Funding for the future
Sydney-based Baraja Pty Ltd is in a global race towards developing an affordable LIDAR technology, a laser-based radar that can scan the environment for objects such as buildings, other cars and even lines on the road.
In autonomous devices such as driverless cars or robots, LIDAR could provide crucial additional data to 'perception systems' that to date rely on cameras.
The new technology sends out pulses of laser light, and then uses the reflection to build a 3-D map of objects in the surrounding environment. This provides a major advantage over cameras as it also works well in bad weather conditions.
However, there is stiff competition in the market. For example, here in Australia Ocular Robotics produces LIDAR systems for the use in robots. And for driverless cars the global frontrunner is Velodyne, a California-based company that has recently landed a major coup by attracting a $150 million investment from Chinese search engine giant Baidu and Ford.
But cost has so far been a major obstacle to the industrial use of LIDAR, and according to Sydney-based startup Baraja, its concept is cheap, has no-moving parts, can scale to volume, and is robust to jamming and interference.
This has already convinced venture capital firm Blackbird Ventures to back the project.
The Accerlerating Commercialisation scheme is part of the Australian Government's Entrepreneurs' Programme. The scheme was implemented to help businesses with a combined turnover of less than $20 million in the crucial early stage of commercialisation.
While it also provides commercialisation guidance and portfolio services, the key support is through grants of up to $1 million, which have to be matched dollar-for-dollar by the recipients.
To date, the scheme has supported 168 organisations with $87.7 million.
The 22 successful projects in the latest round of grants also include:
- Pat Labs Pty Ltd - $211,564 for its Project Turing project, which aims to humanise conversations with machines, in the user's own language.
- CPIE Pharmacy Services R&D Pty Ltd - $437,250 for a single-use portable electronic infusion device designed for applications in home healthcare.
- Heuch Pty Ltd Dandenong South VIC - $498,860 for its solar powered refrigeration equipment designed for use in remote areas.
- Vidiense Technology Pty Ltd - $455,918 for the commercialisation of a scalable video-in-email platform. The innovation allows to display a video in an email without the need of an external player on the computer device.