A human-sized robot with special abilities and two innovative IT solutions for companies: Three start-ups from the university have been awarded an EXIST start-up grant at the same time. Another success for start-up support on campus.
The spin-offs "infopixel" and "STORM 2" each consist of a trio of computer scientists, while the multidisciplinary team of "a1robotics" is made up of a neurobiologist, a physicist with a doctorate and a computer scientist from the university. The funding from the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy for the three projects, co-financed by the European Social Fund, totals almost 400,000 euros.
Computing Science graduates Christian Dänekas, Philipp Gringel and Steffen Kruse from infopixel are working on graphic visualisations. These are an important means for companies to prepare complex technical or organisational data in a comprehensible way for different groups of people, for example in IT management. The cloud-based solution from infopixel is intended to offer a simple alternative to the time-consuming manual creation of visualisations and expensive specialised tools.
Its key technical innovation: the software generates the graphics automatically, eliminating the need for repeated revisions and ongoing checks to ensure they are up-to-date and consistent. In this way, the trio of founders from the OFFIS affiliated Institute want to save costs and enable a collaborative way of working.
The three Diplom Computing Science graduates Svetlana Lipnitskaya, Olaf Roeder and Sebastian van Vliet from STORM 2 are addressing the increasing documentation requirements for sustainability activities in business. Until now, recording, documenting and personalising these activities, which are often scattered across all departments and locations of a company, has been associated with considerable effort and costs.
The trio's business idea, which has its roots in the university's Department of Information Systems, is to develop software that utilises modern automated data integration mechanisms to enable strategic, opportunity- and risk-efficient sustainability management, while at the same time making the potential for sustainable development visible and usable. The team has been researching IT-supported sustainable corporate development for four years and has already been able to win a number of partners and pilot customers with its idea.
Robotic systems are the focus of the third founding team of a1robotics, consisting of Malte Ahlers, Sven Burdorf and Dennis Borde. They have developed a modular humanoid robot the size of an adult human. The arms of the current prototype ADAM-1 are based on a biologically inspired joint system that enables a human-like movement sequence. A new type of force measurement sensor system for all axes of movement of the arms is used, among other things, for flexible and safe interaction of the system with humans. The head, which is motorised in two axes, is equipped with optical and acoustic sensors. The robot can move freely in space with the help of an omnidirectional drive system.
The Oldenburg founders initially want to establish their product as a research robot, particularly for global university research and teaching in the field of service robotics. All of the robot's subsystems will also be available as individual components.
