Refraction AI, a company developing semi-autonomous delivery robots, today announced that it raised $4.2 million in seed funding led by Pillar VC. Refraction says that the proceeds will be used for customer acquisition, geographic expansion, and product development well into the next year. The worsening COVID-19 health crisis in much of the U.S. seems likely [...]
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--observIQ, a provider of next-generation observability solutions for ITOps and DevOps teams, today announced that its open source log agent Stanza is now part of the OpenTelemetry Project as the key component for log collection. observIQ’s Stanza Log Agent Now a Part of OpenTelemetry Project #observIQ #OpenTelemetryTweet this Since its inception in 2020, observIQ’s [...]
Despite the precariousness of 2020, one thing is certain as we look to the future: Autonomous delivery will become an integral part of our world. This massive potential is evident on both a global and national scale — there have been 195 deployments of social robots worldwide in response to the pandemic. The U.S. has seen a 20% [...]
Traxen, a metro Detroit-based technology, launched its intelligent adaptive cruise control system, iQ-Cruise, for traditional and electric commercial vehicles. The system will be available to both commercial vehicle aftermarket and OE customers. Through the use of artificial intelligence (AI), advanced algorithms and sensors, iQ-Cruise can reduce fuel consumption by an average of 10% while improving safety, drivability [...]
Study to Evaluate Strata's Ability to Detect Tumor Recurrence using Liquid Biopsy and Monitor Treatment Effectiveness for Patients with Early-Stage Solid Tumors ANN ARBOR, Mich., Jan. 13, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Strata Oncology, Inc., a precision oncology company advancing molecular indications for cancer therapies, today announced plans to begin enrolling the Sentinel Trial in the first half of 2021. [...]
BURLINGAME, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has awarded its 2020 Clean Air Excellence Award for Transportation Efficiency Innovations to Aperia Technologies, a leading supplier of efficiency and safety-enhancing tire management technologies to the commercial trucking industry, for the Halo Tire Inflator. This is the EPA’s highest national award to honor a project for [...]
Ann Arbor, Mich. October 27, 2020 — Strata Oncology, Inc., a precision oncology company advancing molecular indications for cancer therapies, today announced that Palmetto GBA, a Medicare Administrative Contractor (MAC), has established coverage of the StrataNGSTM test for patients with advanced stages (III or IV), recurrent, relapsed, refractory, and/ or metastatic solid tumors. StrataNGSTM is a comprehensive [...]
Caroline Wong (@CarolineWMWong), CIO of Cobalt, said that if key security projects were delayed or canceled to make room for critical projects that would enable a distributed workforce to work more securely (for example, VPN implementation or training on how to set up a secure home WiFi network), “then it could be a positive change, [...]
ANN ARBOR – Tech veteran Jon Newhard joined conversational AI startup Clinc in July, five months after the company’s co-founder and former CEO Jason Mars stepped down over allegations of sexual harassment, verbal abuse and inappropriate conduct. After Mars' exit gained national attention and the University of Michigan suspended its recruiting relationship with the company, many were [...]
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich., Sept. 23, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- observIQ, a global leader of open source observability solutions for DevOps and ITOps, announces that it has launched a beta program for its new SaaS-based log management platform called observIQ Cloud. observIQ Cloud allows customers to seamlessly monitor multi and hybrid cloud environments at enterprise scale. [...]
Akadeum is pleased to announce that we are a semi-finalist in the XPRIZE Rapid Covid Testing competition. We have recently expanded our microbubble platform by functionalizing our revolutionary buoyancy-activated separation technology for RNA isolation in saliva samples. Our goal is to create a workflow that allows for quick and easy RNA extraction in larger volume [...]
The presidential and vice-presidential debates over the last few weeks have been…. interesting. I think we can all agree that they have been some of the most heated debates yet. The presidential debate quickly turned into emotional arguments that you could clearly see in the faces of the candidates. Image by Author: Using FiftyOne to visualize distributions [...]
ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Mobility industry veteran Luke Schneider has been named as the new chief executive officer of Ann Arbor-based Refraction AI. The tech startup is known for its small REV-1 , delivery robots that scuttle around Tree Town taking food and groceries to community members. Schneider has had over 25 years of experience in [...]
Like many automotive engineers, Ali Maleki has had to temper his expectations for autonomous vehicles in recent years. He once thought the technology would be available by this time. Now Maleki doesn’t expect widescale deployment until about 2030. But he still recognizes the potential convenience, safety and environmental benefits. And he’s doing something about it. [...]
PLYMOUTH, Michigan, Sept. 17, 2020 – Seasoned automotive business leader Mary Petrovich has joined the Traxen Board of Directors as chairman to support the start-up company in its mission to lead the trucking technology market rapidly into the future. In addition to Petrovich’s appointment to the board, Bill Gryzenia, an accomplished automotive industry veteran, has [...]
Ann Arbor startup and TechDisrupt 2019 AI top pick Voxel51 just announced that it has just launched a new tool called FiftyOne, the computer vision industry’s first open-source tool for experimenting with and cleaning image and video data for machine learning. Engineers working with machine learning for image and video data sets have a new way of [...]
Cobalt.io, a “pentest-as-a-service” platform that lets any business access ethical hackers to stress-test their software, has raised $29 million in a series B round of funding led by Highland Europe. Penetration testing, or “pentesting,” is a process that strives to identify vulnerabilities and exploit them as a real-world hacker might. The pentesting market is currently [...]
The restart is underway, and as stores reopen, retailers must ensure customers and employees maintain adequate social distancing. To help track and manage those efforts, startup Voxel51’s platform can monitor in-store traffic and identify when locations are busy. The company’s metric, referred to as the physical distancing index, uses video feeds and computer vision modeling to [...]
From Michigan to Tokyo, the coronavirus pandemic has led to a surge in demand for contactless delivery robots. In Ann Arbor, Michigan, lunch orders for Refraction AI’s last-mile REV-1 autonomous delivery robot have jumped by up to four-fold since the health crisis began. The company, which started operations in July 2019, created the robot for [...]
ANN ARBOR, Mich., July 29, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Strata Oncology, Inc. , a precision oncology company advancing molecular indications for cancer therapies, today announced it has signed an agreement with BioMed Valley Discoveries Inc.. to accelerate patient identification and enrollment for BioMed Valley's Phase 2 study of BVD-523 (ulixertinib) for patients with advanced malignancies harboring MEK or atypical BRAF alterations [...]
In an encouraging sign for application security, enterprise organizations are conducting penetration tests more frequently and more broadly than before, data from a new Cobalt.io study suggests. Unlike in the past where regulatory and other compliance mandates used to be the primary driver for these tests, organizations are now conducting them more to proactively detect [...]
Ann Arbor, Michigan based Clinc, a provider of conversational artificial intelligence technologies, formally announced a partnership with Visa Inc. (NYSE: V), extending its AI banking experience to financial institutions and banking customers around the world. “Our goal has always remained the same - to create technology that makes people’s lives easier,” said Lingjia Tang, Clinc co-founder and interim [...]
The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted a need for fast and accurate methods for identifying RNA viruses through nucleic acid capture and detection. Akadeum Life Sciences is up to the challenge. In a relatively short time, the coronavirus pandemic has spread across the globe. This novel virus was first noted in Wuhan, China in December 2019 [...]
New Strategy Provides Disruptive Open Source Observability Solutions for DevOps and ITOps GRAND RAPIDS, Mich., July 21, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- observIQ, a global leader of open source observability solutions for DevOps and ITOps, is being unveiled today. Blue Medora is launching this new brand after VMware’s acquisition of its True Visibility Suite team and [...]
SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 17, 2020—Sight Machine Inc., which revolutionizes manufacturing operations to achieve continuous breakthroughs in productivity, profitability and sustainability, was named a 2020 Global Cleantech 100 company by Cleantech Group. The 2020 Global Cleantech 100 is the 11th edition of the annual guide to the leading companies and themes in sustainable innovation. It features the private, independent and [...]
First, Rachio set out to help your lawn, and the planet, by creating a sprinkler controller that uses weather data to keep you from watering when you don't need to. Now they're back to apply that same "think globally, act locally" attitude towards keeping your lawn greener with Lawn Champion, the first product in the [...]
Security pentesting can be a slow, often expensive process for software companies. And the results often show where a product stands at a moment in time, not as a dynamic entity. Companies traditionally approach pentesting in two ways. The first is to hire in-house pentesters, an option large banks often choose. But that can be [...]
...Predictive maintenance is even starting to appear for tires. Aperia’s wheel-mounted Halo tire inflation system automatically adds air when a tire drops below the recommended pressure. About six years ago, Aperia added sensors to demonstrate the product was working, which led to its telematics product, Halo Connect. Judith Monte, Aperia’s vice president of marketing and [...]
Ann Arbor’s Voxel51, which offers advanced machine learning tools to analyze video, has just released a tool that looks at the social impact of physical distancing from the COVID-19 epidemic. They’re calling it PDI, or Physical Distancing Index. The data can be used in a number of ways to look at the results of social distancing orders [...]
While the Wuhan district in China was under quarantine, news surfaced of robots delivering food and, later, medical supplies. Meanwhile, in the United States, the French company NAVYA configured its autonomous passenger shuttles in Florida to transport COVID-19 tests to the Mayo Clinic from off-site test locations. As the weeks of stay-at-home orders and recommendations slip into months, the [...]
Cobalt.io wants to change the way companies purchase and pay for pentesting services, which test an application for vulnerabilities before it goes live. Today, the company announced a number of enhancements to the platform. Jacob Hansen, CEO and co-founder at Cobalt, says the pentesting business typically involves an expensive and time-consuming exercise, which culminates with the [...]
Voxel51 CEO Jason Corso teaches computer vision at the University of Michigan. CTO Brian Moore was his student when he was doing his Ph.D. in machine learning, and after some brainstorming, the two decided to combine their skills and build an AI video analytics platform. "We're focused on the next frontier, which is video where [...]
SAN FRANCISCO, July 11, 2019 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Security thought leaders Caroline Wong and Joe Sechman released a new report this week, The State of Pentesting. Data for this report was gathered from over 150 survey respondents as well as 1400+ pentests performed over the past three years on Cobalt.io's Pentest as a Service platform. From this research, Wong and Sechman noticed [...]
GRAND RAPIDS, MICH. – Oct 14, 2019 – IT monitoring integration innovator, Blue Medora, today announced early access availability of over 50 log source integrations, dramatically simplified deployment options, fully-managed log agent, and 24/7 customer support for New Relic customers through BindPlane, its Monitoring Integration as a Service (MIaaS) solution. Helping New Relic customers properly configure and [...]
ATLANTA — The expansion of Halo Connect, an analytics platform focusing on predictive tire maintenance, was announced by Aperia Technologies Inc. at the North American Commercial Vehicle Show. The platform features precise vehicle location and service insights, along with tire tread depth and replacement tracking. “Following a successful limited-quantity release with some of the industry’s [...]
Akadeum Life Sciences, Inc. announced an initial close of its Series A financing. The company is pursuing additional investment before final close during Q1 2020. These funds will enable Akadeum to focus its commercial adoption on how to solve longstanding problems in sample preparation. The investment includes several Michigan-based angel groups in addition to venture [...]
Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. The postal creed dates back to Ancient Greece and perhaps foretells the next chapter of ecommerce as Refraction AI robots take to the snowy streets of Ann Arbor, Michigan to pilot their online food delivery service. [...]
Refraction AI tests new Delivery Robots in Ann ArborOne of the autonomous delivery robots created and currently being tested by Refraction AI sits downtown Ann Arbor, Wednesday Oct. 30, 2019. Refraction AI tests new Delivery Robots in Ann ArborMatthew Johnson-Roberson cofounder and CEO at Refraction AI sits next to one of the autonomous delivery robots [...]
Akadeum Life Sciences, Inc., an Ann Arbor-based biotechnology company, announced today that it has entered into a collaboration with Agilent Technologies, Inc. to work toward a new method of isolating target molecules for detection. Akadeum aims to disrupt the status quo in isolation technology with their buoyant microbubbles. Notably, Akadeum is the first company to [...]
Just a few months ago, industry-disrupting conversational AI startup Clinc, which is rolling out an automotive application of their voice-interface software in 2021, was filling the top floor of tech and startup co-working space Cahoots and filling an office in Kerrytown. Now the conversational AI research startup is expanding into a third location in Ann [...]
ANN ARBOR—The first programmable memristor computer—not just a memristor array operated through an external computer—has been developed at the University of Michigan. It could lead to the processing of artificial intelligence directly on small, energy-constrained devices such as smartphones and sensors. A smartphone AI processor would mean that voice commands would no longer have to [...]
Many companies and municipalities are saddled with hundreds or thousands of hours of video and limited ways to turn it into usable data. Voxel51 offers a machine learning-based option that chews through video and labels it, not just with simple image recognition but with an understanding of motions and objects over time. Annotating video is an important [...]
Blown-out, flat or damaged tires are considered by fleets to be at least a leading cause of roadside maintenance calls for commercial trucks, while underinflated tires are the single-biggest source of tire issues in general. To help prevent these tire-related maintenance and safety problems, technology suppliers have introduced a variety of automatic tire inflation systems, [...]
As many folks continue to look skyward in expectation of drone delivery services, they’re missing the development of an increasingly popular delivery technology back on terra firma. Wheel-based delivery robots may not be quite as sexy as their flying counterparts, but with fewer regulatory hoops to jump through than drone services, the technology is likely to [...]
ATLANTA, Ga. – Aperia Technologies’ new Halo Connect is using the power of machine learning to help fleets “virtually eliminate” unplanned tire-related downtime. The system builds on the company’s Halo tire inflator, incorporating a retrofittable sensor that feeds data into Aperia’s analytics platform. “The hardware, the sensors are not where the secret sauce is,” CEO Josh [...]
ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aperia Technologies Inc., a leading supplier of tire management technologies that improve the safety and efficiency of commercial vehicle tractors and trailers, has announced the initial rollout of Halo Connect, a proprietary connectivity platform that leverages machine learning to enable fleets to virtually eliminate unplanned tire-related downtime. Aperia Technologies announces limited rollout of Halo [...]
ANN ARBOR, Mich., July 10, 2019 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Refraction AI (https://refraction.ai), creator of the REV-1, a low-cost, lightweight autonomous delivery robot that can operate in both the bike lane and on the roadway, today launches at TechCrunch Mobility. Founded by University of Michigan professors Matthew Johnson-Roberson and Ram Vasudevan, the company has developed a safer, more cost-effective solution for last mile [...]
Prof. Jason Corso's startup launches powerful video processing platform ANN ARBOR—Voxel51, a University of Michigan startup, today launched its flagship product—a software platform designed to make it easier, faster and more affordable to access the untapped potential of video data. The software is aimed at companies that work with video but struggle to extract the [...]
ANN ARBOR, Mich., May 20, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Strata Oncology, Inc., a precision oncology company, today announced that data from its Strata Trial, a nationwide observational NGS screening protocol providing no-cost tumor sequencing and clinical trial matching for 100,000 advanced cancer patients, will be presented in a poster at the upcoming 2019 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) [...]
Ann Arbor-based biotech company, Akadeum Life Sciences, announced the release of seven new products based on its proprietary microbubble technology. Akadeum Life Sciences today announced at Immunology 2019 the introduction of its first suite of products based on its microbubble technology. Unlike magnetic-based products, microbubbles use buoyancy to gently separate cells of interest within the [...]