Teams Face Blue-Ribbon Judging Panel Oct. 13 at Carnegie Mellon University

PITTSBURGH-The Robotics Technology Consortium, Carnegie Mellon University and the Innovation Accelerator today announced the five teams from across the United States that are finalists in the inaugural RoboBowl venture competition. The entrepreneurial teams will compete before a blue-ribbon panel of judges at Carnegie Mellon on Oct. 13.

RoboBowl Pittsburgh is the first in a series of national "next-generation robotics" venture competitions intended to find and foster startup and early-stage companies seeking to develop products and services that address unmet and underserved market needs in targeted industrial sectors. The initial event in Pittsburgh seeks to identify new ventures with compelling ideas for next-generation robotics products or services in the health care and quality of life industries. Each finalist receives $5,000 and a chance to win an additional $20,000.

The finalists are:
• Bright Cloud International Corp, Highland Park, N.J.
• Interbots, Pittsburgh, Pa.
• Origami Robotics, Pittsburgh, Pa.
• RescueBotics, Mountain View, Calif.
• TactSense Technologies, Pittsburgh, Pa.

Summaries of the finalists' proposals are available at http://www.cmu.edu/qolt/Events/robobowl-pittsburgh/robobowl-pittsburgh-finalists.html
"We are pleased that the initial RoboBowl competition in Pittsburgh has attracted national interest and that it is taking place in conjunction with the "Innovation Accelerator @ Carnegie Mellon" event the following day," said John Pyrovolakis, founder and CEO of the Innovation Accelerator. "We look forward to the opportunity for the finalist teams to present their innovative ideas for how robotics technology can be adapted to meet some of our most challenging problems in health care."

The judges for the final round competition include Pyrovolakis; Helen Greiner, president and CEO CyPhyWorks, president and CEO, Robotics Technology Consortium, iRobot co-founder; Nathan Harding, co-founder and CTO, Berkeley Bionics; Venetia Kontogouris, senior managing director, Trident Venture Capital; Rich Lunak, president and CEO, Innovation Works; Steven S. Martin, president and CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Nebraska; and Frank DiMeo, vice president, Technical Staff, Physical & Biological Technologies Practice, In-Q-Tel.

The event will also feature opening comments by high level representatives from the National Science Foundation and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy as well as a keynote presentation by Rory Cooper, Co-Director of the Quality of Life Technology Center, a NSF Engineering Research Center operated jointly by Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh.