Pittsburgh Ventures

As I wrote in my post last week, this week I am going to highlight four technologies/teams at CMU that are looking to spinout to form a company, and are looking for a CEO.  Project Olympus is helping to facilitate matches.  Up third…

Assistive Mobile Technologies (BeaconSys) – This is a project that originates with faculty member, Priya Narasimhan and systems faculty member, Rajiv Gandhi, both of ECE. The two have created a company, BeaconSys, targeting technologies for the blind and visually-impaired. Prof. Narasimhan has invented a series of technologies for enabling everyday activities for the visually-impaired. These technologies also have applications for the general population. Since August, I have worked with Prof. Narasimhan on identifying the market opportunity for BeaconSys. Having determined that the blind and sight impaired market is too small, Priya has focused on expanding the scope of the technology to be applicable to other populations. She has initiated a pilot program at Giant Eagle for mining data gathered using the technology. The pilot was to start in one store and move to four stores this spring.

You may have seen Dr Narasimhan’s other work at YinzCam, a startup that is making quite a splash at Penguins games in the Mellon Arena.  Next time you are there, be sure to take your WiFi enabled device with you, because you will be able to get a whole new rich set of camera angles!

You can learn more here at the Project Olympus site for BeaconSys.