A look at the start-up scene reveals the diversity of the areas in which AI can be used. These young companies are developing products for industries as varied as healthcare, robotics, finance, education, sports, safety, and many more. We present a small selection of interesting start-ups here.
Connected Cars for Everyone
In the form of Chris, the start-up German Autolabs provides an assistant designed specifically for motorists, which easily and conveniently provides access to their smartphone via smart speech recognition and gesture control, including while driving. Chris can be integrated with any vehicle, regardless of its model and year of manufacture. The aim is to make connected car technology available to all through the combination of a flexible and scalable assistant software and hardware for retrofitting.
Make Your Own Voice Assistant
Snips is developing a new voice platform for hardware manufacturers. The service, based on Artificial Intelligence, is intended to allow developers to embed voice assistance services on any device. At the same time, a consumer version is due to be provided over the Internet, running on Raspberry Pi-powered devices. Privacy is at the forefront of this, with the system sending no data to the cloud and operating completely offline.
Realistic Simulation for Autonomous Driving Systems
Automotive Artificial Intelligence offers a virtual 3D platform which realistically imitates cars’ driving environment. It is intended to be used as a means of testing software for fully automated driving, helping to explore the systems’ limits. Self-learning agents provide the reality needed in the virtual platform. Aggressive drivers turn up just as often as overcautious ones, and there are arbitrary lane changes just as there are unforeseeable braking manoeuvres from other (simulated) vehicles that are part of the traffic.
Feeding Pets More Intelligently
With SmartShop Beta, Petnet provides a digital marketplace that guides dog and cat owners towards suitable food for their pets using Artificial Intelligence –
depending on their breed and specific needs. The start-up has itself also developed the Petnet SmartFeeder for the feeding pets. This allows the pets to be automatically supplied with individual portions. The system gives notifications for successful feeds and when food levels are low. An automatic repeat order can also be set up in the SmartShop.
Smart Water Bottle
Bellabeat has already successfully brought Healthtracker to market in the form of women’s jewellery. Building on this, the start-up has developed an intelligent water bottle with Spring. By way of sensors, its system can record how much water the user drinks, how active she is, how much she sleeps, or her stress sensitivity levels. An app, with the assistance of special AI algorithms, is used to analyse users’ individual hydration needs and give a recommendation for fluid intake.
Drone for the Danger Zone
Hivemind Nova is a quadrocopter for law enforcement, first responder and security applications. The drone learns from experience how to negotiate restricted areas or hazardous environments. Without a pilot remote-controlling, it autonomously explores dangerous buildings, tunnels, and other structures before people enter them. It transmits HD video and a map of the building layout to the user live. Hivemind Nova learns and continuously improves over time. The more it is used, the more capable it becomes.
Detecting Wear Ahead of Time
Konux combines smart sensors and analysis based on Artificial Intelligence. The solution is used on railways to monitor sets of points, for example. Field data, already pre-processed by sensor, is wirelessly transmitted to an analysis platform and combined with other data sources such as timetables, meteorological data, and maintenance logs. The data is then analysed using machinelearning algorithms to detect operational anomalies and critical wear in advance.
Greater Success with Job Posts
Textio is an advanced writing platform for creating highly effective job advertisements. By analysing the hiring outcomes of more than 10 million job listings per month, Textio predicts the impact of a job post and gives instructions in real time as to how the text could be improved. To do this, the company uses a highly sophisticated predictive engine and makes it usable for anyone – no training or IT integration needed.
