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You want a RoboScooter, you just don’t know it yet. The MIT-designed lightweight, folding, electric scooter is one their labs latest innovative creations that is bound to revolutionize urban mobility. The prototype of the new design, which was unveiled at the Milan Auto Show a couple of months ago, is a product of MIT’s Smart Cities Group run by professors and students. Their goal is to reduce the negative effects of extensive vehicle use, road congestion, air pollution, traffic noise, excessive consumption of space for parking, and ultimately reduce carbon emissions to slow global warming. No wonder they were a semifinalist at the MIT $100k.

They are working with manufacturers in Taiwan and Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute. Motor scooters are already popular abroad in European and Asian cities and it’s about time that someone is doing something to reduce traffic congestion in these major cities. RoboScooter is an improvement because it is green and designed in such a way that eliminates the powertrain with the motors directly inside each of the two wheels. This makes it possible for the scooter to be folded up into half its size and making it easier to be stored in crowded urban environments.

If the scooter isn’t impressive enough, the team designed and accomplished the project in a mere eight months “from a blank sheet to a built concept.” Plans in the future not only center on selling these but creating systems where communities can share or rent from spots throughout the city Zip Car style. Check out the video to see it in action:

iViz is a network security company founded by two IIT-Kharagpur alumni. They provide technology which enables organizations to strengthen their networks against hackers and intruders. Their patented software uses AI to simulate a hacker’s penetration techniques and eliminate human errors. The founder’s Bikash and Nilanjan developed the technology as a project on network security in IIT. When they saw the potential of a business in their project, they entered various business plan competitions to raise initial funds. Bikash also sold some of his paintings to fund their business.

I had the opportunity to talk to Bikash after he had won Conquest-2006, which was a business plan competition held at BITS-Pilani. While I couldn’t make much sense of his technology, I was inspired by his passion and vision. A few days after winning Conquest he incorporated iViz and began taking projects from companies. In a year he won UC-Berkeley’s Technology Challenge and also London Business School’s Asia technology venture competition. Recently Business Today put them in their annual top 10 Indian startups list. (more…)

People were thrilled when cell phone companies rolled out built-in cameras. But now, they are about to be stunned. Shahyaan Desai, a graduate of Cornell University, is in the process of developing a high-definition micro video projector that utilizes breakthrough micro-mirror technology called Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS), to bring a new generation of displays to market. Imagine, instead of your massive rear projection system you have projector that is no larger than a matchbox! With this type of disruptive technology, it comes as no surprise that they have been able to lock down nearly $1 million in a seed round from 6 venture capital firms as well as taking the grand prize of $100,000 last Tuesday in New York’s Creative Core Emerging Business Competition.

Although it has potential to produce an incredible device, Mezmeriz Inc. faced a big challenge of creating a market for the new technology. Offices already have large projection systems, so they looked into more ubiquitous products such as digital assistants, cell phones, and MP3 players. This still begs the question whether or not people actually need a portable HD projector. Everything is shrinking, but does everything need to be so incredibly tiny? You would think that features would be compromised; however, a recent article explains that the opposite is true:

Though small, the device can project a wide image onto a wall or fold-out screen, making a much larger image than is possible with the tiny LCD screens that come with, say, the popular Apple iPod music and video players. (more…)

Loopt is a mobile social mapping tool. It uses GPS on mobile phones and devices to track friends and displays their locations visually on a map or in a list. You can request for alerts when your friends are within a certain distance, send messages to friends in a particular area and also share geo -tagged information and photos with your network. Right now the service is available on Sprint and Boost, and more service providers should be added soon. It costs $2.99 a month after a 30 day free trial. Loopt joins the likes of FireEagle by Yahoo and Whrrl by Pelago.

Loopt is two years old and was founded by Sam Altman and Nick Sivo. They are already in an advanced stage of growth with nearly $15 million in funding by Sequoia Capital and New Enterprise Associates. Loopt was one of the earliest startups invested in by YCombinator. YC funded the company when Sam was still a sophomore at Stanford University. Paul Graham mentions him in his ‘A student’s guide to startups‘ essay describing him as, “Ah, so this is what Bill Gates must have been like when he was 19.” Sam also advises some of the more recent YCombinator companies. (more…)

A team of students from the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon won the top prize at the Moot Corp business plan competition this past weekend. Moot Corp, held at the University of Texas at Austin, is considered one of the most important and prestigious competitions in the country. This year’s winners presented NeuroBank, which has developed proprietary technology to extract and preserve adult neural stem cells. This was reportedly the ninth year that Tepper has taken the prize (making them the winningest school in the competition’s 24 year history), this year beating out 37 competing teams from business schools and universities from around the globe.

The NeuroBank teams consists of Tepper MBA candidate Raymond Sekula, M.D., and Sasha Bakhru, a Ph.D. candidate at the Carnegie Mellon College of Engineering. The two scholars have developed technology to:

…harvest, isolate, expand and store neurologic stem cells from cerebrospinal fluid, a clear bodily fluid around and inside the brain. The technology allows minimally invasive extraction, isolation, expansion and cryopreservation of these stem cells and supports efforts to expand their use in developing treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, stroke or traumatic brain injury, among others. In addition, the technology will allow patients to store healthy neural stem cells today to receive cutting-edge treatments for diseases they might develop later in life.

Raymond and Sasha will receive $25,000 in cash and (more…)

There’s no need drink that coffee or pop that adderall anymore, just chew on some ThinkGum, a new creation from Stanford grad student Matt Davidson. The gum is designed to improve concentration, increase alertness, enhance information recall and reduce careless errors by packing the gum with herbs and herbal extracts that have been scientifically demonstrated to exhibit these characteristics. ThinkGum will also help with all nighters; it has the equivalent amount of caffeine as half a can of soda. (more…)

Last week, I was fortunate enough to meet Marc Deley, a college dropout (Boston College) and founder of The Rez(life) Magazine, a College Mogul partner. Marc has leveraged a variety of skill sets and connections as well as his creativity to mold the magazine into a professional and engaging product that can rival any magazine you might pull off the shelf. I am impressed with the quality of content as well as his execution and development the business model that is already proving very successful–he is expanding to five universities in the Boston metro area.

I couldn’t believe it when Marc explained that Rez(life) is an entirely student-run publication. The content includes high-quality photo shoots with the hottest students from each school, intriguing articles covering the issues and topics that matter most to students, and features that are specific to each school and its surrounding community. Rez(life) is a new breed of magazine that comes specially tailored for each school. (more…)

Fraser Doherty, now a student at University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland, always loved jam. When he was fourteen years old, he began making homemade jam using his Grandmother’s recipes, selling it to neighbors and church congregations. But Fraser realized that when consumed in large quantities, jam takes its toll. He decided to try and make the world’s healthiest jam, using only the best, most nutritious fruits and not adding any extra sugar. Within eighteen months, he left school to work on SuperJam full-time for a year before starting university.

Soon enough, Waitrose, a high-end chain of supermarkets in the UK, gave Fraser a contract to supply their 184 stores with SuperJam. Fraser has since managed to secure contracts to supply other large retailers in Great Britain, such as the UK’s largest grocer–Tesco. After securing the contracts, Eat Super Ltd. was born. He is currently reinvesting all profits in order to grow the business. Last year, SuperJam reportedly hit $750,000 in sales and is on track to double that in 2008 (about 50,000 jars a month). Over the next few years, Fraser plans to expand into other spreads such as marmalade and peanut butter and reach international markets, mainly the US. (more…)

The Inter-American Development Bank has launched its grant program called Innovation for Inclusive Development. The grant is aimed at fostering development and dissemination of innovations in products, processes and services and engender solutions with the potential of improving the quality of life of poor and/or excluded people in Latin America and the Caribbean. Up to six grants, ranging from $30,000 to $100,000, will be awarded to the selected individuals to develop, test and pilot the projects in the region. Here is a link to selection criteria of award.

The deadline for submission of project proposals is June 20, 2008 (5pm EST). For more information visit the Innovation for Inclusive Development website.

Trust the MIT guys to take something as mundane as a post-it and turn it into a really cool tech toy. The Ambient Intelligence Group at MIT has created ‘Quickies’, which are intelligent post-it notes that can be searched, located and can communicate with your computer or mobile phone. Using RFID, Artificial Intelligence and ink recognition technologies, they’ve made it possible for using post-its to add events to iCal or Google calendar, send reminders on your cell phone, or to simply save information on your computer.

While such a product looks very commercially viable, I hope its introduced into the market and doesn’t remain a college project.

[MIT via Gizmodo]