A team of researchers from the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology has developed a proof-of-concept for a novel rechargeable silicon (Si) battery, as well as its design and architecture that enables Si to be reversibly discharged and charged.

Led by Professor Yair Ein-Eli of the Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering, the team proved via systematic experimental works of the graduate student, Alon Epstein and theoretical studies of Dr. Igor Baskin, that Si is dissolved during the battery discharge process, and upon charging, elemental Si is deposited. Several discharge-charge cycles were achieved, utilizing heavy doped n-type Si wafer anodes and specially designed hybrid based ionic liquid electrolytes, tailored with halides (Bromine and Iodine), functioning as conversion cathodes.

This breakthrough could pave the way towards an enrichment of the battery technologies available on the energy storage “super-market” technology, providing an ease on the ever-growing market and demand for rechargeable batteries.

Developments leading to this breakthrough

The increased demand for sustainable energy sources prompted the scientific community to focus on battery research capable of storing large scale grid energy in a manageable and reliable manner. Moreover, the rising demand of the EV industry, which mainly relies on current Li-ion batteries (LIBs) technology is expected to strain current Li production and divert it from more widespread use as portable consumer electronics. Currently, no technology has proven to be competitive enough to displace LIBs. Metals and elements capable of delivering multi-electrons during their oxidation process have been the focus of the research community for a long time due to their associated high specific energy densities.

Magnesium, calcium, aluminum and zinc received much attention as potential anode materials with varied levels of progress; yet none has managed to revolutionize the energy storage industry beyond LIBs, as all of these systems suffer from poor kinetic performance to lack of cell stability, and therefore, much is left to be explored. Silicon (Si), as the second most abundant element on earth’s crust (after oxygen) was left relatively unexplored despite a high energy density of 8.4 kWh kg-1 on par with metallic Li 11.2 kWh kg-1; Si possesses a stable surface passivation, low conductivity (dependent on the doping levels) and until now no established rechargeable cell chemistry comprising elemental Si as an active anode has been reported, outside LIB alloying anode.

In the past decade several publications (initiated originally in 2009 by Prof. Ein-Eli) reported the incorporation of active Si anodes in primary, non-rechargeable air-battery designs. Thus, despite its high abundance and ease of production, the possibility of using Si as an active multivalent rechargeable anode was never explored, until the team’s recent breakthrough.

The Formula Student competition in Europe this summer is a platform for new technological developments.  

The Technion-Israel Institute of Technology Formula racecar team unveiled the first-ever autonomous electric vehicle in the team’s history since 2012.

They designed and built it for the Formula Student International Design Competition in Europe next month.

The Technion team placed first at the Formula Student competition in the Czech Republic in 2019, and first place in the first Formula Student Race held in Israel last year. This team also holds the title for the lightest car in the history of the European competition (132 kg).

Team leader Muans Omari, a master’s student in the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, explained that the car world is shifting to electric and autonomous vehicles, and the Formula Student competitions have embraced this trend.

Nevertheless, the transition from an internal combustion engine to an electric propulsion system “took a lot of work and learning,” Omari added.

The Formula Technion team’s autonomous electric vehicle (A-EV) is no longer red and black as in past years, but blue, white and gray to symbolize electric propulsion.

The Formula Student competition is a platform for new technological developments. Each team’s performance is rated on a combination of engineering challenges plus driving skills demonstrated on the track.

The goal of the project is to enable students to acquire practical knowledge in planning as well as manufacturing vehicles.

“We are considered a good team,” Omari said. “We’re not as good as the German teams that are being supported by the largest car manufacturers and their engineers, but we already proved ourselves.”

If thinking you’re sick can make you feel sick, is there a way to train your brain — and your body — to reverse that process and restore you to health?

That’s the central question that Tamar Koren, an MD-PhD candidate at the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa focused on psychosomatic illness, is researching.

Professor Shai Shen-Orr, head of the school’s Systems Immunology & Precision Medicine Laboratory, is mapping how the immune system ages as people age — to the point of being able to calculate the age of someone’s immune system based on cellular data.

Professor Ron Kimmel, founder of the Geometric Image Processing Lab in the Technion’s Henry and Marilyn Taub Faculty of Computer Science, is using artificial intelligence and machine learning to train computers to analyze biopsy images of human tissue in order to determine not only whether a tissue is cancerous, but also what type of mutation it is and how much it has metastasized.

All three projects are examples of the kind of research being cultivated under the Technion’s new Human Health Initiative (THHI) — a recently announced effort to bring together teaching hospitals, different Technion departments and commercial companies to focus on solving specific health-related challenges. 

“This initiative addresses world challenges that require multidisciplinary solutions,” said Shen-Orr, who is also the cofounder of CytoReason, a pharmaceutical artificial intelligence company. “We’re moving from research based on departments and faculties to being goal oriented. In addressing problems of human health, it doesn’t matter where people sit. They need to work together.”

The THHI is focused on six areas: staff and student engagement, new undergraduate and graduate educational programs, recruitment of top-notch researchers, funding, shared office and lab space for “essential meeting of minds,” and acquisition of cutting-edge lab equipment and other research infrastructure.

The new initiative dovetails with other Technion projects with outside partners, such as the university’s Bridge to Next-Generation Medicine program with Cincinnati Children’s Medical Center. That project aims to revolutionize pediatric medicine by combining the Technion’s technological prowess, including world-renowned expertise in computational science and artificial intelligence, with doctors and scientists focused on understanding and treating childhood diseases.

“The Technion believes that the time is ripe for taking the next quantum leap: addressing human health in a comprehensive, institute-wide manner,” Technion President Uri Sivan said. “The THHI represents a major intellectual and cultural undertaking in this direction. No other university in the country, and only a handful around the world, are positioned so well to take this leap.”

The idea behind the THHI is to pull people out of their comfort zones and create collaborations across units and disciplines. 

“Rather than telling our investigators what they should be doing, the best way is bringing them together, and the magic is guaranteed to happen,” said Noam Ziv, who is spearheading the THHI project. 

Ziv said the Technion’s prime advantage is that it’s one of the world’s few technical universities that also has a medical school.   

“I don’t think you have to convince anybody that human health is a huge challenge,” Ziv said. “Our population is expanding, average age is increasing and the number of challenges associated with human health seems to be growing all the time. The coronavirus is a prime example of how things that affect one part of the world quickly affect other parts.”

During the height of the pandemic, for instance, Technion data scientists raced to improve the efficiency of PCR tests using algorithms. Biologists worked to create rapid testing kits that wouldn’t need sophisticated machines to yield quick results. Still others aimed to devised a sticker, which when placed on a mask, neutralizes viruses on contact.

The THHI extends to researching mind/body interactions. 

To prove their hypothesis about psychosomatic illness, Koren and her team induced colitis in lab mice and waited for them to recover. Researchers then artificially stimulated the neurons in the brain that had become active during the bout of colitis. Inflammation re-emerged in the exact same location even though there was no infection. Likewise, suppressing memory neurons reduced the inflammation in mice who were sick with colitis.

“If, for example, you receive a text message from your friend that he has COVID and you just saw him last night, you immediately start to envision that you’re also sick. And you start to manifest physical presentations of a very similar disease: your throat itches, you start coughing, you feel weaker,” Koren said. “Studies have shown that stress or emotional triggers can initiate disease, or sometimes exacerbate a disease that’s already been diagnosed.”

Koren’s research represents a joint effort among neurosurgeons, neurologists and immunologists — the kind of collaboration THHI seeks to cultivate and which is different from traditional approaches to research.

“These kinds of collaborations have already started to develop,” Koren said. “The fact that it’s both basic science and clinical research is a novelty.”

Eventually, Koren said, her team’s work could lead to a variety of new therapies for diseases that currently have no cure, in the form of magnetic stimulation or other non-invasive therapies for patients with rheumatic arthritis, lupus, multiple sclerosis and other disorders.

“What we’re suggesting is not drugs, which also have adverse effects,” she said, “but regulation of brain activity that can alleviate their symptoms and improve their quality of life.”

Wireless V2X technology developed in Israel alerts motorists and two-wheel vehicle riders to each other’s presence.

An affordable device that alerts cyclists and scooter riders to the danger of unseen motorists could prevent many accidents globally, says Israel-based Autotalks.

The company uses V2X (vehicle-to-everything) technology to connect two-wheelers with other road users and warn them of each other’s presence.

The device, called ZooZ 2, gives a visual warning to two-wheel riders if a vehicle is approaching an intersection and could hit them. It also alerts them to drivers indicating a right turn who may be in their blind spot, and cars that jump a red light.

Drivers who have the device are likewise alerted to the two-wheeler. ZooZ 2 uses wireless technology so it can reliably detect two-wheelers even if the line of sight is obstructed.

The company says three quarters of bike and scooter accidents are caused by drivers failing to notice the two-wheeler – and it’s almost always the two-wheeler that comes off worse.

“Autotalks regards all road accidents as preventable, and those accidents involving bikes and scooters deserve special attention,” said founder and CTO Onn Haran.

“We’re committed to making our new micromobility safety device available immediately in order to save the lives of two-wheeler riders around the globe.”

Cyclists and scooter riders fit the device to their handlebars at a cost of $50 to $100 or it can come integrated on high-end models. ZooZ 2 currently communicates only with the 10% of cars that are V2X-enabled, but the technology is to be included in most new vehicles launched in 2025/26.

The first version of the ZooZ micromobility device was launched in September 2021. Autotalks says the updated version is undergoing validation tests by four manufacturers of bikes or their components, and by two vehicle manufacturers.

Autotalks showcased the ZooZ 2 device last week at the Velo-City Conference, the world cycling summit, in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

The plug-and-play device uses software provided by US-based V2X specialist Commsignia and has been tested successfully by the European consortium Project SECUR (Safety Enhancement through Connected Users on the Road).

Autotalks has already produced similar technology for motorcycles and says the first motorcycle manufacturer will incorporate it into mass-produced models in Europe in 2024.

Software scans picture and identifies best-match beauty products for customers

The power of AI now allows you to instantly see how you’d look wearing the makeup of your favorite celebrity or influencer. Simply upload a picture of any makeup look, and let the algorithm work its magic.

Tel Aviv-based startup Mistrix applies a hyper-realistic digital filter that is personally tailored to your facial features and skin tone.

It then identifies exactly which beauty products you need across a range of brands and allows you to add any or all of them to your cart.

Examples of Mistrix’s hyper-personalized filter. Courtesy

Founders Shir Cofman and Tomer Rosenbaum saw a gap in the online beauty market. There are virtual try-ons for clothes, and there are virtual try-ons for makeup, but they’re all tied to a particular brand. They wanted to give people the option to buy whatever makeup suited their look, regardless of where it came from.

Many makeup brands such as Maybelline, L’Oréal, and MAC Cosmetics offer virtual try-on options, but of their products alone. Mistrix allows customers to shop by look, not by product.

“Social networks do not only expose consumers to products. The main factor that currently motivates customers to buy is actually the desire to achieve a unique look that we have spotted online.” says Shir Cofman, CEO of Mistrix.

“What motivates customers is the desire to achieve a unique look that they have spotted online. The social network changed the way we buy beauty today, but beauty e-stores were left behind. This inspired me to create a visual shopping tool,” Cofman tells NoCamels. 

“Our algorithm generates visual content with a filter within seconds that will allow the user to wear the makeup digitally. There’s no need to go through a confusing abundance of packaging that does not illustrate the value of the product.

“Just choose a look and make a convenient quick purchase. Upload your desired look to the platform and we will do the rest.”

Together with Tomer Rosenbaum, she founded Mistrix in early 2021. The company initially conducted pilots with design partners to test its technology, and improved it based on the feedback they received from users. 

Rosenbaum and Cofman. Courtesy

“The huge potential of promoting makeup product sales using visual content made me realize how many sales sites do not take advantage of it,” says Cofman.

Social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok have become major influences when it comes to the purchasing decisions of its users.

Research shows that more than 30 per cent of users buy beauty products directly from social networks, specifically from Instagram and TikTok. In fact, 72 per cent of Millennials bought fashion and beauty products based on Instagram posts, while over half of all Gen Z-ers say they have purchased a brand after seeing an ad or promotion on Instagram.

US ecommerce sales alone will cross $1 trillion for the first time in 2022, and worldwide sales are expected to reach $5 trillion.

Despite this, ecommerce returns rates have spiked 95 per cent in the last five years. As a result, the National Retail Federation estimates that the cost of returns amounts to $101 billion.

Beauty products play no small part in this, and make up over one-fifth of ecommerce returns. In fact, 22 per cent of all cosmetics are sent back to retailers.

Mistrix aims to expand to American and global markets while continuously developing innovative solutions to improve the digital shopping experience for makeup products.

Chief mobility officer of Michigan, the heart of the US automotive industry, says Israeli companies are reinventing transportation infrastructure.

“When we look outside of the United States for new technology, especially for mobility technology, there’s really only two places that have the technology applicable to the use cases that we have here,” says Trevor Pawl, chief mobility officer for the State of Michigan.

“The first is Europe and the second is Israel. It’s remarkable that Israel is the second market because of how small the country is population wise and geography wise,” Pawl tells ISRAEL21c after speaking at the EcoMotion international mobility conference in Tel Aviv.

Considering that the Michigan city of Detroit is the epicenter of America’s automotive scene – this is the birthplace of vehicle manufacturing as well as infrastructure such as traffic lights and lane markings — it’s significant that the state is looking to Israel for innovation in that sector.

While Israelis don’t have a history of car manufacturing, says Pawl, “they have a history of software engineering.”

And that’s key, he says, because “the automotive industry is being driven by four foundational platforms: autonomous technology, electric technology, shared technology and connected technology.”

All of which are Israeli areas of expertise.

In-road charging

Trevor Pawl, chief mobility officer for the State of Michigan. Photo courtesy of Michigan Economic Development Corporation

One joint project is with Israel-based Electreon to build America’s first wireless charging road for electric vehicles.

“We’re seeing Israeli companies come in and help us solve problems but also help us realize that the horizon for future technology being integrated into the real world isn’t as far off as we think. And the perfect example of that is Electreon,” says Pawl.

“Once we saw other Electreon deployments in Sweden and in Israel, we knew that Electreon was a company that we wanted to work with in Michigan,” he says.

Photo courtesy of Electreon

“As transportation infrastructure is being reinvented and we have money from the federal government to reinvent it, we are looking at what else could we do, aside from creating charging stations, to help fleet operators transition from diesel to electric. And one of those things is not having to wait half an hour at a charging station,” Pawl explains.

“We believe that Electreon’s technology will allow for continuous loops for things like delivery vans and transit vehicles. We’re deploying the first mile of road that charges a vehicle as it’s in motion, right here in Detroit, to go live next year. I’m almost certain that it’s not going to be the last mile.”

Kinetic charging

Michigan may also do business with ZOOZ Power (formerly Chakratec), an Israeli company whose Kinetic Power Booster (KPB) based on innovative flywheel technology can provide ultra-fast charging networks for electric vehicles.

Photo courtesy of ZOOZ

“As we build out our EV charging network in Michigan, where much of the population is in the lower part of the state, we have some unique challenges with the grid,” says Pawl.

“This company has a contraption that is able to create its own kinetic energy, then make up the difference in that portion of the grid to ensure that a charging station, or two or three charging stations, are able to function in areas where maybe they wouldn’t otherwise.”

Pawl said that the state is looking into Israeli solutions for maritime mobility for recreation and industry as well, given that transportation on the Great Lakes is important to Michigan’s economy.

Michigan Israel Business Accelerator

Pawl emphasizes that Michigan is seeking Israel innovation in a variety of verticals, such as security, consumer goods and water and agricultural technologies, that generate local jobs.

The Michigan Israel Business Accelerator organizes trade missions a couple of times a year to facilitate matches between Michigan’s needs and Israel’s capabilities.

“Obviously, I only get involved in the transportation mobility side of it,” says Pawl, “and it was important that we brought some of the Michigan Department of Transportation lead consultants on innovative projects — whether for bridges or for the future of automated payments — to EcoMotion to see what was going on in real time with a clear focus on the market.”

The accelerator, he continues, “has boots on the ground in Israel, allowing us to have a presence at cool events such as EcoMotion and making sure that we’re meeting with high-level officials, going into the command centers for certain highways, and meeting with people that are trying to solve the micro-mobility congestion issue in cities.”

Looking at the direction in which the automotive industry and smart cities are moving, Pawl says, “there’s more synergy than you would immediately think. You can’t afford not to be having a constant dialogue with leaders in Israel’s public sector and private sector.”

Mobility and smart cities

Among the Israeli technologies piquing interest are data-driven digitized garbage collection from GreenQ, road noise cancellation technology from Silentium and AlgoShield, a real-time early warning lithium battery hazard detection and explosion-prevention solution.

“We’re getting a lot of questions from cities like, ‘Okay, if we’re going to be aggressively rolling out charging stations and electric vehicles on the road — General Motors is flipping over to all electric by 2035 — how are we going to handle the worst cases, such as battery fires? How do we prepare for the future?’

“Aside from making sure firefighters have the right technology and knowledge to work with a battery fire, the vehicle is going to have to take a major leap forward,” says Pawl.

Photo courtesy of EcoMotion

“If you’re focused on trying to make sure that America not just leads the world in producing technologies and vehicles but also that it’s simply one of the best places to get around, I think Israel can help us find the way.”

Testing ground for Israeli technologies

Trevor Pawl speaking at EcoMotion 2022. Photo courtesy of Michigan Israel Business Accelerator

In his speech at EcoMotion, Pawl said that Michigan, which borders Canada, is a valuable testing site for Israeli businesses entering the North American market.

“We understand that there’s other markets like Silicon Valley, and places on the East Coast that have venture capital markets, but to really prove out your technology you’re going to want to actually get it out in communities,” he explained.

“You’re going to want world-class testing sites at the earlier stage, and once you’re past that point you’re going to want to work with a government that’s willing to give you access to their infrastructure and that has regulatory policies where you can move at the speed of the market and get permits quickly.

“So while you may kick the tires at an automaker R&D lab in Silicon Valley, if you want to end up on a North American vehicle, you have to come through Detroit. And if you want to build a fleet, you’re going to have to access our supply chain,” he says, noting that Detroit houses the lion’s share of US automotive suppliers and automakers.

“This is paired with our commitment to, for instance, the Electreon project, opening up our infrastructure to help Electreon write their playbook in North America.”

Michigan also has North America’s first smart parking lab and is constructing America’s first signature EV route along Lake Michigan. The US and Canadian federal governments are seeking technologies to build better border crossings, Pawl says.

In addition, Michigan is building a 40-mile autonomous vehicle lane between Detroit and Ann Arbor, “which will be essentially the road of the future and provide hundreds of other opportunities for Israeli companies to insert their technology.”

Wireless V2X technology developed in Israel alerts motorists and two-wheel vehicle riders to each other’s presence.

An affordable device that alerts cyclists and scooter riders to the danger of unseen motorists could prevent many accidents globally, says Israel-based Autotalks.

The company uses V2X (vehicle-to-everything) technology to connect two-wheelers with other road users and warn them of each other’s presence.

The device, called ZooZ 2, gives a visual warning to two-wheel riders if a vehicle is approaching an intersection and could hit them. It also alerts them to drivers indicating a right turn who may be in their blind spot, and cars that jump a red light.

Drivers who have the device are likewise alerted to the two-wheeler. ZooZ 2 uses wireless technology so it can reliably detect two-wheelers even if the line of sight is obstructed.

The company says three quarters of bike and scooter accidents are caused by drivers failing to notice the two-wheeler – and it’s almost always the two-wheeler that comes off worse.

“Autotalks regards all road accidents as preventable, and those accidents involving bikes and scooters deserve special attention,” said founder and CTO Onn Haran.

“We’re committed to making our new micromobility safety device available immediately in order to save the lives of two-wheeler riders around the globe.”

Cyclists and scooter riders fit the device to their handlebars at a cost of $50 to $100 or it can come integrated on high-end models. ZooZ 2 currently communicates only with the 10% of cars that are V2X-enabled, but the technology is to be included in most new vehicles launched in 2025/26.

The first version of the ZooZ micromobility device was launched in September 2021. Autotalks says the updated version is undergoing validation tests by four manufacturers of bikes or their components, and by two vehicle manufacturers.

Autotalks showcased the ZooZ 2 device last week at the Velo-City Conference, the world cycling summit, in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

The plug-and-play device uses software provided by US-based V2X specialist Commsignia and has been tested successfully by the European consortium Project SECUR (Safety Enhancement through Connected Users on the Road).

Autotalks has already produced similar technology for motorcycles and says the first motorcycle manufacturer will incorporate it into mass-produced models in Europe in 2024.

These Israeli companies use mobile phones to gather and/or transmit health data and keep tabs on chronic conditions.

Social entrepreneur Ariel Beery and optics expert David Levitz had the inspiration to use the built-in camera of a smartphone to screen for cervical cancer — the fourth most common cancer affecting women globally and the second most common cancer for women in low-resource settings.

“More than five billion people around the world have access to mobile phones, but not to a physician,” Beery told ISRAEL21c in 2014, when the prototype was being piloted in five countries.

“We can do what a $100,000 device can do on a mobile phone, with 10 times better magnification than using just the naked eye, raising diagnostic accuracy significantly.”

Today, the EVA point-of-care device from MobileODT is used by primary care providers in 30-plus countries to conduct specialist-level visual screenings for thousands of women.

Ariel Beery, general partner of CoVelocity Health. Photo by Erin Kopelow

“MobileODT was the first company to build an FDA Class 2 medical device — a regulated medical device that replaces an existing medical system — around a mobile phone,” says former MobileODT CEO Beery, now general partner at CoVelocity Health, a strategic commercialization partner for medical technologies.

Since then, many other companies have harnessed the mobile phone – either to help healthcare professionals gather data (as with MobileODT) or to help patients transmit data from home to the practitioner and facilitate communication during a remote exam.

“There are a number of reasons why mobile phones make sense to be the core platform for a medical device,” says Beery.

“The first one is that every single person on the planet knows how to use one. And that is so important, because training and onboarding for a medical device is very difficult. When you have something based on a mobile phone platform, it’s relatively easy for the practitioner to watch a few tutorials and very quickly start using the device. That’s not the case with anything else, and it’s super important because then you can expand into rural areas and low-resource settings efficiently.”

There are other advantages of using smartphones for healthcare.

“From a regulatory perspective, most mobile phones in the market have received both electrical testing and broadcast certificates. Wi-Fi is intermittent around the world, but when you have a SIM card and a device that will be connected or integrated with medical information systems, a mobile phone shortcuts a whole host of regulation and registration — things that are really hard and expensive to do,” Beery adds. “For any [medical] device that requires communication, mobile phones already have all that already baked in.”

Below are descriptions of 13 companies using the smartphone as a basis or adjunct for smart healthcare.

MobileODT

Photo of the EVA system courtesy of MobileODT

Beery and Levitz originally envisioned EVA as a colposcope addon for the healthcare practitioner’s own phone. The current version instead has a dedicated Samsung J530 built in for all-in-one visualization, documentation and teleconsultation.

“We learned that there’s a big difference between things that assist a health worker in decision-making or communication functions, where using their own mobile phone makes sense; and information-gathering or diagnostic functions, in which case a dedicated mobile phone makes sense,” Beery explains.

“Diagnostic functions require your device to touch the patient. That brings up issues of security and sterilization. Also, a dedicated phone doesn’t have the same wear and tear and memory issues that you have with someone’s personal phone and doesn’t conflict with their images and WhatsApp and what have you.”

The EVA product line now includes separate devices for cervical cancer screening, cervical examination and sexual assault forensics. It’s also used to train clinicians in colposcopy; telecolposcopy or remote colposcopy.

Binah.ai 

Remotely or onsite, Binah.ai’s video-based solution provides medical-grade vital signs measurements — heart rate, heart rate variability, mental stress level, oxygen saturation, respiration rate and more — within 2 minutes via a video of the patient’s upper cheek taken with a smartphone, tablet or laptop.

The signal processing and AI technology compensates for motion and imperfect lighting, and supports any age, gender and skin color. It can even detect subtle changes that might otherwise go unnoticed. Binah.ai works with healthcare, insurance and wellness industries in several countries.

Binah.ai is headquartered in Ramat Gan with offices in Maryland and Tokyo.

Healthy.io

This Tel Aviv-based startup, founded in 2013, leverages the image-processing capability of any smartphone camera for four at-home Minuteful medical tests – kidney function, wound management, urinary tract infection and urinalysis — whose results are transmitted to the clinician instantly.

Healthy.io’s partners in the US and UK include, among others, the National Kidney Foundation, the National Health Service, Modality and the Boots chain. The company recently acquired its American competitor, Inui Health, for $9 million.

K Health

K Health, billed as “healthcare without the system,” provides 24/7 phone access to board-certified doctors in 48 US states for $29 per month (no insurance necessary), where it has some 6 million users. The entire intake process is done on the smartphone, and users text K Health when they are free for a consult.

K Health provides 24/7 access to physicians as well as a free symptom checker. Photo courtesy of K Health

Members can download a free AI-powered symptom-checker app and obtain on-the-go prescriptions and refills. Primary care, urgent care, mental health and pediatric care (as well as Covid-related services) are all included. K Health is based in New York with development offices in Tel Aviv.

Sweetch

Sweetch provides a personalized digital coach for preventing and managing chronic diseases. Image: screenshot

Sweetch is a mobile based digital coach providing personalized recommendations for preventing and managing chronic conditions, generated from analysis of millions of datapoints on the individual’s smartphone and other connected devices.

In addition to the Sweetch app, the technology is available as a white-label app or as an SDK to be integrated within an existing app. Headquartered in Tel Aviv, Sweetch is used in countries across the world.

Montfort 

Montfort bridges technology and neurology, turning any standard smartphone into a personalized neurological medical testing device.

Using smartphone sensors and AI, Montfort’s EncephaLog app provides FDA-cleared digital neurological tests for early diagnosis of conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, anxiety, depression, post-Covid-19 neurological symptoms and more.

In the app, patients see the specific tests prescribed with reminders about when to take the tests and instructions in the patient’s preferred language. Montfort is used in more than 10 countries.

The tests measure parameters in three dimensions — motor (such as balance, gait, tremor), cognitive (memory, response time, pattern recognition) and mood indicators. It merges those measures with a fourth dimension of physiological records (genetics, brain scans, data from wearable devices) for a holistic picture.

Nonagon 

Nonagon, backed by Phillips and Teva, has FDA and CE approval for its smartphone-based telemedicine device.

Four embedded sensors interface with the user’s smartphone to provide readings of nine common tests required for primary medical care: a stethoscope check (lung, heart and bowel sounds), otoscopy of the ear, oximeter (pulse rate and saturation), thermometer (body temperature), and a throat and skin test that uses the smartphone’s camera.

The device works with patients as young as two years old. The clinical data is sent in real time to the physician, enabling near immediate diagnosis, referral or prescription. Formerly known as MyHomeDoc, Nonagon is based in Caesarea with offices in New York.

TytoCare

This company’s award-winning TytoHome remote exam device ties in with the user’s and physician’s iOS or Android smartphone (or other device) via an app that allows the practitioner to control and guide the entire exam in real time.

For example, the clinician can take control of the stethoscope adapter to listen to lung and heart sounds or use the otoscope adapter to check ears for infection. After confirming a diagnosis, the clinician can send further instructions or a prescription.

OneStep

Photo courtesy of OneStep

OneStep of Tel Aviv developed an app-based physical therapy platform providing comprehensive gait analysis using only smartphone sensors.

The user needs nothing more than a smartphone nearby while doing the prescribed exercises. The app gives a detailed assessment of walking and overall mobility and allows physical therapists to communicate and provide effective treatment to patients 24/7.

Lumen

Lumen’s handheld device allows users to analyze and monitor their metabolism with their smartphone. It reveals the body’s current source of energy — fats or carbs — on a scale of 1 to 5, based on the respiratory exchange ratio.

Image courtesy of Lumen

The score helps users adjust their daily diet and physical activities accordingly: Low-carb days decrease the insulin spike, improving insulin sensitivity and enhancing mitochondrial function, while high-carb days ensure the body’s ability to use carbs for energy and keep hormones in balance.

MindReset

This app built on eye-tracking technology from Jerusalem-based Umoove helps thousands of users “reset” their response to depression, trauma, anxiety, stress and other emotional triggers.

Image courtesy of MindReset

An audio guide takes the user through each daily two-minute session of a 10-day program tailored to specific conditions. The eye tracker on the phone’s camera detects patterns in eye movement that indicate a stress trigger. Users are directed to do certain tasks with their eyes that interrupt the pattern and thus create a therapeutic effect by clearing the triggers.

The unique method behind the app was published last November in the journal Frontiers.

Yitzi Kempinski, founder-CEO of Umoove and CTO of MindReset, says results are so encouraging that the company is researching other ways people can use the app, such as for work burnout or emotional barriers to learning.

Neuralight

Using ocular metric data captured with a standard webcam or smartphone, this Tel Aviv- and Texas-based startup is building an AI-driven platform to accelerate and improve drug development and patient monitoring, as well as introduce precision care for patients with neurological disorders.

A physician records a five-minute video of a patient’s eye movements. Neuralight’s imaging tools clean up the video, then artificial intelligence and machine learning decipher what’s behind the eye movements.

The concept is based on scientific studies over the past 20 years showing correlations between various oculometric measures and the neurological status of patients suffering from a range of neurodegenerative and psychiatric disorders.

Cordio Medical 

Cordio Medical’s HearO technology can sense fluid accumulation related to congestive heart failure through a patient’s speech and send an alert. This noninvasive monitoring solution is based on true speech signal processing augmented with machine learning.

The user speaks into a smartphone app whose algorithms allow near real-time monitoring and early detection of condition deterioration. The system is patient-tailored, constantly learning the patient’s voice. HearO noninvasively.

The company recently raised $18 million and aims to enter the US market in 2024.

Israeli researchers from the Technion are developing a solution that addresses the shortages in seasonal harvesters: robots that pick fruit for us.

Throughout history, early summer has often signaled the time to harvest. Harvesting, of course, has evolved considerably. As opposed to ancient times when mobilizing the whole community was necessary to fully harvest grain, there are sophisticated machines nowadays run by just a few individual operators that quickly navigate through fields and efficiently process many acres at a time.

However, in the case of fruits, there is still a need for a great deal of manual labor throughout the harvesting process today, but workers are in short supply. The farming labor and resource shortage is reported in many countries across the world including the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, Vietnam and Brazil. Unharvested produce leads to a loss of food quality and spurs enormous economic losses, a fact that will become more evident and problematic as the world population continues to increase. 

In a new Israeli study, researchers from the Technion developed a ground mobile robot that could drastically advance fruit agriculture and harvesting. The robot, whose development was led by Associate Professor Amir Degani from the Technion’s Environmental, Water, and Agriculture Engineering Department, will have the capability to use one or multiple small-sized drones to perform the operations required in orchards much more accurately and cheaper than the methods used by farmers today.

The study was recently presented at the “Water and Environmental Engineering in the Face of Climate Change” conference of the Environmental, Water, and Agriculture Engineering Department at the Technion’s Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering. 

The Need for Better Fruit-Picking Robotics

The gap between the number of seasonal laborers and the volume of work is expected to significantly expand as the world population continues to grow. By 2050 there are expected to be more than 9 billion people in the world, and in order to feed them all it will be necessary to increase the volume of food production anywhere from 35-60 percent (unless the whole world switches to a plant-based diet). 

One might expect though that with such a highly populated world there would be no shortage of working personnel, but sadly this is not the case.

“People have been moving from villages to cities for decades – and fewer people want to engage in manual labor,” Degani explains. “It’s seen in construction and agriculture, and it happens everywhere – including in countries with very large populations, like India and China. In India, for example, harvesting coconut is a very important task – but fewer and fewer people want to work in that field.”

According to him, the problem also exists in Israel. “As in many Western countries, there are quite a few years in Israel where apples fall to the ground because no one is there to pick them in time.”

Degani believes the solution to these problems lies in robots that know how to pick fruits. 

“Just as automation has solved many of the problems that plagued field crops, like using machines such as combine harvesters, once we adapt this strategy to plantations farmers will be able to better streamline and reduce the uncertainty that currently surrounds the acquisition of skilled seasonal labor for specific times of the year,” he says.

It is important to note that automating harvests should be approached differently than those used for field crops, which involve rough, large, and overly expensive machines. 

“In field crops, massive harvesting is carried out all over the area––usually indiscriminately,” says Degani. “Picking edible fruit should be gentle and selective. The fruits should be picked one by one and handled carefully.”

Interestingly, he claims that the robotic arms currently used in factories, which have a large range of motion and accurate precision capabilities that humans can only dream of, are not suitable for the task. 

“Although these robotic arms know how to perform a pre-planned operation, their sensing and decision making capabilities are limited and are not suitable for agriculture,” he says. “Agriculture is a more difficult world. Agriculture takes place in an uncertain environment with fluctuating changes in light and outdoor conditions, so the robot must have complex sensing and decision making capabilities.” According to him, the robot should not be too expensive of an alternative because otherwise many farmers will not be able to afford it.

Call in Air Support

Degani and his team began to approach the challenge of the harvesting robot’s development by first addressing its maneuverability in the orchard, a task more complicated than it sounds.

“In order for the robot to patrol and weave through all the trees and detect pests or ripe apples, for example, it must know where it exactly is,” Degani explains. The orchard environment is relatively homogeneous from a ground point of view, with most of the trees looking about the same and the GPS reception not being particularly reliable.

This obstacle gave rise to the idea of establishing a connection between a ground mobile robot and a drone. The researchers found that when utilizing the perspective of a low-flying drone, the top-view observation of the orchard provides a unique signature of every tree formed by the shape of its canopy. The first study on the subject was published in the robotics and automation section of the IEEE magazine. 

Currently, researchers are working on additional ways in which the farming robot can use small drones to perform the operations required for harvesting orchards. First, they demonstrated that a drone could hover around a tree, creating a detailed three-dimensional image of each of the trees in the area. These are needed to make the harvesting process more efficient and reflect more modern model of precision agriculture.

“The meaning of ‘precision agriculture’ is that instead of making decisions on issues relating to things like fertilization, irrigation, thinning, pest management, or harvesting at the entire field level, we will look at the agricultural plot at a higher resolution and make such decisions down to the individual tree level,” explains Degani.

This will make it possible to increase the volume of produce, by providing the best conditions for each individual tree, and beyond that, save the use of resources such as water, fertilizer, and potentially dangerous pesticides.

Degani believes the solution lies in the capabilities of a ground mobile robot that knows how to navigate around the wood, perform precise mechanical operations, and even pollinate flowers––another separate project currently under development in the laboratory.

A Shift From Human to Robot?

Today, Degani’s studies are in the prototype stage, and they demonstrate possibilities for future development. In any case, there are already several automation attempts in the fruit harvesting industry represented by Israeli companies such as FFRobotics, a robot equipped with the ability to emulate human hand-picking, and Tevel Aerobotics Technologies, which developed a flying harvester that is scheduled to enter its pilot phase in the coming year.

Beyond that, not only is the identity of the harvester expected to shift from human to robot – but the structure of the orchard itself is also speculated to change.

“The way we engineer and grow trees will change, and they will be designed in a way that is right for robotic harvesting,” Degani explains. “Even today you can see in the world apple orchards that look almost like a two-dimensional wall on which fruit grows. This is not genetic engineering but mechanical engineering operations designed to make the orchard grow as efficiently as possible.” The new orchard structure allows for denser planting and is designed to enable easier harvesting for both humans and robots alike. Studies are currently underway to determine the most efficient configuration, in preparation for an era in which robots will enter the agricultural landscape.

In the end, according to Degani, everything is aimed at becoming more efficient simply because we have no other choice. 

“Even in modern agriculture, the farmer will be very important, but he will need much fewer working hands,” he says. “Like quite a few things, the data will be at the center, to help him make informed decisions, and the robots will carry out the tasks in the field. This is what will direct the efficiency so that we can reach a sufficient crop target that will feed all humans,” he says.

“Because there will be less land, less resources, and less manpower over time, there is a need to find a solution. Otherwise, fruits like apples will be accessible only to the very rich,” Degani concludes.

The study is related to a problem in AI and robotics called autonomous decision-making under uncertainty.

Researchers at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology found a way to simplify decision-making and problem-solving under uncertainty in a way that reduces the amount of information computers need to analyze.

A new peer-reviewed study published in the International Journal of Robotics Research, led by Prof. Vadim Indelman, who heads the Autonomous Navigation and Perception Lab (ANPL) at Technion’s Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, and Khen Elimelech, shows the feasibility of reducing the amount of time for computers to process information without compromising the success of completing a function.

“We demonstrate that we can significantly reduce computation time, without harming the successful execution of the task,” the researchers said. “We also demonstrate that computation efforts can be reduced even further if we accept a certain loss in performance loss that our approach can evaluate online. In an age of self-driving cars and other robots, this is an approach likely to enable autonomous online decision making in challenging scenarios, reduce response times, and achieve considerable savings in the cost of hardware and other resources.”

The study is related to a problem in AI and robotics called autonomous decision-making under uncertainty, which concerns the capability of AIs to complete tasks reliably and autonomously over time in an unpredictable environment.

Technion noted that autonomous agents often do not have access to the variables related to a particular problem and instead function based on a “belief” based on probability models and measurements.

Illustrative image of AI. (credit: PIXABAY)

Belief space planning

A major area of research in the new study was computationally efficient decision-making under these conditions, called belief space planning. In order to solve this problem, an AI must weigh the costs and benefits of a potential action, which requires the researchers to predict how the “belief” will change over time.

The findings may help researchers solve decision-making problems using simplification and show that there are ways to save considerable amounts of computation time without a loss of accuracy.