DC Velocity - November 2017

inbound

Warehouse innovation had a moment in the spotlight earlier this month, and the industry can thank a team of student researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology for that. The occasion was the Collegiate Inventors Competition Expo, held in Alexandria, Va. As one of six finalists in this year’s Collegiate Inventors Competition, Georgia’s Team Oculogx was on hand to showcase its entry, a product that combines smartglasses with augmented reality (AR) to improve efficiency in picking operations.

The product, called PickAR, is a mixed-reality application used with a headset that combines bar-code scanning for immediate inventory control with navigation that projects the optimal path through the warehouse to each item. According to the team, the technology supporting PickAR produced a 37-percent boost in efficiency over existing picking methods in lab tests at Georgia Tech.

While the Oculogx team did not win the prestigious competition, it did earn a chance to show off its invention to expert examiners from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) as well as the media and potential sponsors. Other cutting-edge entries on display at the event included a nasal breathing tube from Johns Hopkins University, a brain surgery health monitor from the Stevens Institute of Technology, a chronic-wound healing system from the University of Virginia, wearable solar panels from the University of Maryland, and the winner—a system that prevents newborn piglets from being accidentally crushed to death by their mothers—devised by a team from the University of Iowa.

Georgia students bring AR to the DC

Self-driving cars can improve road safety, prevent drunk and distracted driving, and offer new mobility options to people who are not able to drive themselves. But before any of that can happen, self-driving car companies must first convince the public that the vehicles are safe.

To help get skeptics on board, Mountain View, Calif.-based Waymo LLC published a For example, one challenge robocars will inevitably face is recognizing and responding properly to emergency vehicles. To help train its cars, Waymo conducted a series of tests with the police and fire departments in Chandler, Ariz., the company said in the report. For the trials, Waymo self-driving minivans were outfitted with sensors that “observed” police vehicles, ambulances, fire trucks, and even undercover vehicles as they trailed, passed, or led the self-driving cars. The data collected by the sensors will help build a “library” of sights and sounds that will be used to teach the autonomous cars whether to yield, pull over to the side of the road, or come to a stop.

Autonomous-car maker trains vehicles to pull
over for cops

One of the latest entrants into the crowded “Uber for trucking” sector is taking a creative tack to raise funds: selling shares in its own “ cryptocurrency,” a type of virtual electronic money similar to Bitcoin or Ethereum.

The company, Doft, is a Walnut, Calif.-based tech startup that says its mobile app can reduce deadhead miles, automatically locate backhaul cargo, and help shippers move unplanned urgent freight. The company joins a crowd of recent entries to the freight-matching marketplace that includes Haulme LLC, XYpper Technologies Inc., Transfix, 10-4 Systems Inc., Cargomatic Inc., and UberFreight.

To stand out from the pack, the founders of Doft (an acronym for “Do Freight Transportation”) are raising money in a way that past generations could not have imagined. The firm held an “initial coin offering” (ICO) in October, in which it created its own currency—called Doftcoins (DFC)— then sold them to buyers like truck drivers, third-party logistics service providers (3PLs), and freight shippers.

Launching an ICO allows a firm to seek funding from the general public, rather than dealing strictly with venture capitalists. The strategy works best when large crowds line up to buy shares, so Doft sweetened the deal by offering anyone who bought Doftcoins in October a 50-percent premium on their investment as well as a lifetime of 0-percent commissions—worth an average of $100 per load—on all freight booked through the Doft platform.

So the next time you see a tractor-trailer cruising down the highway, remember that the driver behind the wheel may also be a high-flying financial speculator.