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Promoting spin-off companies from engineering

Promoting spin-off companies from engineering. Augusto Sarti Dipartimento di Elettronica e Informazione Politecnico di Milano. Spin-offs ... and Deptartments Motivations and risks. Why? Take academic research a few steps ahead (engineering, industrialization, production, ...)

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Promoting spin-off companies from engineering

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  1. Promoting spin-off companies from engineering Augusto Sarti Dipartimento di Elettronica e Informazione Politecnico di Milano

  2. Spin-offs ... and DeptartmentsMotivations and risks Why? • Take academic research a few steps ahead (engineering, industrialization, production, ...) • Keep in touch with the industrial world (cross-fertilization btw industry and Academia) • Contribute to development of industrial potential (in highly technological fields) • Give more opportunities to our graduates and alumni (this also simplifies tech transfer) • Make the University take a stand on socio-economic development at regional or even national level Why not? • Spin-Offs should not get in competition with Departments (not so small a risk or so trivial to manage, as government research funds dry out by the day) • Background transfer needs be kept under watch All such issues have been carefully addressed by the Politecnico di Milano through the Technological Transfer Office

  3. TRE:Information from Space Tele-Rilevamento Europa

  4. TRE Mission Committed to developing and implementing radar-based technologies that provide reliable information from remote-sensing data and solve real-life problems In particular, our work is focused on: detection, measurement, monitoring, of land movement

  5. TRE: from research to business • 20 years of research in Data Signal Processing Radar Group, Eln. Dept. Politecnico di Milano • May 1999: Permanent Scatterers Technique Patent IT, EU, USA (ext. Australia, Japan) POLIMI PS Technique™ - PSInSAR™ • March 2000: TRE foundation first spin-off company of Politecnico di Milano Worldwide exclusive licensee of the patent • Shareholders: 10% Politecnico, 90% the inventors • June 2005: ISO 9001:2000 certification • January 2008: TRE expands to North America, creating TRE-Canada, a Canadian subsidiary of TRE

  6. Core business Venice San Francisco Bay Area Long Beach, L.A. Detecting and monitoring ground displacements Los Angeles Basin Rome hundreds of projects carried out using radar data Las Vegas thousands of satellite images processed all over the world Vancouver Istanbul New Orleans Tokyo

  7. Oilfield MonitoringMiddle East 7

  8. TRE in 8 years… • Staff: > 25 people • Turnover: 4.2 M€ (2007), 4.7 M€ (forecast 2008) • Proprietary PSInSAR™ software: > 400,000 C-code lines • Processing Center: 128-node Linux Cluster • > 14,000 radar scenes processed • > 750,000 sqKm analyzed • > 100,000,000 PS identified • TRE Canada incorporated in January 2008 TRE Proc. Centre

  9. Project Other Industry 7% 3% 8% Univ. & Research 12% Pub. Adm. Oil & Gas 14% 56% Company growth Markets Turnover

  10. Research & University Surface deformation monitoring Target Markets Public Authorities Civil Protection Risk/Hazard maps Hazard mitigation Insurance Companies Oil&Gas Comp. PS Data Claim assessment Oil/gas field monitoring Engineering Comp. Stability check - Track routing

  11. Main customers Energy Sector and Engineering Oil Companies • Snam Rete Gas (ENI Group) • AEM S.P.A (Electricity supplier) • CAVET (Engineering) • CESI (Electricity supplier) • Enel.Hydro (Electricity supplier) • Image ONE (Japan) • Eni S.p.A. • Shell • Petroleum Development Oman • Devon Canada University and Research Centers Public Administrations • Polytechnic University of Milano • INGV (National Institute of Geology) • University of Florence, of Bologna, of Calabria • University of Berkeley • Stanford University • University of Miami • University of Alaska • Civil Protection • Environment Ministry • Regional environment Agency of Emilia – Romagna, Lombardia, Piemonte • Region of Lazio • Region of Liguria • Province of Trento

  12. Kee Square:Sensing intelligence

  13. Kee Square company overview:shareholders Spin Off company of the Politecnico di Milano, founded in July 2007 Founding partners • Politecnico di Milano (directly and through the participation ofProf. Augusto Sarti and Prof. Stefano Tubaro) • Celin Technology Innovation SRL, company founded to deploy innovative products in the ICT market • Ghirlanda Smart Card Solutions SpA, production of magnetic and microprocessor cards for banks, ID, security and health Financial partner • Quantica SGR with Principia Fund is the first Italian Private Equity Fund promoted by experienced managers and prestigious research and university institutions. Principia selects and proposes to investors scientific innovations on the technological frontier to be transferred with profit into market-driven products • Technical due diligence from CNR (National Research Council)

  14. Kee Squarecompany overview:mission Development of innovative techniques in video and audio processing for: • biometric identification and tracking • detection of hazardous events • Sensing intelligence Advanced Know-How collected in 15 years of research on • Digital Image Processing • Digital Audio Processing • Statistical Pattern Analisys • Parallel Programming

  15. Kee Square products based on face analysis Kee Square face analysis products (stand-alone or SDK): • Morpheus FF – Face Finder • Morpheus FR – Face Recognition • Morpheus ZS – Zone Screening • Morpheus ICAO – ISO 19794/5 Conformity Check • Morpheus AI – Audience intelligence

  16. Morpheus FF: fast, robust & accurateFace Finder Morpheus Face Finder is based on two pipelined algorithms that are specialized for • Fast localization of image areas that are likely to contain faces • Fast multi-scale and multi-location search • Accurate localization of facial features (eyes, mouth, eyebrows etc.) • Robust against unfavorable illumination conditions • Robust against occlusions (dark sunglasses, scarves, etc.)

  17. Morpheus FF: trainingprocess Proprietary tagged face image database Tag information classes: • Position of Face Mask points • Photografic set: focus, illumination,background, etc. • Subject: gender, age, ethnic group, etc. • Face: pose, eye expression, gaze,mouth expression, etc. • Morphology: eye type, lip type,nose type, mouth type, etc.

  18. Morpheus FRdatabase search Law enforcement agencies use face recognition for automatic mugshot database reduction in their forensic investigative work

  19. Morpheus ZS: face recognitionfor Zone Screening Suitable for crowded areas (airports, rail stations, etc.) as it relies on distant cameras to identify people Screening method that selects only those people that are worth checking: the final decision on their identity can then be made by an operator (security monitor, pocket pc, etc.)

  20. Morpheus ICAOISO/IEC 19794-5conformity check Evaluates facial images according to the ICAO ISO/IEC 19794-5, which defines the requirements for digital image geometry and scenery, and returns Token Frontal Face Images and Full Frontal Face Images that are compliant with it Competitive Advantage • Accurate and Robust Face Finder • Accurate Quality Control Check • Very fast processing: real-time ISO-compliant check & acquisition Token FrontalFace Image Full FrontalFace Image Digital Face Image

  21. Morpheus AIAudience Intelligencefor Advertising software package for audience measurement based on the analysis of face images • Through standard webcams, Morpheus AI monitors people while they are looking at an advertisement. Morpheus AI, in fact, can automatically extract audience data from image stills or video streams, to be used as an immediate feedback on marketing effectiveness, or for collecting statistics. • Morpheus AI is able to automatically extract information such as : • Gender (male, female) • Age (children, young, adult, elderly) • Ethnic (Caucasian, African, Asian) • Attention span company profile - September 08

  22. More to come... • Automatic video archive tagging • Novel intelligent applications for MIDs (mobile internet devices), in collaboration with INTEL • User profiling • Environment profiling • Data access control • ...

  23. Audio security:motivations The information carried by sounds is complementary to that carried by images There are a wide range of sounds that clearly identify hazardous events • Impulsive sounds: gunshot, explosion, car crash, glass shattering, etc. • Continuous sounds: structural collapse, human scream, brawl, etc. These sounds exhibit distinctive characteristics that allow us to recognize them from background noise Localization and recognition are of great interestto numerous applications • Threat alert • Early warning on threats, potential risks,acts of vandalism, suspiciousor forbidden behavior

  24. The KeeSonic suite: overview Class of products for the intelligent acoustic monitoringof outdoor and indoor environments to recognize,classify and localize sounds that are associatedto dangerous conditions The location and the nature of the hazard can be used for triggering a reaction on the part of the environment • Pointing and tracking cameras • Warnings or deterrent actions • Police intervention

  25. The KeeSonic suite: modules KeeSonic Baseline • Recognition of specific classes of acoustic events from single listening points • Screams, gunshots and explosions, smashed windows or vehicles, car accidents, running engines, etc. KeeSonic Evolution • Recognition of subtle and high-level acoustic events through tracking of temporal evolution of features • Aggressions, mobs, brawls, etc. KeeSonic Enhanced • Baseline/Evolution + advanced array processing • Virtual directional microphones, virtual acoustic screens, beamformers, etc. KeeSonic WideRange • Baseline/Evolution + localization + acoustic focusing • Direction of Arrival (DOA) • Location (with two arrays) • Risk map (with multiple arrays)

  26. Product references Working installation of KeeSonic at the Monte Santo subway/train station in Naples, in cooperation with Nexera SCPA Ground floor (approx 2000 sqm) covered with • 8 listening points (Kee Sonic baseline) • 2 arrays of 4 mics each (Kee Sonic Baseline + Kee Wave) • 1000m of mic wire • 4 PC racks and two 8-mic audio rack units • Detection of screams, gunshots, and other events • Resilient to specific noise sources

  27. Last-minute news • Kee Square turns out to be one of the three finalists in the ACES awards in TWO different categories, winner to be selected on Dec. 2, 2008 in Stockholm

  28. TRE Tele-Rilevamento Europa Via Vittoria Colonna, 7 20149 Milano www.treuropa.com TRE Canada Inc. #550 – 409 Granville Street Vancouver, BC, V6C 1T2 Canada www.trecanada.com

  29. Acquisition Pre-processing Feature Extraction Classification Eventrecognition What’s behind it? • Acquisition • Audio streams are acquired and transferred tocomputing units through appropriate channels(wires, optical fibers, wireless connections,audio over IP, etc.) • Pre-processing • Preliminary signal conditioning • Feature extraction • Classification and recognition are based onmetrics applied to audio features • Classification • Complex and effective classification engines areused for deciding what event the soundcorresponds to, and assigning each audio tag alikelihood “score”

  30. Morpheus FR FRGC 2.0 testresults Good performance with medium-to-lowfacial image resolution(70-35 px eye-to-eye distance) Good performance withuncontrolled facial image Small template size250 floating point array, 1.7 KB Fast template generation25 biometric templates per second* Fast similarity score generation500.000 templates per second* *cpu entry level Core 2 Duo 1.86 GHz

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