Smart IoT Companies: Solutions for real Life

The Smart Industry Portrait of 12 IoT Companies around the world with new solutions, technologies and products.

Nanobiosensors

Creating a Nanonet of Things

Beyond Smart Phones, a vast new world of sensor technology and sensor deployments is emerging in the field of nanotechnology, where some are now talking about the Internet of NanoThings (IoNT). Nanotechnology is actually a combination of multiple disciplines such as physics, chemistry, and mechanical engineering. It describes a host of techniques for bending nature to the will of humanity at or near the molecular scale where things are measured in nanometers (one billionth of a meter). Within the United States, for 2017 the federal government is investing more than $1.4 billion for the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI). This brings to approximately $24 billion the total investment made by that government in the field since 2001. To be sure, most of this spending goes to fundamental research rather than the applied research which nanosensors would include. However, the feasibility of using nanotechnology to provide many kinds of data that were not available in the past and in some cases to initiate functions at nanoscale means this field is also ripe for IoT engagement. For instance, the Nanobioelectronics & Biosensors Group, led by Prof. Arben Merkoçi at the Catalan Institute of Nanotechnology in Barcelona, Spain is conducting research on the integration of nanotechnology methods, tools and materials into low cost, user friendly and efficient sensors and biosensors. According to the group’s website “The developed (bio)sensors take the advantages of nanoparticles, nanotubes, graphene, nanochannels and other nanomaterials while being integrated into innovative, high sensitive and mass production platforms”, with the aim of designing nanotech devices that can deliver fast medical diagnostics, control food quality, and more.

WATTx

Smart Climate Innovation

His goal is to shoot for the moon in IoT, and Bastian Bergmann, CEO at WATTx in Berlin, is well on his way. His company, an innovation lab focused on IoT and specifically smart climate solutions, specializes in IoT Engineering as well as connecting machine and consumer data to empower a smart climate future. By creating innovative digital experiences along the customer journey, Bergmann hopes to reimagine service models for residential and industrial customers to empower smart climate innovation. “We think big”, he maintains, “and we strive to turn the most ambitious ideas into reality.”

BrewBot

Beer Smarts

Making your own beer is almost as simple as pouring a pint if you use the app designed by BrewBot Britain. Founded in 2013 through a Klickstart crowdfunding project, the company is dedicated to making brewing easy to anyone. Brewbot is one of the IoT Companies with a mix of both hardware and software, providing a complete brewing setup out of the box. The Belfast-based team provides a smartphone app that downloads beer recipes and trigger the brewing process. The smart appliance does the rest, taking care of the temperatures, timings and volumes and allowing you to follow along on the app as water is turned into beer.

Simprints

Getting online with a pinch

Simprints, a non-profit technology company based in Cambridge, UK, has developed a biometric fingerprint scanner that connects wirelessly to mobile phones and will allow some of the most vulnerable people in the world to access basic services such as healthcare and financial services. Its core product is a low-cost, rugged and durable fingerprint scanner which uses a curved sensor, which is more intuitive for individuals to make a ‘pinching’ gesture rather than to simply lay their finger flat on the surface of a reader. Registered as a nonprofit, Simprints has so far attracted more than £1 million in seed funding. This includes funding from the private sector as well as from a range of institutional funders and foundations, including UKAID and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Simprints was recognized by Business Weekly as the “Startup of the Year 2015.”

Levis

Weaving a “Smart Jacket”

What happens when wearable technology meets IoT? The jeans-maker Levi Strauss is teaming up with Google to find out. At first glance, ”Levi’s Commuter x Jacquard by Google Trucker Jacket” showcased at Google I/O 2016, a developer conference, look just like aby other piece of outdoor clothing. The difference lies in the weave, an interlacing grids of conductive yarns, so that the wearer can perform tasks through a smartphone or other device by simply touching the jacket or making swiping gestures across it. Think about rubbing your sleeve to change music tracks or answer a call on your smartphone, and you get the general idea. By developing “interactive” fabrics that can bring gesture and touch recognition to clothing and other objects, Google hopes to open the door to making those items more interactive or otherwise collecting data about people and their environment. For the moment, Google is testing the ruggedness of the fabric and working to make touch and gestures more readable. Again, a new universe of sensors and “active” materials could empower creation of new services related to delivery, entertainment, building operations, and more.

Comarch

Tapping into Wealth Management

Comarch, an international software house and systems integrator based in Kraków, Poland, has launched a prototype of a wealth management app taking advantage of technology never used before in the world of private banking: virtual reality. The mobile app prototype combines financial planning and investment advisory into a single tool. “It lets well-off bank clients control and multiply their assets, often scattered throughout the world, with no more than a few taps – and a little help from a personal advisor”, says Grzegorz Prosowicz, Head of Product Management for Capital Markets at Comarch. As for the banks themselves, the app allows in turn for devising investment strategies closely aligned with clients’ needs and objectives.

Braster

A simpler way to halt breast cancer

The medical company Braster in Poland has developed a device to early detect breast cancer. A special foil inside the device measures slight changes of temperature on the breast and takes a picture of this image using a TD next camera module provided by Avnet Silica. The device sends the picture via Bluetooth or Wifi to a mobile phone and the mobile phone send the picture to a hospital center where a doctor analyses the picture and decides if something is wrong and in this case contact the patient to advise her to contact a specialist, thus avoiding the need for examination via X-ray mammography scans.

Kontakt.io & Estimote

Polish IoT Companies take lead in beacon tech

Two Polish IoT companies, Kontakt.io and Estimote, made it into the Top Five list of BLE beacon vendors worldwide recentlyreleased by ABI Research, a market intelligence provider specializing in transformative technology innovation. Real-time location services are expected to be a key part of IoT ecosystem solutions. Kontakt.io, based in Kraków, aims at creating “secure and configurable beacon hardware and software, enabling you to build any proximity-based solutions”, according to co-founder Szymon Niemczura. Estimote has made a name for itself by supplying small, wireless sensors and accompanying software to provide indoor location technology for many Fortune 100 companies, and recently succeeded in landing $10.7 million in Series A funding. “Beacon technology is not something the everyday consumer thinks about, but it’s changing the way they interact with the world around them, while using their smartphone”, says co-founder Steve Cheney. U.S. retailer Target is using Estimote’s smartphone application that works hand-in-hand with beacons placed around the stores in order to provide information and recommendations to shoppers, along with deal alerts.

Parce

Lights, Action!

Parce, a Munich-based has announced Apple HomeKit, a wall plug device that provides an easy, secure way to control your home’s lights, doors, thermostats, and more from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, using the Siri function voice-control lighting and track energy consumption. Triggers based on time or location can be configured Parce to turn on lights as soon as the owner pulls up to the house. Parce One is available for download at the App Store.

SensorBeat

Moving Along

Imagimob, a Swedish company specializing in artificial intelligence products for movement analytics of things and people, has just been granted a patent for “Movement pattern generation using an accelerometer” by the Swedish Patent and Registration Office. Their product, SensorBeat, is billed as the world’s first motion intelligence system on the edge. Consisting of a complete package that contains all the necessary electronics and artificial intelligence for understanding the motion of things and people, it can be easily integrated into 3rd party products. It targets a wide range of segments from gaming (gesture recognition), health/medtech (human motion analysis, body analysis), industry (preventive maintenance), personal security (accident/attack detection) to animal behavior (tracking pets/animal health).

Kiwi.ki

Open Sesame!

Kiwi.ki, a startup based in Berlin, wants to bring the same convenience that’s available to car owners via keyless entry to residential multi-unit complexes, making it possible for anyone who lives at one to just walk up to the door and open it, thanks to an RFID device carried in their pocket. Recently, they signed an exclusive deal with already partnered with Deutsche Post in Germany to make it easy for mail carriers to gain access to apartments for simpler delivery of letters and packages.

Sensolus

Deep Freeze

Sensolus, has teamed up with the Belgian Polar Secretariat and Sigfox to create a partnership to strengthen safety and security during research and field operations at the Belgian polar-exploration. The 2015-16 BELARE Antarctic expedition consists of a team of technicians and researchers specialized in glaciology, climatology and geomorphology in charge of various Belgian and international scientific projects. People on expeditions and moving materials (equipment) in a range up to 40 km around the base station are monitored though with 45 SticknTrack GPS trackers from Sensolus based on the SIGFOX communication network. These devices will not only inform about the location of the materials, but can also about temperature which in Antarctica can sink to -90 degrees Celcius and below, as well as usage and other crucial parameters.

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