compute Stick hardware with almost unperceivable quality loss. Thanks to the collaboration with CEA, Artomatix is now operating an industry-standard-based image and video compression testbench for enhanced-images quality assessment and NN training.

Impact

Artomatix have investigated the impact of applying Artificial intelligence approaches to enable high quality video upscaling images from 720K to HD 1024K and above. They have identified and validated the best approaches and compared these results to existing upscaling approaches using SSIM etc. They have applied and validated these approaches in a number of domains from Gaming (synthetic images), cartoons to static images used in web content (furniture).

In 2020 Artomatix is now part of the Artomatix is now part of the Unity family (€60m acquisition) who have committed to growing the investment resulting in significant and headcount growth in Europe.

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AIRTech

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Company info:

Name: OTA Analytics
Date founded: 2015
Number of employees: 7
Location: Devon, UK

OTA Analytics provide real-time logging and analytics services to enable urban drainage systems to be monitored, maintained, valued and controlled.

www.overtheairanalytics.com

Partners:

Innovation Management Partner:

Artificially Intelligent Rainwater Management Technology

Challenge

In our busy urban settings, frequently, there is either too much or too little water. With changes in our climate, growing urban populations and increased hard surfaces in our cities, we have seen a significant increase in the risk of flooding and sewer spills. Furthermore, ever increasing pressure on water resources and challenges of potable water availability require rapid implementation of water efficiency measures in cities on every continent. Innovative cyber physical technologies are required in order to resolve two of the World’s most costly challenges of our time.

Solution

Rainwater management systems are dual-purpose solutions; providing water efficiency benefits as well as stormwater management services with associated monetary, energy and carbon cost savings for both consumers and utilities. OTA utilised state of the art IoT technologies, which incorporate Predictive Analytics & Artificial Intelligence (AI) with the latest water management and engineering practices. Our vision was to deliver systems that are low-cost, reliable and scalable across global markets. Such systems bring multiple benefits and target a nexus of the challenges facing the water management sector. They provide an ability to capture, store, reuse and release rainwater incident on individual properties and by doing so improve the potable water supply-demand balance and reduce the likelihood of stormwater related flooding and pollution.

FED4SAE Support

In this experiment, we developed a robust, scalable hardware/software system incorporating STM32 platform with Murata’s LoraWAN module into OTA’s middleware, deployed it for testing and validation in the SmartCity Santander testbed as well as case studies in South West England, and used the subsequent data to develop and refine our innovative AI-based control algorithms, in a real-world setting. This was indeed a great success both on the hardware side where prototype systems have been running for over a year successfully, and also the system operation, with optimum operation of tank storage management.

With the business development support from Blumorpho and the Digital Catapult, this experiment has helped us accelerating our solution to market in the EU, building relationship with other suppliers and potential clients, where we can enter as a first mover and realise a significant market share.

Impact

When implemented at scale, our system can help mitigate flooding and sewer spills at some of the most challenging catchments and areas, resulting in significant saving (economic, energy and carbon) alongside climate change adaptation and mitigation. Meanwhile, each system can help reduce demand on dwindling potable water supplies. The market size for both flood mitigation as well as water use efficiency is significant, and the solution can be adapted for application across arid, and wet climates.

Achievements

Beta tested complete solution successfully on Isles of Scilly.
New deployment scheduled for Anglian Water.
Company was acquired by SDS Holdings in early 2020.

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BETP

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Company info:

Name: Kalmia d.o.o.
Date founded: 2016
Number of employees: 15
Location: Škofja Loka, Slovenia

Team of experienced software brewers gathered together with an aim to build innovative web and mobile apps for our awesome clients: choose the best technologies, build a product, design software architecture and great user experience.

https://kalmia.si/

Partners:

Innovation Management Partner:

BETP: Blockchain Enabled Traceability Platform

Challenge

As automotive industry is moving towards digitalization various vendors and their suppliers are looking for new ways to manipulate existing processes. New digitalization approaches will influence development and manufacturing of new vehicles in many areas including traceability.

Kalmia aims to prepare a model of standalone API driven blockchain platform that is ready to integrate with future third-party business applications within various industries providing a functionality of storing, manipulating and evaluating data on the blockchain in order to provide traceability

Solution

Most of current blockchain based solutions request extensive knowledge of distributed ledger technologies by the developers and integrators to deploy applications on the top of them.

Kalmia is developing a platform that hide all the blockchain complexity and is to be blockchain agnostic. Kalmia goal is to offer solution on the top of the state-of-the-art technology and bring it closer to the industry..

FED4SAE Support

Through fruitful and constructive exchanges, AVL and fortiss brought technical support and expertise regarding:

  • IODP platform features and industrial customer needs (AVL)
  • The added value BETP will bring to AVL IODP platform (AVL & fortiss)
  • The technical aspect of the BETP, (AVL & fortiss)
  • Detailed discussion of BETP architecture (fortiss)
  • Contact with potential customers in Bavaria (fortiss)

Blumorpho supported Kalmia broader business model around BETP.

FED4SAE ecosystem has helped to evaluate the true value of BETP solution, offered the opportunity of BETP product first public presentation and will continue helping with further development.

Impact

Strong impact on Kalmia future development is based by providing a stand-alone solution viable for the market. The cooperation with AVL (an industrial platform provider) has accelerated the product development and (especially) business development by providing better understanding and access to the automotive market.
This will work as a strong reference for gaining new customers inside other industries and will result in increasing our revenues and global customer base. Our blockchain and industrial digitalisation expertise is planned to provide 30% year-to-year revenue growth in next 5 years.

BETTAIR

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Company info:

Name: Bettair Cities SL
Date founded: 2017
Number of employees: 7
Location: Can Roses 45 Cornella de Llobregat 08940 Barcelona, Spain.

www.bettaircities.com

Partners:

Innovation Management Partner:

Mapping Urban Air Quality In High Resolution

Challenge

Air pollution in cities is an EU and Global challenge that most developed and developing countries are facing. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), ambient air pollution kills over 4 million people every year, largely in cities. It is an invisible killer, and the problem is increasing due to unprecedented population growth in cities.

Solution

Bettair® is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) that permits, for the first time, to map air and noise pollution in cities on a previously unimaginable scale based on a large deployment of outstandingly accurate gas sensors by using an advanced post-processing algorithm.

The information provided by the bettair® platform allows cities to implement appropriate urban plans to enhance the air quality and to make smart and better decisions to mitigate air pollution. The bettair® nodes are composed count with up to 6 electrochemical sensors to measure gases, an Optical Particle Counter to measure PMs, noise pollution sensor, and other ambient quality indicators. A complete front and back-end solution is provided to municipalities and an APP for the citizens.

Our platform (which is a complementary network to traditional air quality monitoring equipment) will perfectly assist cities to i) identify unknown air or noise pollution sources, ii) to assess the impact and effects of different environmental actions to identify the most effective ones, and iii) recommend specific local actions.

FED4SAE Support

With the support of FED4SAE, we will migrate the current MCU solution used to an STM32 processor family taking advantage of the features offered by this processor family: high performance, real-time capabilities, digital signal processing, and low-power operation while maintaining full integration and ease of development. Additionally, a LoRaWAN module will be integrated into the Bettair® static node. The new devices have been tested in London (with support from Digital Catapult) and in Cantabria (with support from the University of Cantabria).

Achievements

Thanks to the execution of the Application Experiment in FED4SAE, Bettair® nodes hardware has been updated with a new STM32 processor, drastically reducing the power consumption of the node, while enabling new features, including the integration of LPWAN (Low Power Wide Area Network) technologies, such as LoRaWAN.
In this regard, LoRaWAN has not only been implemented, but also extensively tested in real-world scenarios, including the Smart City SmartSantander testbed in Santander (Cantabria), and the DigitalCatapult laboratory testbed, where extensive power consumption tests have been carried out. It is also worth mentioning that, during this time, the company has been awarded with the ship2be label as a company with social and environmental impact, thanks to a growing and more specialized team

Impact

Bettair® platform will permit cities to mitigate air pollution and the benefits of our technology will have a tremendous impact on environmental and societal issues. Air pollution affects vegetation, the quality of water and soil, and the ecosystem services that they support.

In addition, several air pollutants are also climate forcers, which have a potential impact on the planet’s climate and global warming in the short term (i.e. decades). In terms of human health and society, the direct benefits of improving quality of life are remarkable considering that air pollution is the single largest environmental health risk in Europe.

With Bettair® the most cost-effective local actions can be identified to efficiently reduce pollution; studies have shown pollution can be reduced up to 30% or more in cities with just local actions.

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C2MicroCar

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Company info:

Name: Kineton SRL

Partners:

Innovation Management Partner:

C2MicroCar

Cadix

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Company info:

Name: Wegoto
Date founded: 2015
Number of employees: 3
Location: Montbonnot St-Martin (France)

Wegoto develops solutions to capture geographic data in the field & connect geographic information systems (GIS) to a multimodal mobility platform, for real time data update and dissemination.

http://www.wegoto.eu/

Partners:

Innovation Management Partner:

Real-Time 3D scanning system for Accessibility diagnosis
in urban environments

Challenge

Digital 3D city maps are useful for many applications, for instance, urban planning, emergency response simulation, virtual tourism and illustration of historical buildings, route planning, accessibility analysis for different types of mobility and profiles. Basically, different types of maps can be created, depending on the application requirements. The main acquisition techniques that can be found in the literature are either highly time consuming (with many manual post-treatment to build the 3D map) or they are highly computational demanding (with off-line treatment of the raw data and large memory storage) while the spatial resolution might be not sufficient for the targeted application.
Thanks to the project CADIX, Wegoto developped an integrated system that complements today Wegoto LabTrack, a trolley designed to collect data in pathways to later perform accessibility analysis and route planning for people with different profiles and (dis)abilities in the context of soft mobility.

Solution

CADIX captures at low cost 3D data from different range sensors. These data are fused in real-time, leading to a compact source of 3D information. The LabTrack-CADIX solution is a hybrid measurement system with cameras, telemeters, Time-of-Flight sensors, LiDAR together with GPS localisation of the obstacles present in the pathway. This LabTrack-CADIX solution extends the current database with “safety cocoon” information, i.e. information regarding a safe volume defined around the LabTrack.

FED4SAE Support

Wegoto business model is based on collecting and disseminating urban geographic data. FED4SAE allows Wegoto to access CEA support to revisit the architecture (hardware and software) of the LabTrack, taking into account sensor characteristics, computing and memory needs and ease the integration of an encoded wheel that triggers data acquisition every time the LabTrack travels 1m. Thanks to CEA expertise, CADIX firmware was developed using ROS (Robot Operating System) and integrating SigmaFusion™ to fuse data in 3D from the different range sensing technologies, i.e. LiDAR, stereo camera and Time-of-Flight sensors (from STM) acquired through a STM32 platform, provided to the project by STM. Tests have been conducted with the prototype in laboratory environment and in CEA “mini smart village” that mimics a (simplified) urban environment with poles, parking barrier, traffic signs, buildings, pedestrian pathway. Then, the LabTrack-CADIX system will be validated tests in real-life environments.

Impact

Wegoto is currently accelerating its development and in search for financing to sustain its business roadmap. Wegoto will continue to invest in R&D activities to improve the LabtTrack by with another range sensing technology, able to offer the same measurement precision, but with a smaller range (a few meters is enough), and at low cost, accelerate and increase its data collection speed. The CADIX project is fully part of Wegoto corporate strategy and complementary to future envisaged projects, in particular in the field of imaging.

Videos

ECO-Smart Homes

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Company info:

Name: Check BnB, S.L.
Date founded: 2018
Number of employees: 3
Location: C/ La Gitanilla, Nave 1, 29004, Málaga, Spain

www.checkbnb.com

Partners:

Innovation Management Partner:

Saving Energy and reducing Energy waste for Eco Smart Short rental Holidays Home

Challenge

The users of a holiday rental property enjoy an “all included” business model. Under this system, human behaviour is often unconservative, generating a waste of resources that would otherwise be precious, relative to the cost of energy or water, and thus increasing the carbon footprint and the owner spending. This sector consists of 97 million beds in the world, accounting for 25% of the global hotel supply, and continues to grow increasing the problem and leading to accelerating the climate change.

Solution

Through a measurement system based in energy consumption sensors, a predictive algorithm and smartphone app, a recommended energy consumption budget is generated for the duration of the whole stay, according to the number and age of the tenants, as well as the weather forecast. This budget is made available to the tenants and homeowners in a challenge or gaming mode, so that they can meet expectations on a daily basis, generating alarms and educational tips as well as gratifications and compliments, depending on their behaviour with respect to the estimated budget.

The energy consumption is monitored in real time and can be analysed by all users through the app. The immediate result of this supervision is a greater interest in not squandering. Once the challenge is over, the users will receive a financial bonus if they have fulfilled it, which they will be able to recover or donate to an NGO, as well as keep a good-behaviour score.

The app shall also solve other issues and situations related to holiday rental, providing the tenants with a greater comfort and a better and more professional service by the owner.

FED4SAE Support

With the support of FED4SAE we have been able to partially finance the development of the app, the measurement hardware and the kick-off of a pilot project with 10 houses in the city of Santander. At the same time, the partners of the project have provided technical and economic support, and they have opened the possibility for investors to implement this app as a standard for Eco Smart Holiday Homes.

Achievements

By using STMicroelectronics technology and support, EnergyCcM has been able to create a functional device, known as CcMaster, fulfilling all the requirements. This prototype has been certified by Telefonica, which is one of their partners, and is currently being commercialized in a different context as monitoring system for energy systems.

On the other hand, CheckBnB have developed an integrated mobile application to deliver their green “energy budget” vision to the holiday rental market, includes additional functionality to help P2P accommodation and deliver real-time location-based context information to guests, taking advantage of the Smart City and IoT domain know-how from University of Cantabria.

As a result, CheckBnB was awarded 2nd place as Spanish national best energy efficiency start-up company. Last but not least, the commercial and marketing skills acquired through the close collaboration with Blumorpho have helped them to bring their solution to the market and increase the odds to attract new investors.
During 2020, COVID19 impact on tourism sector prevented CheckBnB to fully complete the project and APP CheckBnB mobile application development needed to be postponed. Still, the CcMaster hardware created in the context of FED4SAE supported application experiment has been reused by EnergyCcM on a completely different domain. In this sense, they have pivoted its original use on rental apartments towards solar energy and public lightning sectors.

Impact

Our challenge to achieve the greatest possible impact is to disseminate the system through prestigious NGOs such as Greenpeace and WWF, and thus raise awareness among users in order to not waste precious resources. In the same manner, the objective is to convince homeowners to invest in a system that will bring short-term economic benefits and help combat climate change.

The main objective is to make this system a standard filter, similar to price or rating, according to user comments in the big management channels (AirBnB, Home Away, etc). If we were to achieve this goal, the impact would be of incredible dimensions and it would help very effectively to combat climate change.

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Embrace

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Company info:

Name: Protolab srl
Date founded: 2010
Number of employees: 5
Location: Padua, Italy

High-tech SME developing innovative complete solutions tailored to customer needs and providing integrated systems & services.

http://www.protolab.it/

Partners:

Innovation Management Partner:

Development of a smart sensor kit for monitoring of scoliosis treatment braces

Challenge

Each year about 2% of European teenagers must be treated with braces (spinal orthosis) to counteract the evolution of scoliotic curve by applying a mechanical stress against the body and favouring the correct posture of rachis. Despite the need of recording the exerted pressure expressed by orthopaedic specialists, there is currently no device available, in the market, able to quantitatively measure acting forces inside the braces and to monitor the wearing time. Market analysis outlines big potential in the scoliosis management market, stressing increasing year to year demand still not satisfied by products on the market. It also identifies among main drivers the advancement of technology with tracking devices that can monitor the patient health evolution.

Solution

Protolab aims at: i) developing an innovative plug & play wearable sensor kit for monitoring the pressure inside scoliosis braces, ii) improving the compliance with medical prescriptions and iii) boosting the patient active participation in order to reach satisfying results from the care treatment. Digitization will boost the development of automated analysis to frequently check treatment progresses, while the availability of gathered data will allow the use of predictive algorithms to favour rapid intervention in case of wrong trends, thus favouring the active participation of the patient to the care treatment.

FED4SAE Support

Thanks to FED4SAE project that leverages the collaboration with ST Microelectronics, CEA-Leti and IRT Nanoelec, Protolab developed a prototype system based on STM32WB microcontroller that integrates all the hardware means to support Bluetooth™ 5.0 and IEEE 802.15.4 wireless standards such as ZigBee 3.0 and Openthread. The STM32WB is used to collect data from sensors, to process and then to transfer them via BLE to a dedicated smartphone App.

Tests of the new prototype data communication in realistic conditions were performed in collaboration with Products & Technologies Living-Lab (PTL) of IRT Nanoelec at CEA-Leti in Grenoble. The cybersecurity and privacy risk analysis and the evaluation of regulatory constraints related to patient’s data management were assessed as well with the support of CEA-Leti.

Blumorpho’s innovation management services helped Protolab in the identification of the strategy and the statutory constraints to secure the go-to-market strategy as well as to seek investors.

Impact

Protolab developed a miniaturized and integrated solution tested in realistic environment.

Product qualification and certifications were launched in July 2020. Protolab planned to enter the market in the early 2021 (customer acquisition).

Embrace enters a Global Scoliosis management Market estimated in 2B$. A rough estimate of investments needs, viability and sustainability of business has been carried out with an analysis of incremental costs and revenues that Protolab will tackle to enter the new market. The estimated financial requirement is about 1.4 Mn EUR, while the Break-Even Point will be reached within five years at about 3000 kits/year.

Video

GHOST

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Company info:

Name: Ghost Labs AB
Date founded: 2018
Number of employees: 7
Location: Stockholm

www.ghostnodes.com

Partners:

Innovation Management Partner:

Edge Computing made Simple

Challenge

With the emergence of Industry 4.0, the benefits of the IoT technologies are being exploited by Manufacturing industries to connect and control infrastructure. However, integration has become more difficult to handle. It has also become a capability that drives huge costs. When Industry extend business globally, adds new applications and more computing paradigms, e.g. B2B growth, cloud adaptation (SaaS), social, mobile, and IoT/IIoT, just to name a few. The old integration standards are not fit for purpose anymore. So the challenge is how can you connect all of these existing legacy plant, manufacturing tools and infrastructure to enable these rich insights and control.

Solution

The Ghostnodes integration platform is fully distributed and also has proven capabilities as the key component in high frequency data collection and aggregation. It also ensures that logic can be pushed back out to an operating node (e.g. edge computing). This is typical for IoT/IIoT integration scenarios.

By providing a lightweight agent which can be deployed at the edge and interface with manufacturing tools (CNC Machines), sensors or device manufacturers API to enable legacy machines to become “smart and connected”.

The Ghostnodes solution also provides a customisable rules based engine that enables the nodes to act on processed data. The Ghost Nodes platform will also have an integration with the Siemens Polarion Platform.

Support from FED4SAE

The support from FED4SAE can be summarized in three categories:

  • Hardware: Intel has provided relevant insights in large hardware corporations strategies for smart manufacturing and their positioning in the smart manufacturing value chain.
  • Documented Industry Standards: KTH and Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration (OSLC) has supported with specifications for OSLC standards for large-scale and easily maintainable integrations in heterogeneous environments.
  • Business Development and Networking: Bluemorpho and KTH has connected Ghostnodes with companies and start-ups across Europe for highly valuable collaborations.

Impact

Being part of the FED4SAE project have supported the company and enabled GhostLabs to develop its business in a number of different ways:

  • The Ghost Nodes software platform is now available on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace.
  • New business relationships have been established or strengthen with a number of major international clients within the domain of smart-manufacturing, transportation and Healthcare. To name a few; SANDVIK Coromant, SODEXO and TransDev.
  • GhostLabs have developed a robust business model and business plan allowing for strategic discussions with potential partners and investors.
  • GhostLabs have expanded its pan-European network significantly thanks to outreach activities organised by the project.

Video

https://youtu.be/Vr0MT06-fVs