In 1800, just two per cent of the world’s population lived in cities – now 50 per cent do with 1.5 million more joining them every week. And many of them need somewhere to park their cars. Jukka Riivari, CEO of Finnish startup LeanPark, believes automation is the solution. In the company’s proposed storage system a driver parks his car in a private room, then the floor beneath it rises up to move it to an open space in a car stack behind.
Unlike humans, robots don’t park at odd angles or over lines, allowing LeanPark’s automated valets to pack many more vehicles into the same amount of space. Riivari claims 400 cars can be fit into just 2,000 metres squared – less than half the 4,400 required by a standard multi-storey, and nearly four times more space efficient than a traditional, single-level car park.
Boaz Leupe
Co-founder and CEO, Nerdalize
Re-inventing server farms
Boaz Leupe’s radiator doesn’t only keep your home warm – it can also model protein folding, analyse medical scans, or render a video game while it’s at it. Technology companies and academic labs typically use providers like Amazon Web Service to outsource such computationally demanding tasks to “the cloud” – a nebulous term referring to banks of high-powered computer servers that collectively consume three percent of the world’s total electricity. This energy goes not only into powering the servers themselves, but also into removing the heat they generate in order to keep them within operating temperatures. The idea behind Delft-based Nerdalize’s server-powered radiator is to place these heat producers where warmth is actually needed – in ordinary people’s homes. The result: some Dutch citizens get their house heated for free, while Nerdalize offers cloud computing services at 55 per cent cheaper than most other providers.
Jesper Nordin
Creator, Gestrument
Re-inventing music composition
Holding a single melody in your head can be tricky enough – a classical composer has to simultaneously consider how the individual parts of up to a hundred musicians will all stack up. For Stockholm-based classical composer, Jesper Nordin the solution was technology – namely the way a flexible interface can make the simultaneous control of multiple parameters as intuitive as sculpting sound. Developed in collaboration with software designer Jonathan Liljedahl, the Gestrument app offers both theoretical complexity and expressive freedom by allowing a musician to break their composition down and remix its musical DNA. Nordin has since performed Gestrument compositions with a range of leading orchestras, including the Nordic Chamber Orchestra, but it’s not just for classical music. Preset options draw on everyone from Swedish extreme metal band, Meshuggah to Indian Sitar player, Ravi Shankar.
Learn more about how HP is helping to re-invent startup culture.
In partnership with HP. Discover more
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
