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Weekend Robotics Hackathon Focuses on Healthy People and Environments

Several teams of hackers “got their bot on” at the MaRS center over the weekend as part of a robotics hackathon aimed at creating robots that promote healthy people and environments.

Teams of four could choose either a beginner base kit with an Arduino or a more advanced base kit with a Raspberry Pi. Wearables were also available to borrow such as Pebble Watches, Estimote Beacons, EEG-enabled gesture control Myo bands, the Nod Ring for gesture control, Microsoft Kinnects for 3D imaging and vision, 1mini A8 for GPS Tracking, Tobii EyeX and EyeTribe Trackers for eye tracking, and the EEG-enabled Muse Headband.

Participating hackers were also given demonstrations and one-on-one time with technology experts.

The hackathon ended Sunday with a demo to determine the winning projects. Calmstress, Indie and GestJump won.

 

A team from the University of Toronto’s Health Innovation Hub (h2i) built CalmStress which pushes on pressure points when stressed.

GestJump, made by members of OCAD’s Imagination Catalyst, is a skip rope for the social media age – encouraging fitness by sending selfies while skipping.

The Indie robot is aimed at providing patient data to a doctor more conveniently.

Judges included CBC Radio host Nora Young, AutoDesk’s Gord Kurtenbach, and MaRS Discovery District’s Jon Dogterom.

For tweets from the event, check out #GYBO2015.

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Online News Aggregator Newsana Bought by Relish Interactive

Newsana, an online news aggregator aimed at getting experts to recommend news stories, has been bought by Toronto-based creative agency Relish Interactive.

In a message to Newsana members Tuesday, Newsana co-founder Ben Peterson noted:

Newsana is in good hands. Relish has vowed to not only keep Newsana up and running, but to take our community to the next level.

Relish is one of Toronto’s most accomplished digital development shops, with a growing portfolio of digital content startups under their roof. Newsana will fit right in there – especially considering their team has played a huge role in building Newsana from day one. All said, I’m confident that under Relish’s watch Newsana.com will only get stronger with age.

On a personal note, thank you. Thank you for being a part of Newsana and thank you for making this one of the most rewarding periods of my professional life.

Last year, Newsana launched an offshoot service called MindMarket, which essentially provides a publishing platform for writers with a paywall so they can collect monthly subscription fees from their audience. MindMarket was not acquired by Relish Interactive in the deal.

 

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Spherical Camera Bubl Raises $4.6M in Seed Funding Round

Toronto’s Bubl Technology, the maker of a spherical camera for capturing 360-degree images and video, closed a $4.6 million seed round Wednesday. The round was led by Samsung Ventures, J-Tech Capital, and other unnamed investors.

At the time of the funding announcement, Bubl founder Sean Ramsay announced he would be relinquishing his role as CEO, and taking on the role of Chief Innovation Officer. Current VP of Hardware, Dan Mills, will serve as interim CEO as the Board of Directors searches for a permanent CEO.

Bubl had gotten its seed funding from a successful Kickstarter campaign, and the latest funding news comes shortly after it began shipping its cameras to initial backers in August. Bubl missed its initial goal of shipping in May 2014, but the timing of the actual release nicely coincides with the growing interest in Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality applications of 360 imaging. In the mean time, however, competition has grown with Japan’s Ricoh unveiling its 360-degree camera, Theta, and France’s Kolor providing software to stich GoPro footage together.

Ramsay said in a statement, “Bubl Technology has evolved since our initial Kickstarter campaign. The original vision was a simple – to use app and a spherical camera, but now we’ve developed so much more – an entire ecosystem of hardware and software spherical technology for consumers.”