The European Space Agency Business Incubator Center (ESA BIC) has selected its first two startups in the north region, represented by the Science and Technology Park of University of Porto (UPTEC): inanoE and Eye2Map.
ESA’s incubation program consists on providing to space-based technologies technical expertise and business development during two years, besides a 50.000€ incentive, so these technologies can be applied in other fields like health, transportation and energy.
InanoE develops microgenerators capable of turning thermal and mechanical energy into electric energy, their goal is to make this space technology cheaper and more efficient so it can be used to charge electronic devices such as smartphones and tablets, using only body movement and heat.
inanoE Team
Eye2Map offers services of geographic information and image processing for Agriculture, Forestry and Costal Monitoring. Data can be acquired with their own sensors aboard unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) equipped with GNSS receivers for navigation and precise georeferencing. This technology also has engineering applications by scanning and 3D modeling of historical and architectural heritage of all sizes.
Eye2Map Team
ESA BIC provides support to more than 75 companies every year in Europe. Since 2014 in Portugal, the incubation program is managed by Instituto Pedro Nunes (IPN) in collaboration with UPTEC and DNA Cascais. Besides this two new projects, 4 more Portuguese startups already joined ESA BIC: SpaceLayer Technologies, D-Orbit, Airborne Projects and Active Aerogels.