Four questions for Novo AI

Startups are considered drivers of innovation. In the field of artificial intelligence, it is often startups from universities that use their know-how to develop new application-oriented solutions. The L3S supports such startups from academia. One example is Novo AI UG, which was founded in 2021. For one year, the team at L3S was supported by the EXIST start-up grant from the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology. Even after the funding ends in October 2021, the cooperation with L3S continues. Binaire asked the founders.

How does the cooperation with the L3S help you?

From the beginning, the L3S has been very supportive of the team’s ideas and provided us with consulting resources to advance our goals. Today, we consider the L3S an active incubator for our startup. The wide range of research projects within the institute as well as the collaboration in the AI project IIP-Ecosphere and with organizations like Mittelstand-Digital Zentrum Hannover “Mit uns digital!” have also helped us to get a direct line to companies that want to develop technologically.

What do you offer such companies?

Novo AI has developed an end-to-end solution with sensor modules and integrated AI dashboard to make AI applications available and affordable for industry. The portfolio currently consists of two sensor modules: namely, the Tess stereo camera module and the Ava acoustic and vibration analysis module. Planned and tested use cases include production cycle monitoring, predictive maintenance through retrofit, and 3D product quality assurance and production optimization.

Are there other use cases as well?

Although the modular design is intended for the production and manufacturing market, it also has use cases in the logistics industry in the form of predictive maintenance of assembly line systems. Today, these sensors solve problems that used to cause tens of thousands of euros of loss per hour. We also provide package analysis and route planning to avoid bottlenecks in processes. Our modules are scalable at will and simplify the work. Our Watchmen dashboard offers easy integration of robust AI-driven analytics and puts customers in the cockpit of their factories.

What does further collaboration with the L3S look like?

We have strong interest in federated learning and see great potential for it in the future. Together with IIP-Ecosphere, we are launching a project to develop marketable solutions in this area while improving the knowledge base on the research side on this topic. In IIP-Ecosphere’s AI experimentation field, Novo AI has already conducted experiments on vibration and acoustic data analysis test cases for predictive maintenance and cycle detection.