Even as a young child, Mate Rimac was already obsessed with cars. However, he eventually reached a point where he wanted to make them better and more exciting by electrifying them.

Mate Rimac was born in what was then Yugoslavia in 1988. The tinkering electronics fanatic had already registered two patents at the tender age of 17. At the age of 18, he went on to lay the foundation for his company. Because of buying an old BMW 3-Series for driftsport racing. After its engine exploded, he swapped it out for an electric motor. Rimac kept on improving the BMW, setting five FIA performance records for electric cars in the process.

Finally, with the vision of creating a sports car for the 21st century, he founded Rimac Automobili. The company develops unique traction systems characterised by their power and energy density. Rimac Automobili has since become one of the global technology leaders for high-performance electric motors and drivetrains. Who is equipping renowned brands such as Pininfarina and Porsche, not to mention major producers like Hyundai and Kia.

With his knack for accelerating development and constantly raising the bar, Mate Rimac has achieved his goal: the Rimac C_Two is the most exciting car of our times. With a rated output of over 1,900 hp and torque of 2,300 Nm, the supercar can accelerate from 0–100 km/h in under two seconds, with a top speed of 415 km/h.

Learn more about Rimac Automobili and the Rimac C_Two here: www.ctwo.rimac-automobili.com

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Ten start-ups with passion for technology:

Voice control in real time

From machine to service product

Demonstrate instead of programming

Quantum leap

Future without pilots

Fuel cells from a circuit board factory

Learning with robots

All the info on the wrist

Security drone for the home

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Today, thanks to the ever falling cost of electronic components and ever easier access to expertise in integrating electronic solutions, anyone can harness the power of cutting-edge technology in their products. Antonio Fernandez, Vice President Technical Development at EBV, and Frank-Steffen Russ, Director Market Segments at EBV, are unified in their belief that this democratisation of technology will increasingly transform all aspects of our lives in the future.

Technology and passion are rather contradictory for many people. Why do both belong together in your eyes?

Frank-Steffen Russ: What exactly is it that enables previously unattainable goals to be reached with new technologies? Quite simply, the passion to improve things with technology.

Antonio Fernandez: I assist technology companies all across Europe. When doing so, I have observed how it is precisely those companies that employ passionate people and encourage them to push the boundaries of what is currently possible that really make a difference in their respective markets. We at EBV share this passion for technology and work together to collectively promote innovation.

What fascinates you personally about technology?

A.F.: Technology is indispensable if our civilisation is to make progress. Using technology to bring about a more sustainable future really fascinates me. And the possibilities are endless…

F.R.: More and more new possibilities are opening up. For a long time, bionics was simply just a dream, yet it is now becoming a reality through the use of cutting-edge technology. By consistently applying such new technologies, we can understand more and more complex processes before applying these to newer technologies in turn. However, it’s also the small things containing smart technology that excite me.

What part do semiconductors play in current technological developments?

A.F.: Semiconductors, electronics and software – together with new, sustainable materials – are driving the latest technological developments forwards in every industry. Anyone can use electronics to make products whose new abilities make them stand out among the existing range – or even to create entirely new business models.

F.R.: Semiconductors are a key technology; they are the foundation for digitalisation.

Has semiconductor technology perhaps also changed the possibilities of technology – or access to it?

F.R.: Smart helpers – first and foremost smartphones – are a good example of just how far along the democratisation of technology is today. New sharing concepts that make technology available online with a small price tag to everyone would still be pure fantasy without semiconductors.

A.F.: The cost of integrating electronics into new products is very low today, as is the cost of developing electronic systems. Our manufacturing partners offer excellent, low-cost development tools, while we at EBV assist our customers in applying cutting-edge technologies quickly, easily and successfully.

So what you’re saying is that semiconductor technology is no longer just the preserve of high-tech companies with the electronics expertise to match?

A.F.: The budget required for designing electronics has come down in price dramatically – even for highly complex semiconductors. Yet this is a kind of engineering that still requires a good deal of expertise. The clincher is that it is now easier to acquire that expertise. All you need is a suitable partner for rolling out the technology and engineers who are motivated to take on the challenge.

The lifespan of “smart” products or solutions for the Internet of Things in particular is very short. How is the semiconductor industry responding to this development?

F.R.: Good point – and product complexity is also increasing. In this case, it is very important for us to recognise the trends and make technical support available to our customers promptly in response. However, requirements in IoT applications often go beyond mere semiconductor solutions. In other words, we need to be in a position to see things from the perspective of the customer’s overall system while broadening our range of support solutions. These might include modules or reference designs. What’s more, we need to know the right answers to problems involving cloud connectivity and security, and be able to assist customers or help them with networking.

A.F.: However, it’s not always about consumer products that get replaced by a new generation every 18 months. We have a lot of customers who make products that need to be fully functional for more than ten years, like in industrial, transportation, aviation and aerospace applications. That’s why we at EBV also work with our manufacturing partners in support of longevity schemes that guarantee the supply of selected key semiconductors for more than ten years.

How does EBV assist companies who are new to electronics with turning their ideas into “real” products?

F.R.: With our market segments, we have the technology and systems know-how to convert our customers’ challenges into semiconductor solutions. And not only that – we can also bring customers and selected partners from our network together to commercialize the solution. That not only goes for established companies, but start-ups as well.

A.F.: We work with a range of accredited designers and contract manufacturers throughout Europe. We also collaborate with Avnet Design Services, SoftWeb Solutions and Witekio to assist customers without electronics experience in rolling out the latest technologies – with hardware, software, turn-key designs and a supply of ready-to-use electronics boards.

You also develop your own modules and kits. Why does EBV act as a distributor here? What can you do that others can’t?

F.R.: More and more often, our customers are faced with the challenge of adopting and implementing topics at short notice. Our EBVchips approach enables us to offer a range of tailor-made solutions in this case. One example is Heracles – a GSM module with GNSS, complete with a data package. The GSM modules available on the market until now have one thing in common: customers need to go to great lengths to find a network provider before concluding a separate contract with them. Would it not be better if this were already included in the module? Simply buy the product and rest easy – that is our approach, and it works well for many applications. These include bike tracking, agricultural sensors, status displays for construction machinery, street lighting or service units for vending machines, to name just a few examples.

How high is the demand for EBV’s modules and kits?

A.F.: Semiconductors are becoming more complex, while the demand and availability of turn-key modules are both growing. As a result, customers today can choose to make modules themselves or buy them ready-made. If they choose the former, we are the distributor with probably the best technical resources to support complex designs. And for the growing number of customers who want to buy ready-to-use modules, we offer varied solutions straight from our portfolio. Alternatively, we can point customers towards dependable module manufacturers with whom we collaborate.

The eco-system of our franchise partners has also improved dramatically as far as development kits are concerned: there are now reference designs, development tools and demo boards for practically anything. Sometimes, if we also see a benefit in combining specific new technologies from multiple manufacturers in a demonstration system, then that’s what we do. At present, we are investing heavily in the IoT cloud-service capability of important platforms.

What kinds of new modules can we expect from EBV?

F.R.: We will keep adding to our range of solutions for connectivity and IoT. The next step is to expand the Heracles range to create a third generation with an “on-board secure element”. This will be followed by other solutions.

A.F.: These will include turn-key modular solutions to do with power electronics, embedded processors, AI and edge computing.

Where do you think new technologies will bring about the greatest transformation? Where will they have the biggest impact on our lives?

F.R.: The bounds of human imagination are the only limit. Still, I would say that the automation of mobility and machinery is the biggest topic. In these cases, an established industry will have to reinvent itself. From a user’s perspective, mobility as a service will enable us to be mobile right into old age. The “lab-on-a-chip” will also bring about a major transformation in healthcare services: it is likely that this will become as established in our lives as a simple thermometer is today.

A.F.: I could mention quite a few points here: Energy-saving and higher resistance will help bring about greater sustainability. Higher computing power will make things possible that we still think of as unattainable. We will see improved diagnosis and treatment options in healthcare. Improved safety when interacting with machines and the environment. Thanks to more convenient operation, we can learn to use and implement technology more quickly. Higher productivity will fund a better quality of life for us… Without a doubt, technology will be behind the biggest changes in the future – and hopefully improve our lives by doing so.

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Twelve advices of technology pioneers:

Martin Cooper, Inventor of mobile phones

Elon Musk, Co-founder of PayPal, Founder and CEO of SpaceX, Co-founder and CEO of Tesla

Reed Hastings, Co-founder and CEO of Netflix

Bill Gates, Co-founder of Microsoft

Steve Jobs, Co-founder of Apple

Nikola Tesla, Inventor, physicist and electrical engineer

Larry Page, Co-founder of Google

Shirley Jackson, Physicist and President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Grace Hopper, Software pioneer, developer of the programming language COBOL

Jack Ma, Founder of Alibaba

Jeff Weiner, Former CEO of LinkedIn

Brian Chesky, Founder and CEO of Airbnb

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Professor Johann W. Kolar is an IEEE Fellow (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers). And he is also holder of the professorship in power electronic systems at ETH Zürich. For two decades, he has been advancing the development of power electronics, especially rectifier technology.

Johann W. Kolar was born in 1959 in Upper Austria. He says he was lucky to have had a high school electrical technology teacher with industrial experience in power and micro-electronics. Although he initially wanted to study medicine, but his first dissection lesson quickly pushed him back towards the world of electrical technology. And ever since then power electronics has been his obsession.

His developments have included the Vienna rectifier, which combines high efficiency and high power density. Johann W. Kolar believes that a key challenge in power electronics is that different components have to be simultaneously researched, while also improving their interaction. Finally he introduced the principle of multi-objective optimisation as a fundamentally new research method in power electronics.

In his teaching, Johann W. Kolar aims to pass on to his students his passion for creating new concepts as well as a solid basis of technical expertise, enabling them to contribute to transforming society into an “all-electric society”.

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With a mixture of socio-political intuition and business acumen, Juliana Rotich is helping shape digital transformation in Africa. She believes that social benefit should always be the focus of technological innovation.

When asked about her role models, the IT expert and manager, who was born in 1977 in Kenya, names Lieutenant Nyota Uhura from Star Trek and Mae Jemison, the first African American woman in space. Even at school, Rotich demonstrated a flair for working with computers. Ultimately, her passion for technology took her to the United States, where she gained a degree in IT.

In response to the bloody unrest in Kenya in 2007 and 2008, which saw over 1,300 deaths, Rotich was a co-founder of the online platform Ushahidi. Here, users can share information from and about crisis areas. Today, the platform is used in over 160 countries – including in the civil war in Syria – and also to document hate speech in the US presidential election.

Juliana Rotich is also a co-founder of BRCK, the largest public WLAN provider in sub-Saharan Africa. BRCK developed a modem that provides battery powered Internet access where there is no electricity grid.

These days, Rotich enjoys worldwide respect as an IT expert and the face of a young and successful Africa that is actively helping to shape the 21st Century.

Read more about the online platform Ushahidi: www.ushahidi.com

You can learn more about the public WLAN provider in sub-Saharan Africa here: www.brck.com

The post Short portrait about Juliana Rotich appeared first on Future Markets Magazine.

In Maryam Rofougaran’s view, wireless technologies are one of the most significant advances of our age. And after all, they make a huge difference in people’s lives.

She was born in 1968 in Isfahan (Iran) into a family that prized education. Additional, she was encouraged to be inquisitive and to strive for success in anything she was passionate about. During her school years in Iran, she already dreamed of becoming a scientist like Albert Einstein. And she wanted to discover something new and winning a Nobel Prize.

With a view to realising these lofty ambitions, she started studying Electrical Engineering at the University of California in 1987. While writing her doctoral thesis, she and her brother founded a company to develop wireless short-range communication. Later, they sold the company to the semiconductor company Broadcom.

Among other things, Rofougaran designed RF modules and analogue radio devices for wireless standards. These standards are known as LTE, GPS, Bluetooth and WLAN. Her microchips are used in devices like iPhones, Samsung Galaxy smartphones, iPads, laptops and cars.

Nowadays, Maryam Rofougaran is the co-founder and co-CEO of Movandi. This start-up develops 5G mmWave solutions and holds more than 280 patents.

The teenager who aspired to be a scientist and Nobel Prize winner grew up to become an entrepreneur. However, Maryam Rofougarans products have a major impact on people and even industry today.

Learn more about the company Movandi: www.movandi.com

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Many innovative technologies like artificial intelligence or machine learning end up on a screen, as Dr Simon Haddadin explains. But he and his team at Franka Emika, develop robots that get technology off the drawing board and into the thick of things in the real world. In Haddadin’s words, this not only has an “impact” in a technical sense, but also in social, societal and economic terms.

Despite qualifying as a medical practitioner, he found this new field extremely exciting. Therefore he hung up his stethoscope in 2016 to found Franka Emika together with his brother Sami. They were hoping that the company’s robots would make a difference in the world. Since starting production in 2018, Franka Emika has sold around 3,000 robots for all kinds of applications.

Although Sami Haddadin is the expert when it comes to algorithms and artificial intelligence, his brother Simon was able to bring something else to the table with his medical expertise. Because developing robots at Franka Emika is really about understanding human capabilities and transferring them to technology.

Simon Haddadin demonstrated one particularly impressive example of their robots’ capabilities. The SR-NOCS (Swab Robot for Naso- and Oropharyngeal COVID-19 Screening) conducts high-precision, fully autonomous nose and throat swabs on humans to test for COVID-19. The system has already shown off its capabilities in practical settings and been ordered by surgeries. Yet it took one or two sleepless nights and a healthy dose of passion to get this far, as Dr Haddadin emphasises.

Is the SR-NOCS a typical example of your company’s products?

Dr Simon Haddadin: No, it actually isn’t. We view our robotics solution as a hardware and software platform, similar to Apple with its iPhone and App Store. In other words, other parties can take our platform and launch their own completely new solutions based on our system. We were own our customers in a sense when it came to the SR-NOCS – we not only supplied the platform, but also a system solution for a specific application.

Apart from this platform concept, what is so special about your robots?

S.H.: We founded the company with the vision of opening robotics up to anyone and everyone, which is why we gave our robots new abilities. First and foremost among these is a sense of touch, which was realised by equipping each robot with over 100 sensors and lending it a sense of mechanical flexibility rather than rigidity. It can contract and relax muscles the same way that a human can. This enables our robots to work at close quarters with humans without any barriers or other safety guards.

Finally, our robots are as easy to operate as a smartphone. And they also come at just the fraction of the cost of previous models destined for industrial applications.

With your background in medicine, how did you end up managing a robotics company?

S.H.: My brother and I founded the company together. I actually used to be the one with an affinity for technology and would build and program computers at home. My brother, on the other hand, wanted to be a marine biologist. However, neither of us gave enough thought to our respective futures. In the end, it was our mother who enrolled us on our courses. Electrical and computer engineering for my brother, and medicine for me.

In other words, the exact opposite of your interests…

S.H.: That’s true.

My brother went on to develop an algorithm that gave robots a sense of touch, but nobody believed it would work. I told him back then that you have to back everything up with statistics in medicine. That was around ten years ago at Christmas. Instead of eating dinner together on Christmas Day, we went to the lab at the German Aerospace Center, where he was working at the time, and conducted crash tests. We wanted to establish where the boundary was between danger and safety for humans. This also gave rise to my thesis in the field of biomechanics.

At the time, we both saw how it was possible to conduct a lot of research without actually setting foot in the real world. That was the motivation for us to found our own company.

What is it that fascinates you about robotics?

S.H.: The impact that I have at Franka Emika is entirely different to being just a drop in the ocean as a doctor. In medicine, you learn a great deal about what people are made of. But only a little about how they actually work. This is different in advanced robotics as we understand it. For me, the most exciting thing is that you have to acquire an understanding of human abilities and then put them into a machine. And, of course, it’s really not hard to get excited about all the possibilities that this opens up.

Ultimately, many other cutting-edge technologies like machine learning or artificial intelligence end up on a screen. However, the most important human trait is the ability to interact with the real world, even in total chaos: a person has no idea what is heading their way, yet they can still get their bearings and interact with their surroundings. For me, this intervention in the real world is what makes robotics so exciting. Our robots should help people to put their abilities to good use even more simply and effectively.

You’ve mentioned “impact” – what exactly do you mean by that?

S.H.: This can essentially be divided into two points. Firstly, I am fortunate enough to have an extremely ambitious and talented team here. This team enables us to bring a project like SR-NOCS to fruition within a very tight turnaround time. Innovation is our most valuable asset, and we give our colleagues a very long leash. In this way, they can actually put their ideas into practice. This is what makes our innovations and technological breakthroughs possible in the first place.

The second point concerns real-world applications: our systems are primarily used in the “3C” industry: computers, communication devices and consumer electronics. Yet the year before last saw the closure of the last computer factory in Europe. Although we want to bring about a digital revolution in Europe, we can’t manufacture a single computer here… This is a consequence of the different standards that apply in countries half the world away: after seeing conditions in factories there, you have to admit that they come pretty close to modern-day slavery. This is the only way our smartphones can be as cheap as they are.

Therefore, one “impact” is the fact that we can banish working conditions like this with our robots.

The other impact is that we want to help Europe achieve economic and technological independence again. Nowadays, we are merely consumers of information technology and have ceased to be suppliers. Our vision is to make manufacturing in such fields economically viable in Europe once more. For example, our own production facilities are located in the Allgäu region of Germany, where our robots are manufactured by other robots for the most part. This allows us to manufacture economically right on our doorstep.

Another aim is to make mechatronic systems like autonomous driving or even autonomous flying possible in the long term – we still boast a lot of expertise in these fields in Europe. If at all possible, we want to ensure that these industries don’t go the way of the IT sector, with production for such technologies migrating away from Europe.

We try to do “our bit” to prevent this.

But your motto is “robotics for everyone” – so not just for factories?

S.H.: That’s correct, although we need industry to achieve economies of scale. You first need a market in which you can sell a certain number of units in order to bring prices down further. Although we’ve already made a quantum leap in terms of the cost of robots, they are still too expensive for private use. We therefore need to increase the scale further to reduce costs. In doing so, we can reach a cost range that would also be acceptable for household appliances. This is what the goal must be.

It’s important that robots are not perceived as toys, but as home assistants. Of course, that’s still a few years off, but we are already laying a lot of foundations in development. This not only involves our stationary robots. We are also building service robots already; essentially mobile robotic assistants. Our aim is for people to use robots for assistance at home during the “third age” and “fourth age” of their lives, whether that be for loading the dishwasher, preparing meals or dispensing pills. Robots can also assume an important role as a means of communicating.

In the future, people will be able to communicate with each other haptically using robots, as opposed to just by telephone or videoconferencing. The third area of application is medical assistance: in other words, robots might remind someone to take their pills, perform simple tests like taking a temperature or measuring blood pressure and, if necessary, call for an ambulance.

When do you think that such systems will be widely available?

S.H.: In certain applications, they already are. I estimate that it will be five to ten years before this type of thing is widely available.

I think that industrial applications are absolutely essential, although of course I hope that robots will be used much more in everyday situations at some point. For this to be a reality, however, a few things still need to happen in terms of the technology. Appropriate regulations also need to be amended, such as those concerning how people deal with these types of “learning” systems in their day-to-day lives.

So which aspects of the technology need to be refined?

S.H.: For one thing, there is still some work to be done on how machines communicate among themselves. We don’t think that today’s Internet is suitable for this. It’s too centralised – we really need a new type of network, ideally a decentralised one. There is also still a need for development in terms of real-time applications. For machines, “real time” actually means 1,000 signals per second – a figure more than a thousand times higher than the definition of the same term in an IT or Internet context. Many systems are simply not designed for this. In addition, hardware production needs to keep being scaled up in order for the components to get even cheaper.

Robotics is just one of many trending technologies at the moment, however. Which of the “disruptive” technologies like IoT, AI or edge computing will change our society the most?

S.H.: It’s not easy for me to deliver an impartial verdict here – that goes without saying. The great thing about robotics is that it transcends many kinds of technology. It’s actually about taking all of the technologies you just mentioned and merging them. In doing so, you can bring many of these on-trend technologies into the real world.

You have technology on the one hand. But you also need people who have a certain passion for technology. Yet you might get the impression that young people today tend to eschew new technologies. As a young company, what is your own experience of this?

S.H.: Young people today are – thankfully – preoccupied with extremely relevant topics like climate change. That much is a given. However, at the end of the day, I really do think that technology can help us in many ways to solve the major problems that our society faces.

That’s why we want to show young people what kind of doors technology can open. In 2017, we were awarded the Deutscher Zukunftspreis, which came with an endowment of EUR 250,000. With that prize money, we established a foundation that aims to introduce children and young people to technology as early as possible.

We are also a patron of the Munich round of the “Jugend forscht” youth science competition. In all of these activities, we see that there are still plenty of young people who are interested in technology and who also see the kind of difference it can make.

How important is passion when it comes to developing and using new technologies? Is passion absolutely essential, or might it even be a hindrance under certain circumstances?

S.H.: It’s probably a mixture of the two… Passion makes you keep plugging away in the face of all adversity. If you do new things, you will inevitably face a lot of opposition. This can take the form of competitors, who clearly have no desire for new kids on the block to appear. Then there are regulatory matters – in many senses, the world just isn’t ready for new things.

Naturally, the development of the technology itself is sometimes also difficult and drawn-out. Because all too often, this means long nights and short days when you don’t see your family much. Without a certain passion, it is impossible for someone to defy circumstances like these in the longer term.

„Passion ensures that you carry on despite all the setbacks.“

Dr Simon Haddadin, CEO and Co-founder of Franka Emika

On the other hand, you sometimes need keep a cool head and not get too hung up on things. After all, after a certain point, you simply can’t sink your teeth into absolutely everything. You eventually need to maintain a certain distance to actually make some money. Were it not for passion, the towel might have been thrown in a long time ago.

SR-NOCS – a medical product with a light touch?

Get more informations about the company Franka Emika: www.franka.de

The post Interview with Dr Simon Haddadin, CEO of Franka Emika appeared first on Future Markets Magazine.