When PrimeSense founder Aviad Maizels put a prototype of a 3D sensor on a chip in front of Microsoft in 2006, he had no idea it would lead to the biggest turning point in the Israeli startup’s history. Four years later, its partnership with the Redmond giant resulted in Kinect, the motion-sensing camera that made headlines around the world. In 2013, however, Microsoft unveiled an all-new Kinect, the result of years of entirely in-house development — without PrimeSense’s assistance. As fate would have it, the company returned to its chip-making origins a year ago, creating a new product called Capri, a cheaper, lower-power and tinier version of its 3D system-on-a-chip; so tiny, in fact, that it’s designed to be embedded inside tablets, laptops, thin displays and smartphones. With 3D use cases that go far beyond Dance Central, the Capri is the latest sign that PrimeSense is ready to break free from its video game roots.
“Our business plan was — let’s do something cool with robots!” Peltomaa said.
The pair, plus their third co-founder Harri Volpola, are one of the most interesting entrepreneurial teams out of Finland today. Lukka is the country’s youngest ever Ph.D. after getting his degree in quantum chemistry at the age of 20 and Peltomaa is an early 1990s pop star from one of the country’s first rap groups, a past career he kind of wants to leave behind.
They didn’t know exactly what these robots would do, so they did hours and hours of interviews with different potential customers.
“The question we asked was, ‘How can we help you? What are you losing money on right now?’” he said. They looked at a number of industries like warehouse logistics and food companies.
They stumbled on a problem which wasn’t only just lucrative, but also interesting from a technical perspective. There were problems with getting machines to pick up oddly-shaped objects. They decided to settle on robotic recycling, with the European Union alone seeing 3 billion tons of waste each year and the regional construction industry generating 900 million tons of demolition waste annually.
They would build a system that would sort through trash and pick out things that could be recycled for extra revenue like wood or metal.
Their solution, which can cost anywhere up from a starting price of a half-million dollars, uses off-the-shelf industrial robots that are enhanced by artificial intelligence to determine whether trash rolling through on a conveyor belt is recyclable.
ZenRobotics’ system is also bolstered with several load sensors which detect things like surface area and weight.
The robots weigh trash as they lift pieces and calculate the price a piece could be redeemed for. There are also infrared scanners and metal detectors built into the system as well.
“These are the same kinds of robots that are used in Volkswagen factories,” Peltomaa said. “They are standard industrial robots. They are honed to be really reliable. What we are developing behind them is artificial intelligence software.”
They can also maintain the systems remotely so they can monitor if any parts in the system are starting to wear down ahead of time.
Peltomaa says that a client might normally pay 100 euros to get rid of a ton of waste. But if they can pick out a ton of metal, then they can sell that for about 250 euros.
The company has sold five units so far since they only started about a year ago, and believe that the total market size globally for what they make is about 8,000 units. They put together the systems locally in Finland and then deliver them to the customer.
The company just closed 13 million euros in funding from Invus, a private equity firm that has about $4 billion under management. They also pulled in a CEO who can scale the company in Juho Malmberg, who used to run Accenture in Finland and grew their office from 10 to 800 people. They also brought in Jorma Eloranta as a chairman of the board. He used to run mining and construction giant Metso, which pulled in 7.5 billion euros in revenue last year.
“We want to bring multi-billion euro thinking to our company,” Peltomaa said. “It will be our own fault if we don’t make it.”
Twitter has been steadily ramping up its ad efforts this year, first bringing promoted tweets to mobile devices and more recently opening up ad buying to all US users. Now, according to Ad Age, the social network is preparing to introduce promoted tweets based on your location. In addition to displaying nearby retailers, this feature could showcase deals and promotions at stores in your area. Twitter already display’s different advertisers’ tweets based on general metro areas, but drilling down into specific geo-coordinates will naturally deliver more relevant adverts. Facebook, meanwhile, has been serving up content based on a user’s ZIP code since 2011; so a little catch-up is definitely in order. Twitter’s targeted ads will supposedly launch at the end of the year, just in time for that all-important retail rush.
Another Apple I computer is heading to auction next week, and unsurprisingly, it could sell for a lot of money. The computer will open at $300,000 and it’s estimated that it’ll sell for around $500,000, but if there end up being some avid Apple I enthusiasts bidding on the artifact, the selling price could go
Now there's an easy and automated way to root your Kindle Fire.
(Credit: N2A)
For a long time I’ve been a fan of N2A Cards, which sells a simple plug-and-play way to turn Barnes & Noble’s Nook tablets into full-blown Android tablets. After all, if you’ve got good hardware, why not unlock its maximum potential?
Now Kindle owners can get in on the action. N2A’s new N2Aos service will install Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean) on your first- or second-generation Kindle Fire, replacing Amazon’s heavily customized — and, some would say, limited — operating system with the real deal.
There are, of course, a few important considerations. The first is that because Fires have no microSD slot, you can’t just pop in a card and dual-boot the way you can with a Nook. Installing Android proper means downloading an installer to your PC and wiping the Kindle OS — and all your downloaded content along with it.
Consequently, you’ll lose access to Amazon Prime streaming video — not a big deal if you’re not a Prime subscriber, but unfortunately there’s no Amazon Instant Video app available for Android. You can restore your books via the Kindle app, but that’s it.
I took the service for a test-drive on a 2nd-gen Fir… [Read more]
If you were thinking that a decade of waiting time between the last Killer Instinct video game and now was a long time to wait for fans of the fighting title, you’ll be happy to see what’s been brewing. What the team at Double Helix have created is a next-generation title using the solid must-haves
National Archive documents recently released show that the UK government’s very own UFO department, which had reported on sightings for over 50 years, was shut down three years ago. The department apparently never revealed any “potential threats” to the country, so the Ministry of Defence closed both the hotline and email address that fielded the public’s sightings of UFOs. A civil servant briefed the current defence minister, Bob Ainsworth, saying: “The level of resources diverted to this task is increasing in response to a recent upsurge in reported sightings, diverting staff from more valuable defence-related activities.” The recently released files also covered some of the sightings reported from across the UK in 2009, which included, perhaps unsurprisingly, Stonehenge.
No, it’s not the first Steve Jobs movie to make it out, but it’s the first one to take it seriously. And so far, it doesn’t look half bad. We’ll have to wait and see how the whole thing holds up, but color us hopeful. If nothing else, Ashton Kutcher can be a total dead-ringer for the guy.
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