The Future of Solar Panel Installations with the Help of Robots

PV-Kraftwerker GmbH & Co. is a German energy company that provides photovoltaic mounting systems, fencing systems, carport systems and monitoring and security systems. It offers services that are applicable to mechanical and electrical; planning and in acquiring high-quality components like photovoltaic modules, cables, inverters, sub-construction and assembly.

PV-Kraftwerker’s operations have caused the economical erection of solar power plants by optimizing the assembly through the assembly robot. PV-Kraftwerker dwells between the start-up and the module production plant. The services of PV-Kraftwerker include corresponding fencing and reliable safety installations.

Powered by the desire to save on costs while optimizing energy production, PV-Kraftwerker is using mobile robotics in installing ground-mounted solar panels. Because the workers are robots, PV-Kraftwerker can work day and night in through all kinds of weather conditions. Its robot can assemble solar panels that are considered as power plant grade. These solar panels are normally four times the size of the ones installed in many homes.

Robotics has been a great help to PV-Kraftwerker. Since the time the company has used robots, what the company usually takes 35 workers to install can now be done by just three robots. It is also amazing that the job can take only one-eighth of the time. A 14-megawatt solar plant, for instance, can cost PV-Kraftwerker close to $2 million to install. With the robots, the costs are cut to almost half. One robot costs $900,000 and this amount can be recovered in less than one year of continuous use.

In recent developments, PV-Kraftwerker can now install panels on metal frames – a task usually done manually by humans. As the robots lay the panels, two workers working alongside the robot can screw the panels to the frame to make electrical connections.

In the near future, PV-Kraftwerker expects that robotic installations will become common since many components are being produced to adapt to automation. For PV-Kraftwerker, it is innovating its robots to make them GPS-guided. The company looks forward to robots that pound poles on the ground, mount panels and eliminate the workers that screw the panels to the frame.

Rap Genius: Annotating Rap Lyrics

Angel Investor Andreessen Horowitz has contributed to the funds of Rap Genius to create a site that would act as a collaborative text-annotation platform. Recent developments at Rap Genius revealed that the company is building their site for large companies and government agencies.

Rap Genius offers crowd-sourced annotations of song lyrics. Along with the annotations are lyrical explanations, poetry and religious texts. Rap Genius is also moving into a new business model – the business enterprise.

According to Rap Genius co-founder Ilan Zechory, the idea of going enterprise was suggested by investor Ben Horowitz during the company’s fund raising drive. Horowitz was himself an expert in enterprise. After the fundraising, the Rap Genius team weighed their options.

Rap Genius is competing with some of the most popular companies that offer enterprise such as Microsoft Share Point, Google Docs, and Asana. In spite of the competition, Rap Genius continues to focus on providing consistent collaborative document editing and approvals.

Foursquare: Social Way of Locating Venues

In an era when location-based social networking is gaining popularity, Foursquare has joined in the fad by creating its own website that would cater to smartphone users. Nearby venues can be located through text messaging, the website or through a device-specific app. The app provides a GPS hardware installed in a mobile device provides ease of locating venues. Points and badges are given to users each time they log in.

Foursquare was founded by Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai in 2009. While Crowley was in the New York University for the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), he proposed a similar project for his thesis called the Dodgeball. In 2005, Google acquired the rights for Dodgeball but Google eventually shut the operations of Dodgeball down in 2009 in favor of Google Latitude.

Crowley replicated the idea of Dodgeball in Foursquare where users can interact with their environment using a mobile device. By the end of April 2012, Foursquare’s records show that it had 20 million users worldwide. At that time, Foursquare’s target is to reach 750 million check-ins by June 2012. The figure will represent equal check-ins by both male and female users and that half of these check-ins will come from users outside US. In February 2011, Foursquare added supports for Japanese, Spanish, German, Italian, and French users. Supports for Thai, Korean, Indonesia, Russian and Portuguese customers were added in September 2011. Turkish support was added in June 2012.

Foursquare allows its users to post their locations in a given venue (called Check-in) and then connect with peers and friends. Other check-ins can be done on Twitter and Facebook. Each check-in requires selection. Points are awarded at each check-in. Badges are given based on tagged locations, frequency of check-ins and other predetermined patterns such as time of check-in.

The app also features other useful functions such as “To Do” list, tips at the venue, history page of check-ins with breakdowns according to months and years, and a sidebar that allows check-ins to be categorized.

SELCO India: Power to the Rural Communities in India

SELCO India or Solar Electric Light Company, India is the nation’s leading social enterprise. Its business has had a significant contribution to India’s poor households. It uses its solar energy-based interventions. To date, SELCO has installed about 125,000 solar energy systems in homes and aims to hit 200,000 by the end of 2014. India’s government has recognized SELCO’s contributions and awarded the company with the Ashden Awards (equivalent to the Green Oscars) in 2005 and in 2007.

SELCO was founded by Dr. Harish Hande and co-founded by Dr. Neville Williams in 1995. Dr. Hande was a graduate of IIT Kharagpur. While taking his doctorate at the University of Massachusetts, Dr. Hande birthed the concept of a sustainable source of energy for India. He had the privilege of visiting a poor community in Dominican Republic that uses solar lights. He used this as a model for a similar project in India. He made further studies on poverty and the intervention of solar energy in Sri Lanka.

After these study trips, Dr. Hande met with Dr. Williams, the founder of Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF). SELF is a non-profit organization that focuses on bringing electricity to rural areas worldwide.

In 1995, Dr. Hande and Dr. Williams co-founded SELCO to help meet the needs of people in India who lacked access to adequate energy. At SELCO’s startup stage, SELF owned majority of the stakes. As SELCO started to gain momentum, Dr. Williams slowly withdrew SELF’s interests in the company.

Ouya: The Next Generation Home Videogame Console

Ouya Inc. is a creator of a video game console that operates using its own Android OS. The company maintains the Ouya store that sells games and apps which exclusively runs through the Ouya platform. Ouya features the application called TwitchTV and provides access to its OnLive video game streaming.

Ouya was founded by Julie Urhman in 2012. Urhman is a veteran in the gaming industry. She employed Yves Béhar as designer and Muffi Ghadiali as project manager. Together, they put up an excellent engineering team that started Ouya. Financial backing was provided by Kickstarter. The first console was released on June 25, 2013 after Ouya weathered some delays.

All Ouya systems are development kits. Any Ouya user of gamer can develop their own games using Ouya with the need to secure a license. The games produced will feature a free-to-play aspect regardless if it is completely free, or it has a free trial, or has a purchasable upgrades and levels and other in-game items. By doing this, Ouya can be competitive against Wii U, Xbox One and PS4.

On July 3, 2012, Ouya was introduced to the gaming world as a new home video game console. One week later, Kickstarter began a campaign to gauge the number of people who are interested in its first project, the Boxer 8. Boxer 8 featured an in-progress software and a functional user interface. Its prototype and console can run in Android 4. It is equipped with Nvidia Tegra 3 chip. The app was sold at $99 only.

Within eight hours of Kickstarter’s campaign, the financial goal was already reached. As more and more models became available, the fundraising continued to roll. Kickstarter’s records showed that Ouya made history that day for the best performance of any project on the first day. The statistics revealed one backer for every 5.59 seconds. Ouya was also the first Kickstarter-backed startup to reach the $1 million spot in the quickest possible time and only the eighth company in the Kickstarter history to make $1 million.

There is no doubt that Ouya has the potential to become the next generation home video game console.