Genius NY finalists to begin competition at the Tech Garden in January

SYRACUSE — The five finalists selected to take part in the fourth round of the Genius NY will move into the Tech Garden in Syracuse to begin the competition.

Empire State Development (ESD) announced the five finalists on Dec. 11. 

Genius NY is a business accelerator program administered at CenterState CEO’s Tech Garden. Genius NY stands for Growing ENtrepreneurs & Innovators in UpState New York.

These startup drone and Internet of Things (IoT) companies will participate in the year-long program and will compete for a total of $3 million in direct investment, including a grand prize of $1 million and four $500,000 awards. 

Throughout the program, teams will have meetings with community leaders, mentors, and advisors from leading companies in Central New York while also participating in tourism activities. The goal is to encourage all participants to put down roots and stay in the region following the conclusion of the program.

“We are excited to welcome these innovative entrepreneurs to Central New York for round four of Genius NY,” Eric Gertler, acting commissioner and president & CEO-designate of Empire State Development, said in a statement. “This unique competition supports UAS startups and IoT companies developing the next-generation technologies that will accelerate Central New York’s growing drone industry and ensure the region continues to rise.”

The five companies will move into the Tech Garden in January to begin competing for $3 million in investments. The companies were selected from a pool of more than 400 submissions. 

The year-long competition is the largest business accelerator competition for the drone industry in the world. 

All five of the round-four teams will begin the program in January, focused on enhancing their business plan and will pitch their technologies at an event in April to a panel of judges and audience of more than 300 people, where the grand prize and runner-up awards will be decided and announced.

The finalists

ESD provided the following description of each Genius NY finalist:

Eget Liber of Syracuse uses an autonomous, semi-submersible remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV) to mitigate the life-cycle of cyanobacterium, also known as blue-green algae, in freshwater lakes. The ROV is designed to receive command coordinates from an aerial drone, which is configured to identify algae blooms via spectral analysis. 

BotsAndUs of the United Kingdom automates customer service and operations tasks across the retail, hospitality and travel sectors with a fleet of fully autonomous robots that work with employees to serve more customers as well as capture real time data. They provide a full stack solution of hardware, software, support, and data manipulation.

DroneSeed of Seattle, Washington seeks to make reforestation scalable and “make a dent” in carbon emissions. Using drone swarms, DroneSeed plants trees at a rate that is “six times more efficient” than manual labor planting. Their process decreases the response time to reforest and increases the total acres of reforestation that can be done per year by simplifying the supply chain.

Geopipe of New York City creates instant, immersive virtual copies of real cities for gaming, simulation and architecture. Their machine learning algorithms generate 3D maps and models with every tree, building, road and window labeled and realistically reproduced. These images are then licensed monthly, annually or via revenue sharing.

Skyy Network of Australia has a flight information management system that uses an open source data exchange network built on blockchain. It allows UAS (unmanned aircraft system) service suppliers and air navigation service providers to share and verify safety critical airspace data to allow drones to operate beyond visual line of sight.

A UAS includes a drone and equipment used to control its flight. A drone is also referred to in the industry as an unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV.