Author: jbadmin

Edison Awards for innovation to kick off in Fort Myers

FORT MYERS, Fla., April 13, 2023 — The Edison Awards is honored to announce its 2023 Lewis Latimer Fellows. In its second year, the Lewis Latimer Fellowship program is a bespoke, innovation “curiosity sandbox,” designed to inspire, connect, accelerate and enable Black thought leaders with world-shifting ideas.

“We are excited to welcome the new class of Latimer Fellows and we look forward to immersing them into an incredible learning experience,” said Jon Cropper, co-founder of the Lewis Latimer Foundation. “This unique opportunity provides customized curriculum for each Fellow based on their dreams and goals, and gives access to Edison Awards’ amazing and global community of innovators.”

Meet the 2023 Lewis Latimer Fellows:

• Dr. Lisa Dyson – Founder of Air Protein, a NASA-inspired technology that converts elements in the air into sustainable protein that eliminates compromise between taste, nutrition and climate threat. She is also Founder of Kiverdi, a CO2 Biotech company.
• D. Fox Harrell, Ph.D. – Professor of Digital Media, Computing, and Artificial Intelligence in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), Comparative Media Studies Program, and the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society at MIT, as well as Director of the MIT Center for Advanced Virtuality.
• Jacquelle Amankonah Horton – Founder and CEO of Fave, a new social platform & marketplace dedicated to recognizing and rewarding superfans.
• Shameik Moore – American actor, singer, and music artist launching a new innovation and e-commerce platform designed to build economic and cultural development in African-American communities.
• Ian Randall – Co-Founder, President & CEO of MagLev Aero Inc., an innovative aerospace technology startup in Boston that is developing a novel electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing(eVTOL) Air Vehicle Platform.
• Soton Rosanwo – Soton is an entrepreneur, science fiction writer, and artist. Her company, Centinel, utilizes patent-pending technology to provide claims-free coverage for hard-to-insure risks, like climate or event disruption.

The Lewis Latimer Fellowship channels the spirit of one of Thomas Edison’s principal collaborators Lewis Latimer who helped Edison refine his vision of the lightbulb and design the schematics and patent applications. The program pairs modern-day Lewis Latimers with modern-day Edisons to guide and nurture them on their entrepreneurial and innovation journey. Throughout the one-year program, the Fellows are immersed into a bespoke learning experience that includes field trips to innovation hubs, regular calls with mentors and advisors, pitch support, capital and corporate strategic introductions, and so much more.

“Just one year since the initial launch of the Latimer Fellowship and things are going great,” said Carmichael Roberts, co-founder of the Lewis Latimer Foundation and Edison Achievement Award Winner 2022. “The first cohort has been excellent, and the programming has been stellar. I can only imagine continued success considering the quality and promise that our new class brings. Lewis Latimer himself would be extremely proud to see the Fellowship in action.”

For more information on the 2023 Latimer Fellows and Edison Awards, please visit http://www.edisonawards.com. Applications for the 2024 awards and Lewis Latimer Fellowship will open Summer 2023.

About The Edison Awards:
Established in 1987, the Edison Awards are dedicated to recognizing, honoring and fostering innovations and innovators. Named after Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931), the annual competition honors excellence in new product and service development, marketing, design and innovation. Past award recipients include Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, and leaders of global corporations such as Coca-Cola, Genentech, General Electric, IBM and Campbell Soup Co. In 2021, the Edison Awards introduced the inaugural Lewis Latimer Fellowship program designed to celebrate, connect and bring together a community of innovative Black thought leaders. www.edisonawards.com.

Edison Awards in Fort Myers spotlight world’s top inventions and innovators

 

FORT MYERS, Fla., April 6, 2023 — The Edison Awards, an organization dedicated to recognizing, honoring and fostering innovation, will bring together innovators from around the world to its 36th annual awards event taking place in Fort Myers, FL, April 19 – 21, 2023.

“The prestigious Edison Awards not only recognizes world-changing innovations, but also the brilliant minds behind them,” said Frank Bonafilia, Executive Director of The Edison Awards. “We are looking forward to celebrating innovation and providing attendees with unforgettable experiences and having them walk away feeling inspired.”

The three-day event begins with an opening reception at The Edison and Ford Winter Estates where fellow attendees will meet and cultivate new connections. The following day, Meet the Innovators Forum takes place with executives and experts covering a variety of future-focused topics including discussions on sustainability, economic development, infrastructure innovation and other critical subjects. Between sessions, attendees will visit the Innovators’ Showcase to get a first-hand look at some of the finalists’ products and services.

Gold, Silver and Bronze winners will be announced at the Edison Awards Gala on the evening of April 20. In addition to recognizing the winners, Pat Gelsinger the CEO of Intel and Sir Jonathan Ive co-founder of LoveForm and the mastermind behind Apple’s most iconic products, will be in attendance to receive the 2023 Edison Achievement Award. This years’ Lewis Latimer Fellowship recipients will also be presented at the event.

The event wraps up with a Community Day on April 21 that is designed to engage students and the community in future-forward thinking. The day consists of educational opportunities around leadership and overcoming obstacles, a Hertz electric vehicle car show, an introduction to the Young Edison Challenge student winners and a “Shark Tank” pitch panel featuring 2023 Edison Award finalists.

“We are thrilled to host the Edison Awards and help bring together some of the world’s most inspirational thinkers, innovators and inventors,” said Kevin Anderson, Mayor of Fort Myers. “Our students in this community will benefit tremendously as they will get the opportunity to experience these award-winning inventions in the hopes that it will inspire them to dream big.”

The Edison Awards are grateful for its 2023 sponsors including Black & Veatch, Babcock Ranch, Florida Power & Light, City of Fort Myers, CRA, Horizon Foundation, Enterprise Florida, Team Florida, Cargill, U.S. Sugar, and Lee Health. For more information on the Edison Awards, please visit http://www.edisonawards.com. Applications for the 2024 awards will open Summer 2023.

Established in 1987, the Edison Awards are dedicated to recognizing, honoring and fostering innovations and innovators. Named after Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931), the annual competition honors excellence in new product and service development, marketing, design and innovation. Past award recipients include Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, and leaders of global corporations such as Coca-Cola, Genentech, General Electric, General Motors, IBM and Campbell Soup Co. In 2021, the Edison Awards introduced the inaugural Lewis Latimer Fellowship program designed to celebrate, connect and bring together a community of innovative Black thought leaders. For more information, visit www.edisonawards.com.

Frank Bonafilia, Executive Director of The Edison Awards was recently interviewed by Karen Moore, Publisher of SWFL Business Today about the upcoming innovation awards event in Fort Myers, FL. Read the full story here:

Edison Awards this April will focus on Apple, Intel, and other innovators

By: Sandhiprakash (Sandhi) Bhide, sandhibhide@gmail.com
Innovative Business Leader, Technologist, and Strategist; Member of Edison Steering Committee and Expert Judge; President Anwaya Consulting LLC, CEO Balak Drishti; Cofounder/BOD/Investor: FleetNurse Inc.

 

Smart transportation as the name suggests is about putting smartness in transportation but embedded in the heart or in this case the brain of the vehicle. The vehicle could be a train, a bus, a car, an airplane, a hovercraft, a ship, a boat, a submarine or anything else but normally a motorized vehicle either gasoline powered, or hydrogen powered, or electric or using some other source of energy. Smartness is derived at various degrees of embedded intelligence with a single objective: to take you (or goods) from one place to other so the integrity and safety of the vehicle itself including the assets inside are preserved, to continuously monitor the surroundings to ensure impending threats are recognized and acted upon before they become actual threats, to make sure the vehicles does not create harm to other humans and assets, to learn from ongoing encounters so future impositions are dealt with early and fairly and to monitor and predict things before they become a problem. Smart transportation is a spectrum and not a one thing that makes Smart Transportation.

Smart transportation is not about new fuels, or something specifically about electric or hydrogen based cars, or new exotic materials used in transportation, or about attractive dash board or new method of transportation like Air Taxi. It is also not about what is in the environment like a beacon[i], or GPS, or a recommendation program that tells you which is the best way to go from place A to place B. It is all about what is inside the vehicle and of course, vehicle may depend on outside information like location to act with its intelligence. The vehicle may also use various protocols to connect with other cars, people, obstacles, and surrounding assets, doing sensing, processing, and communicating. All these enable Smart Transportation but they are not Smart Transportation.

The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) defines 6 levels of driving automation ranging from 0 (fully manual) to 5 (fully autonomous). These levels have been adopted by the U.S. Department of Transportation. In the first three levels (0-3), the human monitors the driving environment while Level 3-5, an automated system monitors the driving environment. The following is a high level description of these levels.

1. No Automation: Everything at this level relates to manual control. A human performs all the function such as steering, acceleration, braking, turning heater/music on or off, opening and closing the doors. Here, the vehicle is at the mercy of driver’s instruction (Note: In some cases, I do not know some backseat driving does occur, but we are not talking about at here). Most vehicles on the road today fit this category.
2. Driver Assistance: Here the driver gets some assistance through a technical mechanism called feedback control. The vehicle feature a single automated system, e.g. cruise control allows you to maintain a constant speed or temperature control or air circulation based on heater setting for driver and the passenger. The vehicle senses the up or down slope and the accelerator is automatically adjusted. Almost all the functions in the car fall in this category.
3. Partial Automation: For example, in an Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS), the vehicle can perform steering and acceleration. This is where both the human and the machine are both engaged and human still monitors all the tasks and take over or override control at any time. Here the automation falls short of self-driving because a human sits in the driver’s seat and can take control of the car at any time. Tesla Autopilot and Cadillac Super Cruise systems both qualify as Level 2.
4. Conditional Automation: Here the system has environmental detection capability and can make informed decisions for themselves, such as accelerating past a slow-moving vehicle. This is where the vehicle can perform most driving task but human override is still required and so the driver has to be alert. For example, Audi’s A8 featured Traffic Jam Pilot, which combines a Lidar scanner with advanced sensor fusion and processing power (plus built-in redundancies should a component fail) is an example of Conditional Driving Automation. For example, if the car in the front comes too close, the speed of the vehicle is automatically reduce to maintain car to car distance.
5. High Automation: Here the vehicle performs all the driving tasks under specific circumstance and Level 4 vehicles can intervene if things go wrong or there is a system failure. Here the vehicle can make decisions in most circumstance. Geo-fencing is required and human override is still an option. For example, Canadian automotive supplier Magna’s MAX4 technology (MAX4) can enable Level 4 capabilities in both urban and highway environments. They are working with Lyft to supply high-tech kits that turn vehicles into self-driving cars. These vehicles are geared towards ride sharing. In this particular, in some cases, the driver may be distracted and the vehicle can still take the appropriate decision.
6. Full Automation: The vehicle performs all the driving tasks under ALL conditions. Zero human attention or interaction is required. The dynamic driving task is eliminated. They will be free from geo-fencing, able to go anywhere and do anything that an experienced human driver can do. For many people, this might be too scary. Just look at the amount of information the system has to process in real time (see note below), which also requires tremendous amount of sensing (using a range of sensors), data processing (using processors) and decision making (using AI chips), fast communication (e.g. using 5G), and highest level of security. When it comes to a threat to life, it becomes scary.

 

For further reading:

1. The 6 Levels of Vehicle Autonomy Explained
2. https://www.sae.org/blog/sae-j3016-update
3. https://www.autopilotreview.com/self-driving-cars-sae-levels/
4. https://blog.ansi.org/sae-levels-driving-automation-j-3016-2021/
5. https://www.nextpit.com/sae-levels-beginners-guide
6. https://www.machinedesign.com/a-skeptical-engineer/article/21832324/saes-6-levels-of-selfdriving-cars
7. https://www.sae.org/standards/content/j3016_201806/

 

[1] (For those nerdy out there who want to know some technical details about the IEEE work: Reliable and scalable wireless transmissions for Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) are technically challenging. Each vehicle, from driver-assisted to an automated one, will generate a flood of information, up to thousands of times that of a person. Vehicle density may change drastically over time and location. Emergency messages and real-time cooperative control messages have stringent delay constraints, while infotainment applications may tolerate a certain degree of latency. On a congested road, vehicles need to exchange information badly, only to find that services are not available due to scarcity of wireless spectrum. Considering the service requirements of heterogeneous V2X applications, service guarantee relies on an in-depth understanding of network performance and innovations in wireless resource management. In this talk, we compare the performance of vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) beacon broadcasting using random access-based (IEEE 802.11p) and resource allocation-based (C-V2X) protocols and introduce several enhancement strategies to mitigate packet collisions, recover from transmission errors, and support two-user non-orthogonal transmissions. They can become enabling tools toward reliable and scalable V2X for future intelligent transportation systems.)

Set on the scenic Caloosahatchee River in Southwest Florida, Lee County is known as the location of Edison-Ford Winter Estates, where Thomas Edison himself did some of his most innovative work in his on-site laboratory and botanical gardens.

Now, through a partnership between the Horizon Council, Horizon Foundation and the City of Fort Myers & Community Redevelopment Agency, Lee County also is the location where modern-day innovation is celebrated through the Edison Awards. Lee County is home to some of the most innovative companies in the United States, including several Edison Award winners.

In 2021, FGCU’s Dr. Sandra Kauanui accepted a Bronze Edison Award for Education – Dynamic Learning Platforms on behalf of the Daveler & Kauanui School of Entrepreneurship. Also in 2021, Arthrex, a Horizon Foundation member, earned an Edison Award. John Ciocca, a Florida Gulf Coast University entrepreneurship major, was among the 2021 Gold Edison Award winners for his product, youBelong Voice, an app that provides alternative augmentative communication to those with speech disabilities. Additionally, local students took part in the Innovation Panel and Community Day, and many Lee County businesses participated in panel discussions or as sponsors.

The next Edison Awards events will take place April 19 through 21 with a Gala on April 20 at the Luminary Hotel and Caloosa Sound Convention Center in the downtown Fort Myers River District.

This is the third year the event will be held in Fort Myers.

Experiencing a Storm of Innovation

Given the quick response and strong recovery of Southwest Florida following Hurricane Ian, Lee County will continue to be a spectacular place for the Edison Awards. The community’s resilience and innovative response to the storm has been nothing short of remarkable – and it will make Lee County a beacon as we focus on the sustainability opportunity we have to look at post-hurricane best practices for rebuilding our community. Thanks to swift action from government, local businesses and public-private partnerships, there has been a significant investment of resources for loans and business-recovery support. Many businesses quickly reopened or adapted their business model to continue their operations. Employees were retrained to serve in other capacities such as construction, recovery and repair roles. As a result, Lee County is recovering and continues to offer vistas and experiences that brighten and inspire innovative minds. Follow the recovery and discover resources for planning your trip to Lee County at www.VisitFortMyers.com.

Who Are These Innovators?

Support from Lee County’s private sector ensures a thriving business climate for Lee County. The Horizon Foundation, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) organization with the mission and purpose to support, foster and encourage the economic development and diversity of business interests in Lee County, Florida. The Foundation provides financial, advisory and other support for the Lee County Economic Development Office (EDO) and the Horizon Council as well as financial and other support to other organizations and entities that the Foundation determines will promote and complement the interests and mission of the Foundation, the EDO, and/or the Horizon Council. For more information visit www.leecountybusiness.com.

Known as the “City of Palms,” Fort Myers is a thriving destination on the Caloosahatchee rich in history, culture, commerce and nature. Since the early 1800s, settlers and visitors have sought out Fort Myers, most notably inventor Thomas A. Edison, who built his home, laboratory and botanical gardens between the river and McGregor Boulevard. With history at its center, downtown is an economic and government hub where restaurants and cultural attractions draw a multitude of visitors. Those who admire nature will discover a range of outdoor activities such as parks, trails and watersports. Learn more at www.cityftmyers.com.