upCAT Teams März 2022

Idea

Rhythm makes music move. REO Software enables musicians to create rhythms in an intuitive way. We develop tools that accompany musicians creatively from the first idea to the finished music: on the road, at home on the couch or in the professional studio.

 Team 

Our team was formed at the Institute for Music Informatics and Science in Karlsruhe (IMWI). Dirk Handreke is currently completing his Master’s degree in Music Informatics there in the field of Software for Creativity. Dr Bernd Härpfer wrote his dissertation at IMWI in the field of rhythm and perception research. Dirk and Bernd share a passion for rhythm and digital music production.

Idea

SemorAI is to become an artificial intelligence that understands real processes in the company on the basis of semantic technology and various methods of artificial intelligence and can evaluate the resulting data. This should make it possible to analyse past data and learn from it in order to use real-time data to predict future errors and counteract them by suggesting actions. With an in-depth root cause analysis, it should then be possible to determine the causes of errors and derive possible actions to prevent these errors in the long term. In addition, potential sources of error should be pointed out as early as the product development stage in order to reduce development and introduction costs.

Team

Founder John Achim Holzhauer and Co-Founder Kanran Zhou (Joe) met at the SDaCathon of the KIT’s SDaC research group in April 2021 and started working on defect data. In the process, they identified the problem of inadequate risk and defect management. In Germany alone, the 25,000 manufacturing and construction companies of interest to us, which generate an annual turnover of approximately € 1.8 trillion, incur between € 50 and 250 billion in defect costs annually. However, the economic as well as environmental sustainability potentials are much greater.

That is why they have made it their mission to make risk and error management in manufacturing and construction companies fit for the future.

About themselves

Joe and I are the perfect team, as Joe, with his Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering and Information Technology at KIT and some experience in developing software, AI and knowledge graphs, takes on the part of the technical implementation and I, with my diverse start-up experience, my Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering and likewise some experience in developing software, including at the wbk Institute for Production Technology, at Arvato Financial Solutions and Bosch in the area of Industry 4.0, contribute the part of the organisation and external presentation. My own start-up experience ranges from the eCommerce company Daba OHG and the brand Schulfreund, which I founded in my second semester, to the start-up Bock auf Karlsruhe.

I am currently writing my bachelor’s thesis on the topic of “Future-proof error management in manufacturing companies through semantic technology and artificial intelligence”, in order to use it to explore the foundations for our startup and the technology in more detail. Based on this, we want to submit an EXIST application.

The upCAT programme is also very helpful for this, as we scrutinise our business model once again and concretise the value proposition. In addition, we receive very valuable feedback.

Idee

People who suffer from hearing impairment face the cocktail party problem. They cannot have conversations with multiple people in a crowded environment because most hearing aids amplify all sounds, even noise. Convoaid is a mobile app that helps users by providing them with a directional hearing experience. The app localizes different sounds around the user, and the user selects which sources they want to hear and only those sources will be amplified and broadcasted to the hearing aid.

 Team

Nahid Mohammadi  has a master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from KIT. Currently, she is a Ph.D. candidate at the ITIV institute at KIT.