In the opening scene of Disney’s Big Hero 6, robot builders pit their high-tech creations against each other in a back alley bot fight. Reach Robotics founder Silas Adekunle is bringing that scene to the real world. Adekunle’s United Kingdom-based company is developing Mecha Monsters – smartphone controlled robots designed to battle each other. Players will be able to customize their bots with shields, weapons and other upgrades. “We are going to allow people to bring video games into the real world,” he said. For the next four months, Adekunle and his small team will be in San Diego as part of the Qualcomm Robotics Accelerator – a $1 million program that the wireless chip maker kicked off Thursday in conjunction with Techstars, a global accelerator organization. Ten robotics companies from across the globe were selected to participate in the accelerator, where they will work on their products in 7,000 square feet of free lab space on Qualcomm’s campus. These young firms will have access not only to Qualcomm’s technology and engineers but also to business expertise designed to get their robots out of the lab and into the market. The accelerator is another example of Qualcomm’s push to get smartphone technology into adjacent markets – ranging from connected cars to smart medical devices. Its efforts come as the smartphone market matures, with slower growth forecast over the next few years. “Many of our executives say a smartphone is essentially a robot without wheels,” said Houman Haghighi of Qualcomm Ventures, who is leading the accelerator program for the company. “So it is exciting for us to see some of the technologies developed over the years for the smartphone space now transferring over pretty organically into robotics.” Two San Diego robotic startups were chosen for the accelerator, which had nearly 250 applicants. CleverPet, founded by a team of cognitive scientists and neuroscientists, has built an in-home robot that provides dogs with the daily mental and physical tasks when owners are away. Inova Drone, founded by former employees of 3-D Robotics, builds rugged drones for use by firefighters, search and rescue personnel and businesses. “They are professional service drones that have a lot of features in the platform that are different from consumer drones,” said co-founder Carlos Juvera, such as the ability to handle larger payloads, military grade cameras and mounts and redundant rotor blades for reliability. Other accelerator participants are from San Francisco and New Jersey, as well as Singapore, Greece, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom. Projects range from long-range drones to small, rugged wireless charging pads for drones to a robotic lighting system that follows the sun throughout the day and uses mirrors to reflect natural light into the home, reducing electricity use. Each company will receive $120,000 — $100,000 from Qualcomm and $20,000 from Techstars. The program ends in September with participants pitching their businesses to investors. Adekunle of Reach Robotics hopes to tap Qualcomm’s technology and product development experience to refine Mecha Monsters into a gaming platform with a price tag of $150 or less. “If you come back in four months, this robot is going to look a lot different,” he said, “still awesome but manufacturable and affordable.”
Source: http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2015/may/28/drones-qualcomm-techstars-robotics-disney/
