Quixter has built a biometric pay-by-palm technology system that’s up and running at Lund University in Sweden. The idea is the brainchild of Fredrik Leifland, an engineering student at the university, who wanted to come up with a quicker system for making card payments. (And clearly didn’t think much of NFC.) Read More
Israeli startup StoreDot is showing off a bio-organic fast-charging battery tech, which uses quantum dot technology, that can charge a battery from flat to full in 30 seconds. It’s also looking to push its nano-crystal technology into smartphone displays as a cheaper, cadmium-free alternative. Read More
Back in the summer we covered Fuel3D’s Kickstarter campaign for a high res scanner that can turn real world objects into 3D models with accurate geometry and colour — a companion device for the rise in ownership of 3D printers (which of course need 3D blueprints to print).
Fuel3D went on to raise more than $300,000 via its Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign, and today the technology that came out of the U.K.’s Oxford University has further added to its war chest for continued development and getting the product to market — snagging $2.6 million in early stage financing from a syndicate of private investors, led by Ben Gill of London-based Chimera Partners.
It’s also talking early IPO, with plans to follow this tranche of external funding with a mezzanine financing round, expected to take place before the summer — and, possibly, an initial public offering as early as 2015.
“We have established a core group of shareholders that have taken a long term view on the technology and management of Fuel 3D Technologies,” said Gill, commenting on the funding in a statement. “The 3D printing market is the focus of significant investor interest at the moment, and Fuel 3D’s disruptive technology feeds that interest from a unique angle. We are actively exploring a number of interesting financing options, including the possibility of an early IPO.”
Fuel3D said the big response to its Kickstarter campaign, which had only been aiming to raise $75,000 so pulled in 4x that original target, helped it draw interest from the broader investment community.
“We had a phenomenal response to our product on Kickstarter and the attention this generated led to many enquiries from the broader investment community,” said Stuart Mead, CEO, Fuel 3D Technologies, in a statement. “We have always been confident that our technology has the potential to revolutionize the industry and are delighted to have found a group of ambitious and well-resourced investors who share our vision.”
While Fuel3D is not the first to build a high resolution 3D scanner by any means, its focus on making such high end tech affordable — putting a sub-$1,000 price-tag on the device for its Kickstarter campaign — is presumably what’s especially exciting investors here.
The expected retail price of Fuel3D’s device will actually be $1,500 — albeit, that’s still far below rival high res scanners which it says retail for $15,000+.
Fuel3D’s device also breaks from the relatively rigid turntable model for scanning objects, such as the rival Photon 3D scanner, allowing for more freestyle scanning. So, for instance, human faces can be captured in situ — i.e. on people’s necks — without having to do any kind of separating of head from body.
The other focus for Fuel3D is on capturing accurate colour and detailed texture, offering wide scope for its scanner beyond the 3D printing space — i.e. for use by 3D artists, animators, game designers and so on.
Fuel3D’s original Kickstarter campaign was aiming to ship to the earliest backers in April, with additional shipments penciled in for July and September as it worked through to fulfill orders.
As the quantified self movement continues to pick up momentum, the range of consumer devices tracking physiological signals is set to expand. But harvesting bio-signals requires specialist kit — which can be either expensive to buy or tricky to put together yourself for prototyping purposes, unless that’s your particular area of expertise. Well, here’s a device that wants to change that. BITalino is a simplified system for makers, app developers and researchers who want to quickly start capturing bio-signals.
The low cost (€149/$197 + shipping and taxes) kit of modular blocks includes a swathe of physiological sensors that can be broken out to use individually or linked together and used in whatever combination you’re after. BITalino’s approach is plug and play, to keep things as simple as possible. The sensors in the kit can interface with computing platforms such as Arduino (and derivatives) and Raspberry Pi, says project lead Hugo Silva. BITalino also includes Bluetooth connectivity so can be used in desktop and mobile environments.
“Currently there are several APIs for platforms including Android OS, Java or Python; BITalino is also cloud / web compatible through a software framework based on WebSockets, HTML5 and CSS3,” he tells TechCrunch.
Sensors included in the BITalino kit are:
The board also includes an LED block for visual feedback, a microcontroller unit and a power management block to power the other units.
The kit is the result of a collaboration between Portuguese bio-sensor maker, PLUX – Wireless Biosignals (co-founded by Silva in 2007), and a not-for-profit research centre in the country, called Instituto de Telecomunicações, where Silva is currently doing his PhD. He isn’t aiming to make money off the BITalino kit itself — hence its low cost and bootstrapped status.
“BITalino by itself won’t be a money maker; it is more thought out as a community driver/motivator,” he says. ”BITalino is sold with everything needed for people to start developing. The hardware prices start at €149 (+ shipping and taxes) and includes all the sensors and parts to jump start their work. The APIs and software framework is provided free of cost as well.
“Our goal with BITalino is to empower the community with basic tools for rapid prototyping of biosignal-based projects. We are looking forward to lower the prices even more as the production scales up.”
As well as its low relative cost – ”BITalino makes technologies that usually cost several thousands of dollars readily available for anyone at very low pricing”, according to Silva — he says the platform’s other disruptive factor is its goal of “democratising” bio-signal acquisition technologies. The grand aim behind that being to help bring down the cost of developing affordable medical devices for developing and low-income countries.
While BITalino overlaps somewhat, in competitive terms, with Arduino and (the also not-for profit) Raspberry Pi, Silva says it is carving out a niche by specialising in bio-signal capture and processing. ”The Arduino and Raspberry Pi platforms can be seen as competitors, however, biosignals have specific requirements (e.g. tolerance to noise, sampling frequency) for which these platforms are not particularly tuned, and many projects end up heavily bounded by the high cost and limited access to suitable hardware materials,” he says.
“The closest platform that one can find in this segment is the Libellium e-Health sensor platform for Arduino and Raspberry Pi, however the price point for this platform is above $500 and it does not provide either the same sensors, or the same versatility in terms of hardware and software. BITalino provides a framework for very integrated (stamp-like) systems to be developed, and has a growing and wide range of APIs and software tools.”
BITalino went on sale in mid August 2013 and just over 100 of the modular kits have been pre-ordered or sold to-date. Research institutions are a strong initial customer base, as you’d expect — but BITalino is also being targeted more broadly at students, hobbyists and app developers, so there’s plenty of scope for that number to grow.
“We’ve sold to countries ranging from U.S., South Africa, Italy, Spain, UK. BITalinos are already being used by people from institutions such as the MIT, University of Florida, Zurich University, among many others,” Silva adds.
Here’s a video demonstrating some possible use-cases for BITalino:
Passwords could be passé if this Toronto-based startup has its way. Bionym, which was founded in 2011 and closed a $1.4 million (CAD) seed round last month, has devised a biometric recognition system in the form of a wearable wristband — called Nymi, just launched as a pre-order for $79 for early 2014 shipping.
The wristband relies on authenticating identity by matching the overall shape of the user’s heartwave (captured via an electrocardiogram sensor). Unlike other biotech authentication methods — like fingerprint scanning and iris-/facial-recognition tech — the system doesn’t require the user to authenticate every time they want to unlock something. Because it’s a wearable device, the system sustains authentication so long as the wearer keeps the wristband on.
To authenticate via Nymi, the user puts the wristband on and touches a topside sensor with one hand to complete an electrical loop with the bottom-side sensor touching their wrist. That generates the ECG data used to authenticate their identity, and the wristband transmits the ECG (via Bluetooth) to the corresponding registered app, on a smartphone or other device in proximity to the user, to verify the wearer is who they say they are.
Bionym says Nymi is a three-factor security system, being as multiple pieces have to be in place for authentication to be achieved. However the system skips some ongoing hassle of multi-factor systems by maintaining an authenticated state and only requiring the user to offer up their biometric data once per day (or however often they remove the wristband).
As well as an ECG sensor and Bluetooth low energy for transmitting data, the wristband contains a gyroscope and accelerometer so it can support gesture unlocking scenarios, too (it has 6-axis motion sensing) — so you could use a particular wrist twist to unlock a car door, for instance. That sort of scenario will depend mostly on third party developers getting involved and building out an app ecosystem around the device. Bionym is releasing an API that will be open source so it’s hoping to attract broad interest.
Proximity is another parameter developers could build into unlocking scenarios — a payments application would make sense to require the wristband to be in close proximity to a reader to confirm a transaction, for instance, whereas a smart TV might want to configure a profile to a particular user when they walk into the room.
The wristband device itself could also be used for health/activity tracking, says CEO and co-founder Karl Martin. “We will support basic gestures ourselves, and we will also give access to the motion information for other uses. For example, people might want to use it for activity tracking, in addition to the gestures,” he tells TechCrunch.
The Nymi device will include a battery to power the data capture and transfers — which Martin said will support about a week’s use between charges. The corresponding Nymi app will let users create custom notifications if they so desire, so they could configure the app to alert them to new emails or messages when they authenticate the device in the morning. The app will be available on iOS, Android, Windows and Mac OSX initially. An open-source SDK will allow for developers to port support to other platforms.
Bionym, which was originally spun out of the University of Toronto (where Martin got his Ph.D.), claims it doesn’t have any “real direct competitors” for the specific functionality it’s offering.
“We don’t view this as just a product to unlock your devices, smartphones, etc. Those are security applications. We’re looking beyond that to smart environments. How do we enable hyper-personalised experience? These are all applications of identity. Security is one application but not the only one, and as far as I know nobody else is doing that,” says Martin.
There’s no doubt plenty of others are eyeing up the password-alternative space, though. Google is one and is part of the FIDO Alliance that’s seeking to come up with a new framework for digital authentication. Anyone who can crack the ‘passwords are broken’ problem with a robust, low-friction alternative is clearly in for a very lucrative ride.
Add to that, there’s potential for capturing extremely granular user data if users are required to wear a sensor at all times when accessing their gadgets and services. However Martin stresses that Nymi is building in privacy “by design,” as well as security — with a hardware-secure element where the user’s ECG data is cryptographically stored and which — crucially — other applications will require user permission to access.
“We have a cryptographic chip on the wristband,” he notes. “We’re not just depending on software, we have hardware-based cryptography there. It … allows that communication to be encrypted. It doesn’t just depend on just the Bluetooth standard which has some weaknesses.
“When it’s transmitting your identity… to your devices around you you don’t want anybody to know that it’s you unless you opt in, you don’t want to be tracked, you don’t want somebody, say, a Bluetooth scanner to know when you’re around so we encrypt that information so that it becomes opt in. Nobody can know that it’s you without your permission.”
Using hardware-based cryptography also allows the Nymi to bolster its defences against identity spoofing attacks. “If your identity is essentially a long binary string, can’t somebody just copy that and retransmit it? And the answer to that is we digitally sign all the data coming off the wristband so that it’s impossible for anybody to spoof that data and essentially steal your identity,” he adds.
So what will Nymi offer its early adopters? At launch, in the beginning of 2014, it will support built in device unlocking capabilities, and be supported by a range of third party apps, says Martin.
“We’re going to be working very closely with developers this fall,” he says. “We already have lots of developers signed up for that. So we’re going to be ourselves offering basic capabilities ourselves for unlocking personal devices and computers. And then at the same time we are engaged with several companies that make consumer electronic products… that’s going on behind the scenes. And then there are third party developers — and we’re going to be all about nurturing that to happen so that by the time we launch there will definitely be some high quality third party applications.”
Looking ahead, the grand vision is surely for a password-less future, based on authentication via wearable biometrics. That’s a ways off, right now though, as Martin concedes. ”The goal is not to simply manage passwords, the goal is to replace passwords,” he says. “That being said it obviously takes time for these things to be adopted in a ubiquitous way so we are looking at some intermediate solutions to integrate with password managers, things like that.
“Part of our launch right now is to see what are the kinds of integrations people want the most… We want to get people’s ideas for what the vision for this kind of a product is so we can focus on that.”
Irish startup Galvanic has just launched a Kickstarter to crowdsource funding a wireless stress biosensor it’s calling PIP. PIP — which stands for ‘personal input pod’ — is a Bluetooth biosensor that monitors its user’s stress levels by measuring their galvanic skin response (GSR) as they hold the PIP pinched between thumb and forefinger. GSR means skin conductance — so basically how sweaty you’re getting and therefore how nervous you’re feeling.
PIP isn’t just a quantifiable self-tapping biosensor; it’s been designed to work in conjunction with iOS and Android phone and tablet apps to provide a gamification element. The company has created three games designed to be played using the PIP, which utilises Bluetooth as its data transport tech. The user’s stress level is then incorporated into each game as the core gameplay mechanic — with the ultimate aim being to help the player learn what they need to do to relax.
It sounds a bit counterintuitive, since competitive gaming can be synonymous with sweaty palms, which is presumably why Galvanic’s project extends to designing stress-busting games. It’s created three games to be used in conjunction with the PIP — a relaxing racing game, a seasonal mood game where players meditate on a wintery scene to turn it into spring, and a more playful lie-detector multi-player game — but it does also plan to launch an SDK in future to get third party developers expanding the PIP’s gaming ecosystem.
With this initial handful of in-house games the PIP can only be so interesting, but if Galvanic can convince enough people to buy in to the gadget and thus lure enough outside developers to join in, there’s plenty of potential for other cool biosensing software ideas. The price per PIP is $79 for a limited number of early bird Kickstarter backers, or $99 thereafter. Presumably each new PIP-compatible game may also carry a consumer price-tag.
Galvanic is gunning for $100,000 in Kickstarter funding, with the money to be used for finalising manufacturing and readying its own apps. Assuming it hits this rather ambitious funding goal, the company reckons it can gear up for mass production by the end of 2013, and expects to be shipping in Q1 2014. In future it said it plans to expand platform support beyond Android and iOS, to add Windows Phone, Blackberry, Windows, MacOS and also game Consoles and set-top boxes.
While modern medical technology has not reached the stage where one is able to get a robotic prosthetics in the same vein as that of Anakin Skywalker when he received a lesson in lightsaber dueling against Count Dooku, we have arrived at the edge of the doorstep, where one might be able to print 3D cartilage constructs as and when required. This is what a bunch of researchers over at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine have demonstrated recently using a novel bioprinter that relies on a couple of low-cost fabrication techniques so that it can deliver a structure which is not only durable but biologically active.
An electrospinning machine will rely on an electrical current to generate the kind of extremely fine fibers required from a polymer, resulting in a strong and porous structure. Following that, a common inkjet printer will deposit layers of natural gel, while a solution of cartilage cells is also put into the structure. You end up with a hybrid synthetic and natural cartilage construct which does seem to resemble that of actual cartilage after eight weeks of implantation in mice under earlier experiments. Hopefully, humans will be next without any devious side effects.
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