Innovative platform honoured in EIT ICT Labs challenge

A Dutch project has won this year’s EIT Labs’ Idea Challenge Internet of Things (IoT) at a ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden.

The Undagrid project won a cash prize of €40,000 and involves the development of a platform, or mesh, connecting devices in the IoT, including cloud services and applications. The annual EIT ICT Labs competition aims to create interest and visibility of the IoT market and prizes are awarded to the three best ideas from European start-up companies or teams looking to develop their solutions and bring new products to market.

Led by Lennart Schroer, Marcus Breekweg, Christiaan Willemsen, the Undagrid mesh gives connected devices equal control, rather than some tools having greater control than others in traditional systems. This allows a more free and easy flow of information in the Undagrid mesh.

Following the win, Breekweg, said: “By 2020 there will be 50 billion things connected to the internet, but the existing network technologies are not the solution to every IoT user case.”

Second prize went to Evothings Secure, a Swedish startup led by Alex Johnson and Aaron Ardiri which provides an end-to-end solution for secure traffic for the IoT; they were awarded €25,000. Third place went to Sensewaves, a French startup for “making sense of sensor data”. They developed a solution that help connected assets become smarter by transforming raw sensor data into meaningful information. The project was given €15,000.

A total of 163 submissions were made to the competition and the final included 11 projects. The jury assessing the winners consisted of industry experts, investors, business accelerators as well as the Stockholm Node director Gunnar Landgren and Henrik Abramowicz, Action Line leader for Future Networking Solutions.