The future belongs to Smart Systems. We present six exciting start-ups that might well play a big role in tomorrow’s world.
Autopilot for diabetes therapy
Healthcare for diabetics worldwide costs more than 400 billion Dollars, 43 percent of which is spent in hospitals. That problem is being addressed by Danish start-up Admetsys with its “Smart Pancreas”. The system, connected via a venous catheter, monitors and controls the blood-sugar values of diabetics in real-time and with no blood loss, so their glucose levels are the same of those of a healthy patient. Early clinical studies have proved successful: the improved blood-sugar monitoring reduced hospital mortality rates by 34 percent.
www.admetsys.com
Protection against burglars
This lamp from Switzerland is smarter than it looks. Disguised as an LED light, the Comfylight is an app-controlled home alarm system. The system operates preventively. That is to say, the smart lights remember the residents’ movements around the home. And when they go out, the lights turn on and off reflecting that normal routine. Comfylight also detects break-ins, flashing as a deterrent, and sending an alert to the home owner’s smartphone. And of course, Comfylight also provides a pleasant lighting ambience.
www.comfylight.com
Smart home with Bluetooth
Polish entrepreneur Radek Tadajewski used to be a venture-capitalist, and now he has launched his own highly promising start-up project. OORT is a smart home system based on Bluetooth technology. That means the system can be controlled from any Internet-capable phone or tablet, whatever the manufacturer or operating system. It is even able to communicate with devices the residents already own – including wearables. The patent-registered technology thus enables an open eco-system to be constructed, comprising smart devices, sensors, mobile communications software and a Cloud platform.
www.oort.in
Third hand for factory workers
What emerges when ex-BMW employees get together with people who used to work for design and innovation consultancy Ideo? A smart glove for industrial workers. The ProGlove aims to make work procedures in manufacturing or logistics faster and safer. Sensors built-in to the glove capture all the movements involved in specific work procedures, record every item the worker picks up, and provide feedback: is the work sequence correct? Has the right tool been selected? Thanks to RFID technology, the glove is able to register items like a scanner – but simply by gripping them, with no other equipment needed.
www.proglove.de
Revolution in the vegetable fields
Silicon Valley is not only a hotbed for Internet companies, but also for vegetable-growing robots. The LettuceBot, built by start-up Blue River founded by two Stanford graduates, specialises in growing California’s favourite salad vegetable. Equipped with a video camera and detection software, the system is able to distinguish between weeds and lettuces in the field just as well as a human eye, enabling it to target pesticides in exactly the right dosages. The robot can also thin out the plants in the same way. If they are too close together, it sprays fertiliser directly onto one plant, which dies, and the fertiliser helps the next one grow.
www.bluerivert.com
A family-friendly robot
MIT professor Cynthia Breazeal has developed a new family member with astonishing abilities: Jibo. The stationary robot specialises in communication. It can talk, react to speech, give reminders of appointments, autonomously take photos, and even reads out stories using interactive apps. It is all made possible by speech and learning algorithms, wifi, HD cameras, a room microphone, and a voice of the robot’s very own. Because it is able to learn, Jibo also recognises people on camera, and is able to relay messages in a targeted manner as well as turning on the lights when someone comes home.
www.jibo.com
(picture credits: Shutterstock)
