Heptasense, a portuguese startup, was selected to join Data Pitch, an ambitious European project to accelerate startups from the continent, and challenged to solve a series of challenges by working with data. Beta-i, in partnership with the European Commission, ensures coordination of this acceleration program.
Heptasense, whose solution is already being used in Mercedes factories, is an artificial intelligence software that can recognize and predict accidents on the streets to alert operational teams in real-time.
One of the biggest causes of traffic, and consequently high carbon emissions, are accidents. This problem is worse on highways, because it is hard to detect on time, and very difficult to manage afterwards. Heptasense is a software platform that leverages data from surveillance cameras to detect accidents and alert the operational teams in real-time. Although this solves part of the problem, the goal is also to mitigate such risks. That’s why the platform is also merging data from weather, GPS and historical accidents data to predict when and where accidents may occur so that operational teams can be ready to act.
Heptasense is one of 29 new Data Pitch startups that were this week introduced at a celebratory reception held at the Google Campus in London. This new cohort brings the total number of Data Pitch companies to 47, each receiving up to €100K equity free funding, expert mentoring, investment opportunities, and access to data from established businesses and the public sector.
The project is coordinated by Beta-i, in partnership with the University of Southampton, the Open Data Institute and french data platform Dawex. The initiative, which kicked off officially today, will be financed by the research and innovation program Horizon 2020, the European Union, and each startup will be in the program for six months.
“This is a fantastic opportunity to build a platform for collaboration between startups and companies covering all of Europe. Startups will have the opportunity to access huge data blocks from some of the largest European companies in order to try to resolve previously identified challenges, using the development of new products and services. This European accelerator brings together a wide and diverse batch of industries, working in an engaging and collaborative way, and we see this opportunity as a chance to use our experience, as we expand our know-how and methodologies. “
Ricardo Marvão, co-founder and Head of Education of the Beta-i
The ambition is to create an entire ecosystem of innovation for Europe, a space where big companies can work closely with agile startups so they can innovate and learn from each other, using the data as a basis to solve the problems.