Named as one of CB Insights
100 Most Promising AI Startups 2023
Originally published by Israel21C
It’s that time of year again – when some of the most exciting Israeli startups make their pilgrimage to Las Vegas to participate in the annual Consumer Electronics Show.
This year’s CES takes place from January 5 through 8 and covers over two million square feet – a 50 percent increase over 2022’s show.
Here, in alphabetical order, are 23 of the many Startup Nation companies CES attendees will be checking out this week at the Israel Export Institute’s pavilion and elsewhere around the show.
Want to save the planet and have fresh vegetables grown at home? Agwa’s produce-growing home appliance puts an automated grow-box in your home or office. No chemicals, pesticides or herbicides required.
Agwa says its device can feed a whole family for a year at a cost that’s 50% of “retail premium produce” and is “as easy to handle as a coffee machine.”
Agwa’s flagship product, AgwaGarden, comes with 59 “slots” into which you insert a dried seed pod. It requires just a gallon of water and $1.20 worth of electricity a week.
Airosphera is the consumer-facing spinoff of climate-tech firm Airovation Technologies. While Airovation focuses on capturing carbon at industrial plants, Airosphera applies the company’s superoxide radical technology to home use, plugging into indoor air purifiers.
CO2 buildup at home, simply as a result of breathing, can impact concentration, sleep and general wellbeing, the company says. Airosphera deploys artificial intelligence algorithms and biosensors to personalize its carbon clean-up for individual users based on heart rate, breathing rate and daily routine.
When Apple releases its long-anticipated augmented reality (AR) glasses later this year, the human-computer interface may never be the same.
AR requires tools to make it easy to superimpose images and text information on top of a video or livestream. Arti AR allows business professionals to augment their presentations using a software-only cloud-based solution. It doesn’t even require AR glasses.
Arti has found that AR presentations are three times more engaging than traditional slideshows and 70% more memorable.
Home workouts just got more intense with Israeli startup BlazePod’s “Flash ReflexTraining” — small LED pods that blink on and off in eight colors according to pre-set patterns to guide your exercise routine.
Place a couple of pods on the ground and you can do core-strengthening plank pushups where you extend your arms to smack a pod when the light flashes. Attach the pods using the product’s suction cup backing to a punching bag and up your boxing game with more rhythmic timed punches. Control is via an iPhone or Android app.
Over 300,000 athletes around the world already use BlazePod. “It’s very much like Simon Says on steroids,” CEO Yaniv Shneiderman told ISRAEL21c.
One out of four people above the age of 65 will develop atrial fibrillation, an abnormal heart rhythm that increases the risk of stroke fivefold and the risk of heart disease threefold. Current screening is done by electrocardiogram.
Cardiokol listens to your voice and extracts vocal parameters associated with an irregular heartbeat. It can be as simple as listening to a person saying “aah” for a few seconds during a twice daily phone call or while chatting with a digital voice assistant.
Cardiokol can be embedded in landlines, smartphones and smart speakers. Timely detection “can prevent over 70% of related strokes and other chronic, high-cost complications,” CEO James Amihood told ISRAEL21c.
Despite rosy forecasts, fully autonomous vehicles won’t arrive on the mass market for at least 10 to 15 years. For now, autonomous vehicles need to be low speed and limited to dedicated, private locations such as university campuses, holiday resorts, hospital grounds and industrial plants.
Carteav’s hardware and software turns electric golfcarts into self-driving LSVs (“low speed vehicles”) which you can order using a mobile app. The service is being tested in senior communities in Israel and soon in Turkey, too. Carteav LSVs can also be used in cities that are going car free.
If you need a brain scan, most likely that will be via an EEG (electroencephalogram), which involves attaching small sensors to the scalp to monitor electrical signals.
CorrActions removes the physical sensors and uses motion data detected by your mobile device to achieve the same goal on-the-go.
CorrActions can monitor cognitive states such as fatigue, inattention and anxiety, as well as alcohol or drug influence, making it a hot property for vehicle manufacturers and fleet operators. The company already has partnerships with Volkswagen and Hyundai.
Deeyook’s technology brings mobile phone navigation to indoor spaces like the local mall, where GPS is notoriously poor. Deeyook doesn’t rely on satellites; rather, the company’s software measures the angles of wireless transmission around you, allowing it to work indoors. Deeyook can tell you where you are within 10 centimeters.
Deeyook’s technology, which requires very little power, is not just for navigation; it can help retailers more precisely target visitors’ phones, so they get the most appropriate ads, and it can also help companies track assets – from shipping pallets to Uber vehicles and e-scooters.
Wearing virtual reality goggles can be disorienting. Some people get “cybersick” while playing a VR game, while others develop stress. Eye-Minders’ tech analyzes what a VR device’s camera is picking up about the user’s eye movements to help manufacturers and game developers minimize that discomfort.
Eye-Minders can also provide insights into a player’s interest, engagement and feelings in real time. A separate Eye-Minders division, Alethia-Intelligence, helps clients identify human-related threats in various industries and at border crossings.
Healables makes wearable devices that heal the body by delivering tiny doses of electricity that stimulate cells to accelerate the process. The wearables combine a smart textile fabric technology, a connected app and diode-driven microcurrents.
“The treatment is simply like getting dressed,” CEO Moshe Lebowitz told ISRAEL21c. The wearable can be integrated with doctor-prescribed treatment programs or self-led recovery at home.
Healables’ ElectroGear sports and wellness model for athletes is a more flexible option for treatment platforms that require stationary machines.
This Internet of Packaging company’s solutions include Water.io, a smart, reusable, rechargeable, Bluetooth-connected water bottle that measures liquid level, blinks and vibrates as a hydration reminder, and pairs with a co-branded app to provide a personalized hydration experience; and Vitamins.io, a smart, reusable, rechargeable, refillable Bluetooth-connected vitamin and supplement bottle that increases user compliance and pairs with a dedicated app to help turning consumers into subscribers.
Did you ever wish you could smell the delicious food being shown in a movie or cooking program? Or enjoy the fragrance of wet leaves in a rainstorm? The iRomaScent device releases highly targeted whiffs either on-demand or in sync with a video.
The device can be loaded with up to 45 different scents and can store over 5,000 “whiffs” using a narrow pencil beam that directs the smells to a specific viewer. It’s not just for the movies: A home device could help consumers get a sniff of perfume without visiting the nearest mall. For creators, an “editor” lets you add scents to a video.
We all know it can be hard to hear someone while traveling in a noisy car. Kardome’s AI technology is intended for manufacturers looking to improve their existing speech recognition systems – for use in vehicles or wherever noise may overpower conversation.
Kardome’s software eliminates background noise, can identify the target speaker when there are multiple people talking at once, and can recognize branded “wake words” that increase a company’s positioning. Kardome can be integrated into any smart mobile device.
Newsight develops 3D vision and spectral analysis sensors for cars, healthcare, smart cities and next-generation robotics. The company partnered with Sheba Medical Center’s ARC Innovation Center to create SpectraLIT from Virusight Diagnostics, a 20-second Covid-19 test that delivers results almost as accurate as the gold-standard PCR test but at a fraction of the cost.
SpectraLIT uses a spectrometer-on-a-chip to detect viruses in blood by analyzing light wavelengths in saliva. Other uses of Newsight’s technology include improving the functionality of rice-sorting machines and faster reading of barcodes in stores and warehouses.
Olive WatchOS is an app that communicates via Bluetooth with Olive Diagnostics’ toilet-mounted sensors to display real-time health data based on passively analyzing urine. The sensors use advanced optics to screen for biomarkers of three conditions that often plague older people: urinary tract infections, kidney stones and bladder infections.
The sensors can also track hydration and pH levels and, in the future, could monitor alcohol levels, diet and general health. Data is uploaded to the cloud where it can be shared with one’s doctor. Tests have found Olive’s technology to be 98.7% accurate with 100% specificity.
When Apple ultimately reveals its AR glasses, the question occupying the team at Oorym will be: Is there room for another near-to-eye display device? Oorym, not surprisingly, says “yes.”
Based on the research of Yaakov Amitai, who invented the “waveguide” technology used in most of today’s AR systems, Oorym attaches a bit of film on top of a simple waveguide to turn ordinary lenses into smart AR-ready glasses.
Oorym addresses four main limitations of most AR glasses: low brightness, bulky and cumbersome construction, poor image quality, and expensive manufacturing. Oorym glasses will cost just a few hundred dollars, says CEO Mori Amitai.
How do you improve on the already uber-popular Rubik’s Cube? Connect it to a smartphone. Particula’s app-enabled GoCube tracks a player’s moves on the mobile screen and provides interactive tutorials to help players learn to solve the Rubik’s Cube puzzle faster.
It’s more than just learning: With GoCube, you can compete with friends around the world to see who can do it faster. The app tells you how many moves you made per second and how many moves to successful completion.
GoCube can even be used as a controller for other games. Particula makes other types of sensor-enabled toys with wireless connectivity, such as GoDice.
POLYN Technology is a fabless semiconductor company that makes tiny AI chips for sensors. The company’s NeuroSense product can detect users’ heart rates in real time.
At CES, the company is demonstrating its new voice-processing technology, which has three modes: voice detection, voice extraction and transparent.
While similar neural networks run in the cloud and are power-hogs, POLYN’s chips use very little power, lasting longer on a small battery – important for “hearables” that must always be on. Putting the functionality on a chip is also better for privacy.
Radix’s new Android TV Manager is intended to help telecommunications operators and service providers stay on top of their “fleet” of Android TV set-top boxes. The platform includes app and device management, remote support, monitoring and analysis, and over-the-air updates.
By using Radix, telcos can reduce the number of in-person service calls required. Radix has other solutions beyond the TV: a cloud-based classroom management system with built-in video conferencing, interactive touchscreen management, and a “command center” to manage virtual reality headsets.
You’re thinking of purchasing a new home, but it’s hard to visualize where all your furniture will go. SparX uses augmented reality to “stage” a home. Real-estate professionals can scan an empty space and watch it instantly fill with personalized designs according to the client’s style, budget and lifestyle preferences.
The app allows new homeowners to purchase or rent what they see without leaving the SparX app. SparX outputs a fully staged video along with photos for “immersive on-site staging experiences.”
The VBox Android TV Gateway connects to your home network and streams live local TV channels as well as online services. You can use a single VBox to record live TV content to a USB, SD card or NAS drive. Simply connect your antenna (for terrestrial broadcasts), cable or satellite feed and you’re good to go.
Or take one step further and recast the signal from your TV to any connected devices in your home. You can even watch and record different live TV stations from several devices at the same time.
Whether from a home camera or a professional application, images and video have always fared poorly in low light conditions. Visionary.ai software applies computer vision, artificial intelligence and sophisticated algorithms to improve the quality of images and videos taken from any camera. Think better night vision, superior recognition of faces, and images free from blur. Target markets include security, automotive, medical applications, drones, smart cities and consumer electronics.
The Lod-based startup, formerly known as Chakratec, has developed a technology for fast charging electric vehicles in places where the power grid is not up to handling multiple cars at once. Zooz – Hebrew for “move” – deploys a unique flywheel technology to boost the capabilities of an existing power grid by up to three times.
Zooz is running pilots around the world, including at New York’s La Guardia Airport, Wien Energie in Vienna, US-based convenience store and fuel supplier ARKO, and Blink Charging. Zooz says its kinetic power booster will function for 15 years.
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