Our Innovation Analysts recently looked into emerging technologies and up-and-coming startups working on solutions in Industry 4.0. As there is a large number of startups working on a wide variety of solutions, we want to share our insights with you. This time, we are taking a look at 5 promising simultaneous localization & mapping startups.
Heat Map: 5 Top Simultaneous Localization & Mapping Startups
Using our StartUs Insights Platform, covering 1.116.000+ startups & emerging companies, we looked at innovation in the field of Industry 4.0. For this research, we identified 173 relevant solutions and picked 5 to showcase below. These companies were chosen based on a data-driven startup scouting approach, taking into account factors such as location, founding year, and technology among others. Depending on your specific criteria, the top picks might look entirely different.
The Global Startup Heat Map below highlights 5 startups & emerging companies developing simultaneous localization & mapping solutions. Moreover, the Heat Map reveals regions that observe a high startup activity and illustrates the geographic distribution of all 173 companies we analyzed for this specific topic.
Cartacoustics – Underground Simultaneous Localization & Mapping
Underground utilities are exceedingly difficult to maintain as this requires a tremendous amount of time and effort to excavate the earth and then refill the area. The lack of information regarding underground utility lines creates a hurdle that SLAM overcomes and enables efficient labor planning for any maintenance work.
The US-based startup Cartacoustics develops a patent-pending ground-penetrating acoustic locating and mapping technology. The technology locates and maps structures up to 30 feet below the surface and functions in all types of soils. The company’s Advanced Sonic Technology products use acoustic probes that are able to scan the surface of the soil without requiring to make changes to it.
Wayz – SLAM-As-A Service
The industries which benefit from SLAM tools and technologies are widespread. However, while the technology is available to all, it currently focuses on autonomous vehicles (AVs) and robotics. This is due to the fact that the amount of investment required to develop the technology from the ground up is still not feasible for many other industries.
Chinese startup Wayz provides location and mapping services through its intelligent positioning perception platform. The machine learning-based system applies to both indoor and outdoor scenarios, with intelligent scene awareness to determine the current location of a smart machine, robot, or vehicle. The broad capabilities of the platform allow many different types of industries to integrate the platform into their systems.
Scape Technologies – SLAM SDK
The provision of Software Development Kits (SDK) for SLAM enables a larger pool of developers with access to the framework to create applications around the data. Though SLAM is a term that associates with AVs and robotics, with the availability of SDKs, the growth of SLAM-based applications is visible in the fields of Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) mobile application development.
The UK-based startup Scape Technologies creates a SDK which identifies the location of devices in an outdoor environment to use AR content in specific geographical places. The SDK uses the camera of a device along with GPS to provide this location information. Additionally, developers use the SDK to aid them in the development of AR applications that utilize simultaneous localization and mapping.
Reckon Point – Indoor SLAM
AVs and similar outdoor autonomous systems have created tremendous growth in research and development of location and mapping systems. As the technology for outdoor localization and mapping keeps advancing, their benefits carry over to indoor environments as well. Many industries such as healthcare, construction, and retail are benefitting from indoor SLAM technologies.
the US-based startup Reckon Point is a provider of indoor systems for navigation, mapping, and positioning. Based on 3D LiDAR, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Object Identification, the indoor scanning suite has an accuracy of up to 2 cm. Additionally, the startup integrates LiDAR data with the Google Maps API for advanced indoor navigation. Some applications of this technology that are already widely used include the navigation and real-time location tracking for customers in large stores.
Outsight – SLAM For Autonomous Vehicles
Many automotive manufacturers are investing resources into the research and development of AVs intending to achieve level 5 autonomy as soon as possible. For a smart machine to be fully autonomous it needs to have a complete understanding of its environment and its position within this environment. To achieve this, organizations collect and process a combination of information from various sensors and devices.
The French startup Outsight is dedicated to creating products and technologies that provide smart machines and vehicles awareness about their surroundings through the use of SLAM. Outsight’s 3D Semantic Camera enables the immediate and precise localization and mapping of the surrounding data by using their SLAM-on-Chip(R) algorithm. Today’s AVs can maximize the benefit of this algorithm as they collect position and location information from sources both internal and external to the vehicle.
What About The Other 168 Solutions?
While we believe data is key to creating insights it can be easy to be overwhelmed by it. Our ambition is to create a comprehensive overview and provide actionable innovation intelligence so you can achieve your goals faster. The 5 simultaneous localization & mapping startups showcased above are promising examples out of 173 we analyzed for this article. To identify the most relevant solutions based on your specific criteria, get in touch.
