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From missiles to wearables: U of I startup gets $650,000
Adam Tilton
University of Illinois researchers figure that the same techniques that can be used for tracking missiles and space junk can make wearable fitness devices perform better.
Their startup, Rithmio Inc., has raised $650,000 from investors, led by U of I alum Marcin Kleczynski, founder of antivirus maker Malwarebytes. Other investors include Chicago-based venture funds Hyde Park Venture Partners, Illinois Ventures and Techra Investments, which is run by technology entrepreneur Mark Tebbe, and Champaign-based Serra Ventures.
Rithmio was founded a year ago by U of I engineering professor Prashant Mehta and graduate student Adam Tilton.
They envisioned commercializing their motion-recognition technology for defense companies until Mr. Tilton was at a developers' conference last year. A speaker was trying to demonstrate a next-generation wearable fitness tracker that automatically would recognize different physical activities. But the technology wasn't working very well because it was slow to recognize the different actions, Mr. Tilton said.
"I figured, 'I can do better than that," he said. "We had spent years working on the technology. We had a protoype in about a month."
He declined to go into the specifics of Rithmio's solution but said it is an improvement over other wearables because "we take a different modeling approach that greatly simplifies the problem."
"The classic approach is one size fits all," the 26-year-old Peoria native says. "Instead our new approach allows us to automatically personalize a solution that is unique to the user."
It involves sophisticated algorithms and draws on machine-learning advances at U of I. The two had been working on signal processing and machine learning in Mr. Mehta's lab at the U of I, creating mathematical algorithms for tracking moving targets using radar.
The company won U of I's Cozad New Venture Competitionin April, which was judged by Mr. Klelczynski of Malwarebytes, based in San Jose, California; Mr. Tebbe; and others who later became investors.
They're betting on the come. While Rithmio has been testing its product for a few months and expects to begin a wider beta test soon, it hasn't yet lined up any customers. The company hopes to license the technology to electronics companies that make wearables and fitness trackers, rather than make products itself.
Rithmio is part of a growing stable of U of I tech spinouts, including Diagnostic Photonics, Cellular Diagnostics, ElectronInks and PhotoniCare.
Mr. Tilton says Rithmio's software will result in more accurate devices that automatically recognize particular movements or exercises, allowing athletes to better track their performance. The technology also could help users make sure they're doing exercises correctly.
That same functionality could open the door to a market in physical therapy, helping therapists monitor patients' activity. Rithmio's software could also enable smartphones to function as remote controls for TVs or PowerPoint presentations.
"This a platform for gesture recognition," Mr. Tilton said.
The company has about a half-dozen employees. Mr. Tilton eventually plans to open a Chicago office.
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Using this as a mental model of what is going on at QUIK. They have a core group of folks now with the focus on gesture recognition.
We are close enough to the real world that QUIK can have the gesture evolve to what works for the end user.....just as Dr. Saxe says in this item he wrote
and that means many user trials, under a variety of conditions to understand what feels natural. So there will be a flaring of ideas deployed in a variety of products that will result in an understanding of what works and what doesn’t, followed by losing ideas falling out and a focus on refining the survivors, and of course a new burst of creativity in some new area.
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