The Opening Lines of Innovation Success Stories
We had long hoped to hear success stories from the winners of the Russian Innovation Competition. Yet this year when participants began to succeed right after the winners were announced, we could hardly believe our ears.
Jul 02, 2004
We had long hoped to hear success stories from the winners of the Russian Innovation Competition. Yet this year when participants began to succeed right after the winners were announced, we could hardly believe our ears.
We started the competition out of despair. As journalists, we were aware of brilliant innovation projects that Russian domestic business was ignoring completely. Western venture capitalists repeatedly declared their genuine interest in Russian scientists and researchers but had no dealings with them, at least not in Russia itself.
We came up with the idea to get Russia's best experts together, to objectively select the projects that were strongest by anyone's measure, and to present them to the public. We were rather disappointed with the results of the first two contests, as many good innovation projects failed to become investment projects. Things seem to have changed this time. Two serious investments were announced immediately after the finalists were presented: AFK Sistema and Tekhsnabexport decided to fully fund two winning projects. Also, innovators heard the call we made last year to support the real sector. As a result, we now have a Best Industrial Innovation award.
All of a sudden, yet another award, the White Book (Belaya Kniga), also took off. It was introduced just this year. This book of honor will be the home of long-term (10-20 years) capital-intensive projects designed to have a critical impact on the national economy as a whole or its individual sectors.
Grand prix for pressing buttons
Physicist Martyn Nunuparov, founder of Qmodule Company which unites a group of specialists from half a dozen EU and NIS countries, presented a variety of instruments at the competition, such as wireless switches, door locks, and other devices. They all had one thing in common - their chips and transmitters ran off of the energy provided by human muscle.
Hand current generators, powered by cranking a handle or rod, have been in existence for nearly a hundred years. However, these cumbersome devices are of little use when just a tiny amount of energy is required by a very small device. Nunuparov and his colleagues designed a piezoelectric converter similar to those igniting gas with a spark in one-off lighters and mounted it under a switch button. Pressing the key generates very low current, yet this is more than enough for a modern chip.
It's not a new idea that it is possible to derive electric power from everyday actions, like pressing buttons, in quantities sufficient to power electronic devices. Martyn Nunuparov's main innovation lies in the converter diagram itself. Today, a line of products under the umbrella brand of Qmodule consists not only of switches and locks, but also modules for other electronics manufacturers. However, as Nunuparov told the panel of experts at the presentation, nothing is stopping scientists from developing a wireless keyboard or mouse, remote pressure and vibration sensors for construction and engineering, motion detectors for the military, or any other self-contained device for situations where mechanical energy is wasted. Their batteries will never run down, since there is nothing in a piezo-converter that breaks down with time. In environmental terms, a human finger is the cleanest alternative energy source, as it leaves no waste products in tow except a fingerprint. When presenting the Grand Prix to Nunuparov, the Competition's General Partner AFK Sistema stated that it intended to make production facilities available to his team, fully fund the pre-production stage, and provide them with working capital to arrange pilot production.
Reading blindfolded
Dmitri Rakov, a senior research associate at the Russian Academy of Sciences Engineering Institute, invented a new computer communication system designed for the blind and partially sighted and was awarded Intel's innovation prize for the Best IT and Telecommunications Project.
The blind and partially sighted people rarely capture innovators' interest (despite the fact that there are about a million such people in Russia alone). The last significant invention in this area was made in the first half of the 19th century. In 1826, a French man named Louis Braille invented an alphabet made of raised dots. Yet books written in Braille are enormous volumes nearly impossible to lift.
The invention of the computer hasn't improved the lives of the blind much. So-called Braille displays - long panels with embossed Braille letters that can be connected to a laptop - are available but they weigh at least 1.2 kg. Input keyboards are large, heavy and expensive. Dmitri Rakov proposed a fundamentally new design in the form of a glove crammed with electronics. He placed six tactile sensors (micro-solenoids) corresponding to a specific letter or numeric character. A user has merely to press the sensor with the thumb. Learning to type using the glove isn't much more difficult than on a traditional keyboard.
But the main merit of the Rakov glove is that it enables a user not only to type but also to read. Activated by external signals, the tactile sensors press a specific area of the fingers, and the user can read words by spelling them out.
The phone understands you
The market for voice identification devices is complex and highly competitive. A lot of companies are involved with speech recognition but few succeed and even fewer excel. Speech recognition devices are installed in a variety of systems ranging from call centers, where the system automatically recognizes a dozen phrases, to cellular phones, where a built-in chip can sometimes correctly decipher a few names and nicknames recorded and stored by their owners for speed dialing. Experts of the competition were therefore skeptical about a St. Petersburg team called Titan, a.k.a. Speereo Software, who presented a project on voice recognition for mobile devices (palm pilots and phones based on the WindowsCE and Symbian platforms). On closer examination it proved, however, that the project was absolutely remarkable.
During the live demonstration at the presentation, the Speereo Voice Translator program exhibited fairly good recognition, or at least no worse than that of commercial programs. The system is speaker independent, meaning it does not require preset tuning to an owner's voice, which has been a stumbling block for many. The developers themselves assert that the average accuracy level of the average commercial system amounts to 70 percent; just few have managed to reach the level of 90 percent, while their system showed the level of 95 percent when tested. Vladimir Lyamin, a mathematician and a founder of Speereo, believes that his company will be able to reach the level of 99.9 percent (one error in a thousand).
Complimentary to the technology, Titan's business organization came as a pleasant surprise as well. Quite a good start-up was before us: a lot of funds were invested in the project, which was indicative of the founder's belief in his brainchild. It was run by a dedicated and aggressive (in the good sense) entrepreneur supported by a competent corporate organization and clear patent and marketing policies. Also, both the jury and the founder were of the same opinion regarding the company's development strategy: the main task facing the company is to sell its product to large international corporations and encourage them to install the system from St. Petersburg in their own devices. The start-up took the Best Innovation Project award.
Could you adjust my cartilage?
A fourth of the world's population has crooked noses. 10-15% have difficulty breathing due to a crooked nasal septum. In Russia, nearly a million people need surgery to correct this. Up to 80,000 operations are performed annually. Their number would be even greater but children cannot undergo this operation and many adults don't want to take the risk due to the traumatic nature of the procedure and its potential complications. Russian scientists from a research and production company called TermX-Nauka proposed an alternative - a method of nasal cartilage shape correction by laser. It's a fundamentally new painless and bloodless technique approved in the course of clinical trials at the ENT Clinic at the Sechenov Moscow Medical Academy, where 250 patients were studied.
The technology has no equivalents in the world and is based on a change in the status of interstitial water and on softening cartilage tissue as a result of exposure to local short-term laser heating (This effect was discovered by Emil Sobol, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences and head of a laboratory at the Russian Academy of Sciences Laser and Information Technologies Institute in Troitsk). When heated this way, the cartilage tissue becomes plastic and can be shaped as necessary by means of the appropriate apparatus. After the treatment, the septum cartilage tissue "congeals," returning to its original elasticity and, at the same time, retaining its new form. The tool kit created by TermX-Nauka specialists consists not only of an infrared fiber laser and special set of instruments for correcting a crooked nasal septum, but also includes a diagnostic system with feedback. The scientists believe that the scope of application of the new technology can be significantly enlarged. In particular, research on certain spinal diseases is currently under way. 145 disc correction operations have already been performed in clinical trials. This method could also be used in cosmetology and plastic surgery to correct ears, to treat arthritis, and to end snoring. Marketing specialists estimate that the volume of sales of new units in the US alone could amount to more than $1 billion in five years after the product is launched on the market.
To be continued...
We started the competition out of despair. As journalists, we were aware of brilliant innovation projects that Russian domestic business was ignoring completely. Western venture capitalists repeatedly declared their genuine interest in Russian scientists and researchers but had no dealings with them, at least not in Russia itself.
We came up with the idea to get Russia's best experts together, to objectively select the projects that were strongest by anyone's measure, and to present them to the public. We were rather disappointed with the results of the first two contests, as many good innovation projects failed to become investment projects. Things seem to have changed this time. Two serious investments were announced immediately after the finalists were presented: AFK Sistema and Tekhsnabexport decided to fully fund two winning projects. Also, innovators heard the call we made last year to support the real sector. As a result, we now have a Best Industrial Innovation award.
All of a sudden, yet another award, the White Book (Belaya Kniga), also took off. It was introduced just this year. This book of honor will be the home of long-term (10-20 years) capital-intensive projects designed to have a critical impact on the national economy as a whole or its individual sectors.
Grand prix for pressing buttons
Physicist Martyn Nunuparov, founder of Qmodule Company which unites a group of specialists from half a dozen EU and NIS countries, presented a variety of instruments at the competition, such as wireless switches, door locks, and other devices. They all had one thing in common - their chips and transmitters ran off of the energy provided by human muscle.
Hand current generators, powered by cranking a handle or rod, have been in existence for nearly a hundred years. However, these cumbersome devices are of little use when just a tiny amount of energy is required by a very small device. Nunuparov and his colleagues designed a piezoelectric converter similar to those igniting gas with a spark in one-off lighters and mounted it under a switch button. Pressing the key generates very low current, yet this is more than enough for a modern chip.
It's not a new idea that it is possible to derive electric power from everyday actions, like pressing buttons, in quantities sufficient to power electronic devices. Martyn Nunuparov's main innovation lies in the converter diagram itself. Today, a line of products under the umbrella brand of Qmodule consists not only of switches and locks, but also modules for other electronics manufacturers. However, as Nunuparov told the panel of experts at the presentation, nothing is stopping scientists from developing a wireless keyboard or mouse, remote pressure and vibration sensors for construction and engineering, motion detectors for the military, or any other self-contained device for situations where mechanical energy is wasted. Their batteries will never run down, since there is nothing in a piezo-converter that breaks down with time. In environmental terms, a human finger is the cleanest alternative energy source, as it leaves no waste products in tow except a fingerprint. When presenting the Grand Prix to Nunuparov, the Competition's General Partner AFK Sistema stated that it intended to make production facilities available to his team, fully fund the pre-production stage, and provide them with working capital to arrange pilot production.
Reading blindfolded
Dmitri Rakov, a senior research associate at the Russian Academy of Sciences Engineering Institute, invented a new computer communication system designed for the blind and partially sighted and was awarded Intel's innovation prize for the Best IT and Telecommunications Project.
The blind and partially sighted people rarely capture innovators' interest (despite the fact that there are about a million such people in Russia alone). The last significant invention in this area was made in the first half of the 19th century. In 1826, a French man named Louis Braille invented an alphabet made of raised dots. Yet books written in Braille are enormous volumes nearly impossible to lift.
The invention of the computer hasn't improved the lives of the blind much. So-called Braille displays - long panels with embossed Braille letters that can be connected to a laptop - are available but they weigh at least 1.2 kg. Input keyboards are large, heavy and expensive. Dmitri Rakov proposed a fundamentally new design in the form of a glove crammed with electronics. He placed six tactile sensors (micro-solenoids) corresponding to a specific letter or numeric character. A user has merely to press the sensor with the thumb. Learning to type using the glove isn't much more difficult than on a traditional keyboard.
But the main merit of the Rakov glove is that it enables a user not only to type but also to read. Activated by external signals, the tactile sensors press a specific area of the fingers, and the user can read words by spelling them out.
The phone understands you
The market for voice identification devices is complex and highly competitive. A lot of companies are involved with speech recognition but few succeed and even fewer excel. Speech recognition devices are installed in a variety of systems ranging from call centers, where the system automatically recognizes a dozen phrases, to cellular phones, where a built-in chip can sometimes correctly decipher a few names and nicknames recorded and stored by their owners for speed dialing. Experts of the competition were therefore skeptical about a St. Petersburg team called Titan, a.k.a. Speereo Software, who presented a project on voice recognition for mobile devices (palm pilots and phones based on the WindowsCE and Symbian platforms). On closer examination it proved, however, that the project was absolutely remarkable.
During the live demonstration at the presentation, the Speereo Voice Translator program exhibited fairly good recognition, or at least no worse than that of commercial programs. The system is speaker independent, meaning it does not require preset tuning to an owner's voice, which has been a stumbling block for many. The developers themselves assert that the average accuracy level of the average commercial system amounts to 70 percent; just few have managed to reach the level of 90 percent, while their system showed the level of 95 percent when tested. Vladimir Lyamin, a mathematician and a founder of Speereo, believes that his company will be able to reach the level of 99.9 percent (one error in a thousand).
Complimentary to the technology, Titan's business organization came as a pleasant surprise as well. Quite a good start-up was before us: a lot of funds were invested in the project, which was indicative of the founder's belief in his brainchild. It was run by a dedicated and aggressive (in the good sense) entrepreneur supported by a competent corporate organization and clear patent and marketing policies. Also, both the jury and the founder were of the same opinion regarding the company's development strategy: the main task facing the company is to sell its product to large international corporations and encourage them to install the system from St. Petersburg in their own devices. The start-up took the Best Innovation Project award.
Could you adjust my cartilage?
A fourth of the world's population has crooked noses. 10-15% have difficulty breathing due to a crooked nasal septum. In Russia, nearly a million people need surgery to correct this. Up to 80,000 operations are performed annually. Their number would be even greater but children cannot undergo this operation and many adults don't want to take the risk due to the traumatic nature of the procedure and its potential complications. Russian scientists from a research and production company called TermX-Nauka proposed an alternative - a method of nasal cartilage shape correction by laser. It's a fundamentally new painless and bloodless technique approved in the course of clinical trials at the ENT Clinic at the Sechenov Moscow Medical Academy, where 250 patients were studied.
The technology has no equivalents in the world and is based on a change in the status of interstitial water and on softening cartilage tissue as a result of exposure to local short-term laser heating (This effect was discovered by Emil Sobol, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences and head of a laboratory at the Russian Academy of Sciences Laser and Information Technologies Institute in Troitsk). When heated this way, the cartilage tissue becomes plastic and can be shaped as necessary by means of the appropriate apparatus. After the treatment, the septum cartilage tissue "congeals," returning to its original elasticity and, at the same time, retaining its new form. The tool kit created by TermX-Nauka specialists consists not only of an infrared fiber laser and special set of instruments for correcting a crooked nasal septum, but also includes a diagnostic system with feedback. The scientists believe that the scope of application of the new technology can be significantly enlarged. In particular, research on certain spinal diseases is currently under way. 145 disc correction operations have already been performed in clinical trials. This method could also be used in cosmetology and plastic surgery to correct ears, to treat arthritis, and to end snoring. Marketing specialists estimate that the volume of sales of new units in the US alone could amount to more than $1 billion in five years after the product is launched on the market.
To be continued...