Russian Startup Livemap Lands $300K Grant For Its Motorcycle Helmet With Built-In Navigation

As we’re coming up on the next Consumer Electronics Show, I got an update from one of the companies that participated in TechCrunch’s Hardware Battlefield at the last CES — Russian startup Livemap.

The Livemap team is working to create motorcycle helmets with voice control and GPS navigation directly in your field of vision — so while you’re riding, you can see directions in your helmet display without having to fiddle with another device or look away from the road. (Back in January, the Livemap team demonstrated an early version of their display, which was transparent enough to show a map without obscuring the road ahead.)

CEO Andrew Artishchev told me via email that most of the past year has been spent building the pre-production prototype of Livemap’s optics. Those optics will be built entirely of aspheric lenses, allowing the helmet to, in his words, be “smaller and lighter and sometimes cheaper than the multi-lens design.” He added that the other big focus has been creating a design that will keep the optics costs down.
Livemap Lens Diagram

Now Livemap plans to unveil its prototype in the spring, and to start sales this summer in its first market, the United States.

To help create the prototype, Livemap has also received a grant of 14.7 million rubles from the Russian Ministry of Science. (That’s a little under $300,000 in U.S. dollars.). If you’re fluent in Russian or don’t mind using Google Translate, you can read more about the grant here.

Artishchev also commented on the emergence of a new competitor, Skully, which he dismissed as “only part of Google Glass.”

“The product called Skully P1 is, in short words, like Google Glass put into a helmet — with all its disadvantages like tiny screen, low saturation and contrast, low resolution,” he added.

Comments

Build Your Own Awesome Personal 3D Avatar with Avatara

Do you use social networks and want to build your own awesome 3D avatar? Maybe you want to send someone a cute cuddly image of yourself (kind of)? Or maybe you have your own ideas of what you would do with an Avatar… Well look no further than Avatara which I discovered from the MakeUseOf directory . You can create 3d avatars out of pre-set up templates or create your own from scratch. To start, visit Avatara’s homepage . You will see this screen: Click Get Started to umm, get started! That will take you to this screen: You see that you can build your own Avatar using an uploaded head shot like the Obama one above (just an example, guys). Or roll with one of their awesome avatars. I chose to start with a blank avatar by clicking Start with a blank avatar at the bottom of the screen. That takes you to here: I clicked on the filter at the top and told it to filter out everything but male characters and then I saw this: I rolled with Buck and continued. You need to click Select...

Fun Tools to Translate Your Name into Japanese Calligraphy

Japanese calligraphy is an artistic writing style of the Japanese language. Its Chinese origins can be traced back to the twenty-eighth century BCE. Calligraphy found its way into Japanese culture in 600 CE and is known as the karayo tradition. For Westerners, calligraphy is forever fascinating. However, it takes years to learn how to properly draw the signs. Two basic principles must be known to understand Japanese writing: there are different writing styles and different alphabets. Kaisho for example, is a writing style most commonly used in print media. Tensho on the other hand is used in signatures. Other writing styles are Reisho, Gyosho and Sousho. The alphabets include Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana. Katakana is used for writing foreign words. It can also serve to highlight words, in analogy to capital letters as we know them from the Roman / Latin alphabet (Romaji in Japanese). Each Kanji character has a meaning of its own, while Hiragana or Katakana characters merely repres...

Boom, the startup that wants to build supersonic planes, just signed a massive deal with Virgin

Have you heard about Boom? Boom is a relatively new startup that’s aiming to build something pretty crazy. They’re not building an app… or a social network… or even some new gadget for the Kickstarter crowd. Boom wants to build planes. Really, really, really fast planes. Specifically, they’re trying to design and build a supersonic passenger plane that goes 2.2x the speed of sound. If all goes to plan, they’ll be able to shuttle people from New York to London in 3.5 hours, and SF to Tokyo in 4.5. Sound crazy? I wouldn’t disagree. It’s worth noting that the company is in the very early days for something as intensive, massive, and hugely expensive as designing and producing a passenger aircraft. They’re still working on their first prototype, and hope to fly it by late next year. But it’s also worth noting that the team behind the plane has some serious talent in its blood: the company’s 11 employees have collectively contributed to over 30 aircrafts — having worked on thin...

Kiran Upadhyay

Search This Blog