Rodney Brown writes in Mass High Tech that iRobot founder Helen Greiner‘s new company CyPhy works has landed a $2.4 million research award from NIST to figure out how to improve inspection and monitoring of civil infrastructure — highways, bridges and dams — using unmanned aerial vehicles.

As Greiner puts it, “There are 600,000 bridge in the United States, and there is a mandate for inspection of each of them every two years.” The mandate, by the way, comes from the National Bridge Inspection Standards (NBIS) from the U.S. Dept of Transportation.

Teamed up with the Georgia Institute of Technology Research Corp., CyPhy will work on a remote inspection system based on small, unmanned, hovering robots fitted with video cameras and other sensors. The planned hovering UAV would slowly move around bridges and similar structures to gather close-up, HD images. 

Such systems have long been pursued as the holy grail of bridge inspection, due to cost, safety and accuracy. A Bridge Inspection Robotic Development Interface (BIRDI) constortium was launched in Korea, for example, with the primary goal to develop advanced robot systems for automated bridge inspection and monitoring while reducing human risks and improving efficiency and data reliability.

Uncategorized innovation, robotics

Reading Dana Mattioli‘s article in the Wall Street Journal today about R&D spending. She cites a recent Booz & Co study of 1,000 of the world’s biggest R&D spenders – the study finds that most companies have stuck with their innovation programs despite the recession — and many are boosting spending to compete more effectively in the upturn.

Mattioli’s article is a nice summary, but the Booz report itself (written by Barry Jaruzelski and Kevin Dehoff)is highly recommended reading for anyone involved in innovation.

I like the tone and content of many of the executive quotes in the report like:

• “Innovation is what drives our competitive position in all three of our markets — automotive, professional, and consumer — and therefore we can’t back off,” says Robert Lardon, corporate VP for at Harman International Industries.
• Adalio Sanchez, GM of IBM’s System X server business, echoes that point of view: “I would argue that the recession is a catalyst for increased innovation.”

Booz cites three primary reasons companies are so reluctant to cut innovation spending when times are extremely tough.

1. Innovation has become a core component of overall corporate strategy. Given the fierce nature of business competition in recent years, a reduction in innovation efforts would be akin to unilateral disarmament in wartime.
2. Companies in most sectors are typically committed to product development cycles that extend for many years — well beyond the length of an average recession. If they are suppliers, they have often already contracted to help develop their customers’ next new model; if they sell to consumers, missing an innovation cycle can mean being put out of the game entirely.
3. Many companies see the recession as an opportunity to build their advantage over their competitors
   — especially weaker ones that may have to skimp on R&D for financial reasons. If the stronger companies can maintain the pace of innovation, the thinking goes, they may be able to gain market share quickly once the upturn gets under way in earnest.

Judging from the data in the Booz study, the results of their survey, and their conversations with executives, innovation has become central to every company’s efforts to compete. And the degree of competition has been in no sense reduced by the downturn.

If anything, concludes the Booz report, it has been heightened, and most companies are fully aware of the need to be in position to profit from the coming upturn.

This includes, of course, keeping up a steady flow of PR to ensure a relentless brand presence, as well.

The Booz report: Profits Down, Spending Steady: The Global Innovation 1000

Uncategorized innovation, R&D spending, technology, Technology Public Relations

President Obama’s new “Educate to Innovate”  campaign aims to improve the participation and performance of America’s students in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).

The President launched the initiative with these words, “We’re going to show young people how cool science can be.” Having spent my entire career dedicated to the promotion of technology and innovation, I could not be more excited to hear such sentiments from the President of the United States!

The campaign expects to include Federal Government participation, as well as imput from leading companies, foundations, non-profits, and science and engineering societies to work with young people across America to excel in science and math.

In fact, five major public-private partnerships are jumping in to harness the power of media, interactive games, hands-on learning, and community volunteers to reach millions of students over the next four years, inspiring them to be the next generation of inventors and innovators. $4.35 billion in Federal grants will be offered to schools who can innovate in STEM education and the private sector is stepping up with an additional $260 million in related funding and programs.

I like what Chuck Lawton had to say in his GeekDad post about this. “Part of what makes this exciting is the contrast between “Educate to Innovate” and the purely standards-based ‘No Child Left Behind’ initiative which had similar but broader goals for increasing educational competency. Regardless of where you stand on the merits of NCLB, a focus to improve test scores as the only metric for improvement isn’t as engaging or applicable for students as robotics competitions, computer programming in the form of games or other real-world applications of science. And corporations looking for the next wave of top thinkers, such as Intel, now have the ability to get involved.”

These remain exciting times in general, and while many say the President has too much on his plate, this kind of initiative has been a LONG time coming. I’m glad to see an adminstration willing to face the slide in America’s ability to educate in science and math. And more importantly, an adminstration willing to DO something about it!

By the way, parts of Tom Friedman’s recent column Advice From Grandma resonate perfectly with this. Friedman declares he is ”not ready to cede the 21st century to China just yet,” because you cannot commodotize imagination. And today’s technology allows us, he says, to act on our imaginations farther, faster, deeper and cheaper than ever before.

• Whitehouse press release on Educate to Innovate
• Whitehouse blog on Educate to Innovate
• President Obama’s full remarks on Educate to Innovate

Uncategorized Educate to Innovate, education, innovation, politics, technology

The book “Startup Nation” by Dan Senor and Saul Singer is climbing the bestseller charts these days.

It’s certainly a great read, and confirms so many of the observations I’ve had the privilege to make first-hand over the past two years since Rainier opened its Israel office (I travel to Tel Aviv again in about 10 days…).

And now the authors have an article in Newsweek – “Soldiers of Fortune: How the Israeli Army became the most prolific innovation engine on earth.”
The article focuses on one key aspect of the book – the Israeli military’s role in becoming a boot camp for new tech entrepreneurs.

I remember coming home from my first formal business trip to Israel in 2007, and saying (regarding the breathtaking innovation I’d seen over 25+ meetings), “There’s something about the army background that’s driving all this…”

 
Please don’t get the mistaken impression though, that Israel’s entrepreneurial success is solely about the military. As Yaron Samid says in his TechAviv article, “Without stealing the thunder from this uniquely well written book, here are a few of the observations Dan and Saul present from detailed case studies and interviews with Israel’s top innovators:

• Israeli immigration and assimilation policies bring and support a highly motivated, diversified pool of talent into the country.
• Israel spends more as a percentage of our economy on R&D than any other country in the world and knows how to make that money relevant to startups.
• Israel actively cultivates a culture of entrepreneurship and leadership in the military. Teenagers are not only given the responsibility to make life-saving decisions, typically with little data, but to question authority regularly in doing so.
• The Israeli economy respects and knows how to integrate the unique talents and “chutzpah” developed by soldiers in the military.

Next month I’ll make my 20th trip to Israel. I’ll meet with somewhere around 25 Israeli high-tech companies and many of the VCs who are driving this unique innovation engine. It’s an absolutely fantastic phenomenon, and a thrill for anyone like me who thrives on being around technology (and, of course, helping to bring technology to the market!).

Uncategorized innovation, Israel, technology, Technology Public Relations

Speaking at Venture Beat’s Smart Grid conference the other day, VC superstar John Doerr (of Kleiner Perkins) declared that “Greentech could be the largest economic opportunity of the 21st century.”

Doerr compares the evolution of the Smart Grid to the initial, disorganized adoption of the Internet, but voiced his concern about the U.S.’s position in the global cleantech business.

Doerr said. “Even if you don’t believe in global warming, or if you don’t believe this is going to be the biggest global business… the U.S. is not going to win unless our entrepreneurs start to lead — and not just our business entrepreneurs, also our policy entrepreneurs.”

In underscoring the opportunity, Doerr pointed out that while the Internet represents a $1 trillion economy, the energy business  is a $6 trillion dollar economy(!).

And in a soundbite built to stir the passion of pioneering entrepreneurial zeal, Doerr declared, “The super grid is going to be the last great network we build in our lifetimes.”

See the writeup on Doerr’s talk by Eric Wesoff in GreenTechMedia.

Uncategorized cleantech, green technology, innovation, technology, venture capital

Starbucks says it has begun implementing an LED lighting conversion program in all of its company-owned stores in the U.S. and Canada, and has already completed installation in more than 1,000 U.S. locations.

The retail giant expects to expand the program to international markets in March 2010, aiming to complete installation in more than 8,000 company-owned stores around the world by the end of 2010.

Once that’s all done, Starbucks projects a 7 percent per-store reduction in energy use. This is a very exciting move by a major corporate entity, and I like the statement it makes about responsible energy consumption. I also like the technology implications here – solid state lighting is viable and can be esthetically formed to meet the needs of all kinds of design environments.

 Solid state lighting seems to be finally moving into the mainstream. I’ve recently come across Oree who is developing next-generation planar LED illumination with the first flat, thin, highly efficient light source. It’s cool because it lets lighting companies do some very creative design while still reducing energy consumption.

Oree’s is the kind of technology that could drive widespread adoption of LEDs in growing markets such as general lighting, decoration and LCD panels. I like it.

Uncategorized cleantech, green technology, innovation, LED Lighting, technology

Gizmodo is running an excellent series this week called “This Cyborg Life.”

The series is described as being about “what happens when we treat our body less as a sacred object and more as what it is: Nature’s ultimate machine.”

Here’s are some of my favorite stories from the series:

• If 1950s Men Redesigned the Human Form, We’d Be Horrors
• Gadget Singularity: Let’s Ditch Our Buttons and Screens Forever
• This Flight Helmet Collection Will Kill Your Childhood Dreams
• Nature’s Most Wicked-Looking Robot, the Bacteriophage
• Tales of Human Upgrades: Magnetic Fingertips
• Me and My Exoskeleton: The Trick to Super Strength
• The Six Million Dollar Man’s Cyborg Surgery, Adjusted for Today’s Dollar
• Digital Tattoo Interface Turns Your Skin Into A Display
• I Wear My Suncontacts at Night
• Tales of Human Upgrades: Jerry Jalava’s USB Finger
• Audeo Captures Electrical Signals From The Brain To Create Sound

All these are very cool and worth taking the time to read, in my opinion.

The entire series is posted on Gizmodo at “This Cyborg Life.”

Uncategorized innovation, nanotechnology, neuroscience, singularity, technology