If you notice what the theme is of this weeks digest, itās a hint of whatās to come! Next week part of the inflection team will be in Stockholm, Sweden. Hit us up if you want to meet up!
š¤¼Ā People
Alexander Entinger - Founder at LXRobotics
Alexander is an experienced embedded engineer and firmware/software developer who specializes in building reliable autonomous robotic systems. He is also the founder of LXRobotics, building production-grade firmware for robotic systems. He will compete at the up-coming European Land Robot Trials in Trier, Germany.
Edward Anastassacos - CEO and co-founder of HeroTech8
HeroTech8 is a drone-in-a-box company, pioneering the urban future we see as pretty likely - with many drones buzzing around to do various jobs around the city. From inspections to policing to (further out) deliveries and real-time imaging, drones are not exactly new, but still underutilized for their full potential. Edward and his crew are selling drone services by the hour in cities and ports across the world.
šĀ Companies
Eridu AI - High-performance chips for AI training
Status: Stealth
Source: CAVI
Founders: Drew Perkins, Omar Hassen, Mike Capuano
Why itās cool:
Semiconductor and AI veterans starting a new HW company to tackle a workload that is likely to take on a massive part of total compute (after inference) in the futureā¦ Sign me up!
AstroFirma - AI to help manufacturers and the hard tech economy
Status: Stealth
Source: Friends
Founders: Spencer
Why itās cool:
To build all the awesome stuff weāre envisioning with space economy booming, manufacturing being re-onshored and energy becoming more and more abundant, we need supporting infrastructure. Spence, a veteran and serial founder is kicking this off with a Space Coast Hackathon on May 18 in Florida!
š”Ā Ideas & Science
New findings point to an Earth-like environment on ancient Mars
A research team using the ChemCam instrument onboard NASA's Curiosity rover discovered higher-than-usual amounts of manganese in lakebed rocks within Gale Crater on Mars, which indicates that the sediments were formed in a river, delta, or near the shoreline of an ancient lake. The high levels of manganese suggest there were once habitable conditions in the Gale Crater on ancient Mars, as manganese oxide formation typically requires high oxygen levels, which could have been produced by photosynthetic life or microbes. However, the mechanism for this on Mars is unclear since there is no evidence of life there.
Modular software for scientific image reconstruction
āEPFL engineers have developed new software called Pyxu that makes it easier and faster to reconstruct images taken at any scale. Their system employs reusable, and universally applicable, bricks of algorithms.ā Using Pyxu we could much easier do image reconstruction across imaging methods.
Protecting Physical Assets from UAS Attack
The UK Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) launched a competition on protecting physical assets (e.g., buildings, cars, airports) from unmanned aerial systems attacks. The competition is focused on very specific types of protection, e.g., they should be covert, non-kinetic and no using electronic warfare. Sooo, like a big umbrella that bounces off the drone?