You’re cruising along the highway. Suddenly, you hear a
sputter, your engine grumbles, and your car comes to a
screeching halt. The tow truck drags the car to a local
auto mechanic. Damage: $1,000.
You have no idea whether or not the mechanic is honest
— but you will soon, thanks to a new Israeli innovation.
READ MORE ON: Jewish World
Engie puts the car owner in the driver’s seat by providing
a special malfunction reader that simply plugs into your
car to assess the problem. It then transports the data on
the malfunction via Bluetooth technology to an app that
offers more information on the damage and helps
determine how much the repair should cost. If you want
to — and if you’re in Israel — you even can get quotes
from up to 100 mechanics in the Tel Aviv area.
According to Yaron Cohen, vice president of R&D for
Engie, there have been more than 40,000 app downloads
since the company launched its first round of pilot testing
10 months ago. He said that more than 700 million people
get their cars repaired by mechanics each year, incurring
costs of more than $150 million. Engie, a start-up that just
completed its first round of funding, expects to be
available in the United States within the next six months.
Cohen and his colleague, Ido Ozdoua, were among the
3,000 people either presenting or learning about Israeli
technologies — and the prospect of investing in them —
from January 25 to 26 at the OurCrowd Global Investor
Summit. The meeting, which brought technology leaders
and innovators from around the world to Jerusalem’s
International Convention Center, featured some of Israel’s
hottest start-ups. The agenda was packed with content,
including talks by Jonathan Medved, founder and CEO of
OurCrowd, the leading global equity crowdfunding
platform for accredited investors; Alan Boehme, chief
technology officer, chief innovation officer, chief architect,
and customer/commercial CIO for the Coca-Cola Company;
and Harel Kodesh, vice president and chief technology
officer for GE-Digital. A first-ever “crowd hackathon”
offered some insight into Israel’s ingenuity and creativity.
“It is amazing,” said United States Agency for
International Development Economic Growth Officer Jarir
Dirini, who was there. “But we expect to find it here.”
Take Bird, a small wearable device that turns any space
into an interactive playground, which was developed by
MUV Interactive. In a presentation, CEO Rami Parhan
showed how the gadget can turn anything you touch to
life.
“Remember the first time you touched a touch screen,”
Parhan said. “It was magic. You couldn’t stop swiping. We
have created a user interface that makes you feel that all
over again.”
Bird works with the devices and software you already use
(iPads, projectors, and AV/VR headsets), or with new
ones. It allows you to push, pull, touch, grab, and move
content from anywhere in the room, up to 100 feet away,
with a swoosh of your fingertip.
Bird now is targeting the corporate and education sectors,
and it already has placed 15,000 units in institutions of
higher education. It is being sold through both distribution
channels and re-sellers in the United States and Asia.
Then there’s freeD —”free dimensional video”— from Replay
Technologies, which is redefining what it means to watch
and experience sports. Founded in 2012, the technology
already is installed in stadiums around the world. It allows
for immersive reality experiences for individuals using a
smart screen, enables replays to be broadcast from
different views and angles within 60 seconds, and also
can be leveraged for commercial use. freeD already has
seed-stage funding partnerships with Samsung, Sony,
Facebook, Google, and others.
Other areas of Israeli technology also were showcased at
the summit, including green and agricultural, web, and
medical.
HIL Applied Medical’s CEO, Sagi Brink-Danan, spoke
about the company’s new class of ultra-compact high-
performance accelerators for cancer proton therapy. The
patented approach to particle acceleration and beam
delivery enables reduction in the size, complexity, and cost
of a proton therapy system.
Brink-Danan explained that proton therapy is nothing
new —”we have known about it for 60 or 70 years and it
has been practiced for more than 30 years,” he said.
Nevertheless, today, more than 95 percent of cancer
patients cannot benefit from the therapy because of the
size of the proton therapy machinery and the cost of
running it. The unique properties of laser-accelerated
proton beams allow for more savings in the ancillary
magnetic systems used for beam shaping and delivery,
while providing state-of-the-art clinical capabilities.
The next big thing in upright mobility, UpNRide from
UpNRide Robotics Ltd., is a new mobility solution for
people in wheelchairs. The device enables them to sit and
stand whenever they want to, and in all places — indoor
and outdoor. The rider pushes a button to enable the
standing position.
“They will be able to go up or down whenever any able-
bodied person does it,” Dr. Oren Tamari said, noting the
device’s unprecedented safety features — it can maneuver
on slopes and curves, and keeps the rider centered to
avoid dizziness or falls.
The wheelchair has existed for centuries, and while its
materials and technology have changed slightly over
time, it still is simply a chair with four wheels. There are
more than 8 million wheelchair users who suffer from
poor health because of their necessarily sedentary lives.
Their quality of life and self-esteem suffers. Each person
with a physical disability that relegates him or her to a
wheelchair incurs annual costs of $70,000 to $120,000
for the healthcare system. Enter UpNRide, which launched
in 2014 and whose team of inventors includes the brains
behind ReWalk Robotics, another Israeli venture of
Tamari, Dr. Amit Goffer, and Dudi Haimovich.
“It’s all about inclusion,” Tamari said. “We are changing
the world.”
JNS.org
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