The Technology Collaborative
Round 18 Awards
1. "Software Defined Broadband Wireless Baseband Module"
Accipiter Systems, Inc.
The Open Base Station Architecture Initiative (OBSAI) Forum has defined an architecture for an open Base Transceiver Station (BTS) with the objective of creating an open market for base station components, modules and systems. Accipiter Systems is developing one such module, an Advanced Mezzanine Card (AMC), OBSAI compliant; software defined broadband wireless, baseband module. This product enables a wide variety of applications including public service 4G networks as well as private 4G networks for military and other Government agencies use.
2. "Proposal for a Highly Reliable & Accurate, ZigBee-Based Indooor Location
Tracking System"
Buzby Networks, LLC
Buzby Networks has developed an innovative system that wirelessly tracks the real time location of mobile devices indoors. This is known as a Real Time Locating System, or RTLS. The innovative Buzby Networks RTLS is highly reliable and built on a plug-and-play platform that eliminates the need for expensive site surveys. Through internal and contracted engineering efforts, Buzby Networks will convert its RTLS design into a final product. Once the product is complete, the company will market it to developers of wireless mesh networks that have location tracking needs for their own customers’ end-use.
As its primary deliverable, Buzby Networks will have produced a Real-Time Locating System product consisting of hardware and software upon the completion of the year-long project. Upon program completion, Buzby Networks will be in the early phases of commercialization.
3. "Development of a Universal Plug-and-Play M2M Platform"
Cellular Tracking Technologies, LLC
Machine to machine (M2M) communications technologies are the future of wireless data delivery. M2M uses existing networks, usually cellular (GSM or CDMA) and internet, to transmit data from a deployed wireless unit to a server and, ultimately, the end user. The current state of the art in M2M communications is customized solutions with specific operating parameters and limited broad-spectrum applicability and customer base. The goal of this project is to develop a M2M platform that is highly adaptable and dynamic, to fit multiple hardware systems and a broad customer base. Cellular Tracking Technologies approach will feature an embedded M2M software platform that runs as a complete embedded module. This module will serve as the “glue” between the M2M application, the cellular network, the TCP/IP network, and the end server that manages the device data collection and control. Their platform will allow a customer with very little M2M, cellular, and TCP/IP experience to “M2M Enable” their application rapidly with minimal expense.
Cellular Tracking Technologies, LLC is a western Pennsylvania company that specializes in hardware and software solutions to data delivery via cellular networks. Their initial products are for tracking wildlife (eagles, deer, etc.), but TTC funding will allow them to expand into other markets.
4. "A High Aspect Ratio Anisotropic Mesher for the Electronics and Manufacturing
Industries"
Ciespace Corporation
Ciespace develops and sells software products that automate mesh creation. Meshing is a required step in the design and test of many manufactured products, including consumer electronics, medical devices, automobiles and airplanes. Ciespace’s comprehensive BubbleMesh™ product suite consistently generates high-quality meshes for complex product designs, enabling customers to solve the most difficult non-linear, multi-physics problems in an automated fashion. By adopting BubbleMesh™ products, Ciespace’s customers and partners have significantly reduced the cost of mesh creation for engineering analysis and realized substantial improvements in the speed and quality of virtual product design and testing.
TTC’s funds will support the development of a high-aspect ratio meshing product, which is required for several types of analysis in the electronics, aerospace and manufacturing industries. Ciespace will work closely with its TTC member partners to ensure that this project is a success.
5. "Extreme Video Processing"
Concurrent EDA, LLC
Concurrent EDA, a Pittsburgh-based developer of high-performance electronics has been awarded a grant from The Technology Collaborative to develop the Extreme Video System. This system will have applications for high-end surveillance and military robotics applications that require embedded intelligence. This intelligence requires enormous processing capabilities to automatically extract information from raw video.
Concurrent EDA's Extreme Video System will integrate multiple 5 to 10 mega pixel cameras, process more than 2.4 billion bits of data per second, and transmit results over a high performance network. In order to meet these requirements, Dr. Ray Hoare, Founder and CEO, said the company "will use its proprietary electronic design automation products to produce dedicated hardware chips that transform billions of bits of image data per second into actionable knowledge, like object detection, classification and tracking."
Hoare also said that "computer vision capabilities exist in OpenCV, an open-source software library but current processors are just not fast enough to handle high resolution images in real time." Computer vision enables computer to do what we all take for granted, to know what we are looking at" Hoare added. This capability can be embedded in a wide range of electronic devices from surveillance cameras to cell phones to robotics.
6. "Intelligent Real-time Audio Video Metadata Generation Appliance"
ContentVision
Video is one of the most widely used and effective communication tools available. As its use grows more pervasive, the need to manage, distribute and search it accurately becomes critical. ContentVision software is a web-based solution that ingests, tags, monitors, organizes and searches audio and video. With this project ContentVision intends to expand its reach to include three new markets: sports organizations, digital signage and intelligent video surveillance.
For this project ContentVision will deliver a next generation, feature rich Audio/Video logger for metadata generation. It features internet ready H.264 video file creation, image based scene change detection, audio speech to text processing, face, human, vehicle detection, tracking and classification. These capabilities will allow content owners to gather business intelligence, streamline production processes, and re-purpose video for reuse and distribution over multiple delivery channels.
7. "Spike: Wide Dynamic Range Adaptive Image Sensor"
Intrigue Technologies, Inc.
After several years of tremendous growth the demand for image sensors is leveling off despite the projection that the image sensor would find tremendous growth opportunities in automotive, security and military vision systems. The consumer-level imaging sensors do not automatically translate to these new applications. The future imaging applications operate in unstructured environments in which consumer imaging devices simply fail to consistently capture image details rendering the entire vision system inoperable.
Intrigue Technologies new project dubbed “Spike” will bridge the gap between the technology capability and market opportunity. Spike will develop a prototype of a new high dynamic range image sensor chip. The proposed sensor will work synergistically with other technologies, such as RoboRetina™ Camera, developed by Intrigue under TTC and other programs. Spike sensor will provide wide dynamic range data that the RoboRetina™ Camera will process and render on low dynamic range displays without any loss of visual details.
8. "Face Mining of Digital Video"
Pittsburgh Pattern Recognition
Pittsburgh Pattern Recognition is a spin-off company from Carnegie Mellon University founded in 2004. Its face detection, face tracking, and face recognition software is based on over ten years of research and is widely considered to be the leading technology in these areas.
Digital video is growing at an explosive rate. It is growing along multiple dimensions: Internet video, security video, professionally produced entertainment video, home / amateur video, video conferencing, and government video. Often people are the primary objects of interest in these large video collections.
Pittsburgh Pattern Recognition proposes the creation of a new system called “Face Mining” (patent pending) for navigating and searching large sets of digital video based on the people contained within them. At its core, this technology will be based on our state-of-the-art face recognition technology. By being able to recognize faces in video, we can represent information about the occurrences of people in video in many ways. The proposed program will let us build a system that will take large video data sets and provide intuitive tools for navigating, searching, and cross-referencing individuals across a cumulative database.
They also propose to build a prototype website called facemining.com. The service would be a publicly available demonstration of the above technology seeded with data from the Internet at large. The goal of this website would be to build awareness and excitement around the face-mining technology.
9. "High Resolution, Near-Field 3D Scanning in Outdoor Environments"
threeRivers 3D, Inc.
threeRivers 3D offers both standard and custom 3D scanners that enable users to quickly generate 3D models from real-world objects. Their patented technology achieves unparalleled levels of speed and accuracy. The easy to use software quickly generates meshed models ready for further processing in the software of your choice.
For this project, threeRivers 3D proposes to develop a ruggedized, outdoor use 3D scanner capable of acquiring medium-sized objects in sub-millimeter resolution in full sunlight. This project will expand threeRivers 3D’s capabilities into the area of portable, outdoor 3D scanning, a market segment that is currently underserved by high resolution devices. Typical applications would include: forensics, archaeology, construction, planning, and military sensing.
10. "Proposal for Development of a ZigBee Based Safety Communication System
for Senior Living Communities"
Touchtown, Inc.
As America's population ages, the number of people in senior living communities is growing rapidly. Although nearly all senior living communities have an emergency communications system, typically these systems provide communications in only one direction, from residents to staff in case of an emergency. Systems that provide communication in the opposite direction, from staff to residents, are almost unknown.
Touchtown, already an established leader in lifestyle communications for this industry, is now developing an innovative approach to safety communications called Touchtown Safety™. It will improve the survivability and precision of information delivery, significantly reduce installation cost, and reduce operators’ operating costs and financial risk.
Touchtown applied to TTC for support to complete product development and bring this product to market. Specifically, we propose to use these funds to extend Touchtown Safety into new areas that are vital to the commercial success of our project.
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