Dublin City Council and Enterprise Ireland announced the winners of the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) competition at The House of Lords, Bank of Ireland, College Green this evening.
The competition, which was launched by Smart Dublin last March, sought to find smart technology solutions to help improve and scale up cycling across Dublin. The challenge generated 98 expressions of interest, 23 proposals with 14 dragons den style pitches.
Five companies were selected to receive funding of up to €12,500 and supports from Dublin City Council to research and demonstrate the viability of their smart solution.
The chosen companies and their smart solutions are:
- Ambie introducing BikeLook which monitors bicycle usage and deters and detects bicycle theft
- Fluidedge introducing Liberty Bell, a bell that allows cyclists to record actual or perceived obstacles to aid safe cycling in Dublin
- Hindnseek presents a low power device attached to a bicycle that generates real time data with can be integrated with other data sources
- Limeforge Ltd. offers the See.Sense Tracker providing a ‘find your iphone’ like capability allowing cyclists to easily track their stolen bikes
- M2C Smartcharge Ltd. introduces a tracking, logging and data harvesting system for use with bicycles in an urban area aiding the cyclist in predicting the ease of a journey, safety along the way and creating a secure parking facility and the end of the journey
Commenting at the announcement Dublin City Council’s Chief Executive, Owen Keegan said “A key aspect of our Smart Dublin initiative is to test new ways for the Dublin Local Authorities to pilot and understand the possibilities of using innovative technologies to solve city challenges. We are genuinely impressed with the level of ideas that were presented through the SBIR process and look forward to working with these entrepreneurs to pilot and hopefully scale their products using Dublin as a test bed.”