Blue Venture In-Water Equipment Demo Day
JAIA Bot being thrown into the water. Image courtesy Blue Venture Forum/Maggie Merrill
At the Blue Venture In-water Equipment Demo day earlier this year, the Blue Tech ecosystem located in Southeastern New England was on full display. Companies were given time to introduce their products to the standing-room-only audience in the upper level of the Roger Williams University Sailing Center followed by in water demonstrations off the docks facing Narragansett Bay.
To kick things off, Kevin Rosa, founder of Current Lab, provided a high resolution forecast of the current conditions around the in-water demo area. Its proprietary ocean modeling system generates predictions of currents, temperature and salinity at up to 50 times finer detail than conventional global ocean models.
Walter Schulz, founder of the STEC Reactive Cyclical Induction (RCI) system for marine diesel engines, gave an impassioned pitch about marine diesel engine pollution. His passion for eliminating or reducing marine diesel toxins drove him to develop a the RCI system to reduce NOx by 80%, and other harmful emissions by up to 50%. STEC’s RCI can be installed on newbuilds as well as for retrofitting existing diesel engines.
In an early spring Nor’easter, attendees lined the upper gangway to see equipment in the water. Three JAIA Robotics JAIA Bots were literally thrown off the dock to show how fast they can gather data and get back using an RF link to a handheld tablet. The Bots are used for environmental monitoring, surveying, payload delivery, and reconnaissance operations.
The Aurelia Upper Ocean Profiler was set up in the water to track water velocity near the dock. It is touted as inexpensive, lightweight and user-friendly vehicle for scientific data gathering and surveying. Patrick Pasteris, founder, explained they are transitioning out of research and development and will be looking for partners to move forward into design for manufacturing and commercialization.
The day was not just about getting wet, there were presentations by up and coming start-ups and several RWU students who had a chance to strut their stuff, in front of a group of investors who showed up purely to “shop” Blue Tech.
Blue Venture Forum is known for bringing people, technology and funding together for networking and the Demo Day was no exception. At the end of the day the entire group attended a closing reception that was sponsored by RWU President Dr. Ioannis Miaoulis, who talked about RWU’s participation in the blue economy via their engineering, law and marine biology departments.
As Blue Venture Forum Founder and Director, Dr. Tobias Stapleton said, “dozens of blue tech companies have formed up around the world, over the last five years. Climate and clean tech investors are now looking at blue tech because they see growth opportunity in the sector and they compare the trajectory of “blue” tech today with where “clean” tech was 10+ years ago. And it is widely recognized that the oceans play a critical role to the planet’s climate, so we need to develop technology to better understand our oceans. More than $20 billion dollars has been raised or allocated towards blue tech via private, philanthropic, and governmental investors.”
Walter Schulz, founder of the STEC Reactive Cyclical Induction (RCI) system for marine diesel engines, and Toby Stapleton Blue Venture Forum Founder. Image courtesy Blue Venture Forum/Maggie Merrill
February 2024
