To boldly go where no start-up has gone before
The project team lead by a young Saudi Engineer
Jeddah-October 20,2011: On August 25th this year, the third graduating class of Singularity University, Silicon Valley presented ten business proposals to their professors, angel investors and tech grandees. Singularity University's founder Peter Diamandis likens his institution to Star Trek's fictional "Starfleet Academy for the world's biggest challenges." It seeks out and promotes "exponentially growing technologies" such as nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, brain-machine interfaces, synthetic biology and the like.
One of the most eye-catching projects presented this year was by the Matternet team which was also the furthest along in its development. The Matternet concept aims to leapfrog road-based transportation altogether with a network of electric autonomous aerial vehicles to carry much needed medical & food supplies to regions in developing countries with no proper road access.
The Matternet team's Lead Engineer is Saudi national Yasser Bahjatt. The pitch featured a video of a small robotic "quadrocopter", hovering gracefully to an astral soundtrack. The current prototype is capable of carrying 2kg over a distance of 10km.
"Matternet envisions a network of ground stations for these unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) where the devices could recharge on their way to inaccessible destinations and inexpensively deliver payloads to remote communities, " Bahjatt explained.
He pointed out that they aim to produce the quadrocopters for use in round-trip medical missions for less than $2500, and deploy enough solar-powered ground stations for recharging and restocking supplies.
"The government of the Dominican Republic has already agreed to work with Matternet for a field test in that country. Matternet's ultimate goal is to build an UAV capable of carrying not just medicines but people between villages in these pilotless, electric quadrocopters," Bahjatt added.
Yasser, is a Computer Engineering graduate from KAU, and was the first Saudi to be accepted to Singularity University. As Lead Engineer at Matternet he drives the research and development of the company including the technology of its UAVs, ground stations & logistics AI. Yasser is also one of the active participants at technology events world-wide. His earlier instrumental contributions to science and technology are demonstrated in being the first to translate TED, the biggest convention of innovators in Technology, Entertainment & Design, to Arabic. He had also held the record for most TED translations in the world for 14 weeks.
Other interesting teams that came out of Singularity University are AstroTrash that hopes to use Earth-based lasers to clear space junk out of the path of satellites; BioMine, exploits existing mining technologies to harvest valuable metals from electronic waste and H2020 aims to use their mobile platform to crowd source information on the availability and quality of water in slums. More down-to-earth projects included Corruption Tracker, a mobile platform for reporting corruption, Ignisolar, producing cheap, flexible and lightweight solar panels, and Senstore, which helps the developer community build and commercialise prototype health sensors. All teams hope to turn their projects into start-ups.
Peter Diamindis and Ray Kurzweil founded Singularity University in 2009 at NASA's Ames Research Centre in Silicon Valley. Its ten-week graduate program attracts serial entrepreneurs, engineers, fighter pilots, roboticists and political advisers. Faculty members include Astro Teller, the head of innovation at Google, and Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the internet.
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© Press Release 2011
