Israel Active

Ashdod, Israel’s sixth-largest city, is setting up a joint venture called “Living Lab” with Mobileye, MIT and Microsoft. Its database will be available to startups, government and academics working to build smart transport systems. Ashdod already has “Reway” – its smart bus program.

The 2017 EcoMotion Conference in Jaffa featured 200 companies, representing Israel's growing smart vehicle community. Most interest was centered on autonomous cars, the Chinese impact, electric power supply and startups of every kind.

CyberTech Tel Aviv featured the most innovative and advanced cyber-security technologies. From applications that prevent hacking, to rescue systems that save lives. CyberTech 2017 attracted over 12,000 participants from 65 countries. Israeli cyber products repulsed recent global virus attacks.

The Israel-U.S. Binational Industrial R&D (BIRD) Foundation is to invest $7 million in joint US-Israeli projects including for autonomous vehicles, biotech, homeland security, nanotech and digital health. The Israeli companies are Atvio, C4 Systems, Check-Cap, Isorad, Melodea, Nutrino Health, OpSys and Pill Tracker.

The library at Q5 (the fifth quarter) in Jerusalem doesn’t lend out the usual books. Instead it offers top tech & startup books, laptops, smartphones, tablets, processors, kits for assembling robots and cool new gadgets. Its customers include designers, developers and entrepreneurs.

ALYN Hospital, Israel’s only pediatric and adolescent rehabilitation facility, is creating an Innovation Space in Jerusalem for inventions to help special needs kids. The one-stop shop provides a state-of-the-art prototyping lab, expert support and in-house trialing.

Upstream Security is the latest Israeli cybersecurity startup to focus on the automobile security arena Upstream claims to be the first to offer a cloud-based platform that detects and prevents large-scale attacks on connected and autonomous cars. Upstream just raised $2 million of funds.

Israel’s Techsee is a global leader in Visual Support Technologies for the Smart Home.  Techsee is building a massive database of every interaction and resolution to help customers resolve any recurring technical problem via their smartphones. Techsee has just raised $7.5 million of funds.

I reported previously that Israel’s Giraffic achieved high-speed streaming for Virtual Reality (VR) systems.  Now another Israeli company, Inception has developed multi-track real time streaming and spatial audio for a seamless interactive VR experience.

Israeli startup Chooze has launched an iPhone app that helps expectant parents choose the perfect baby name.  Chooze uses the latest in cognitive psychology to help parents decipher their subconscious preferences for names.