PreAct Technologies Awarded Top Prize at Luminate Finals 2021

JOEL WILLIAMS, ASSOCIATE EDITOR
joel.williams@photonics.com

PreAct Technologies, an Ore.-based developer of intelligent sensing technology designed to bridge the gap between collision avoidance and active safety, earned the top prize in the fourth cohort of the Luminate NY Program’s Innovation Finals Competition. Winners were announced live via virtual ceremony, presented by Sujatha Ramanujan, Luminate’s managing director.

Prize money will be provided by New York state, through the Finger Lakes Forward Upstate Revitalization Initiative, and will be used to help PreAct prepare for commercialization.

A development kit for PreaAct’s TrueSense technology. Courtesy of Luminate via PreAct Technologies.

“We’re going from kind of the dev-kit-level product to production-ready product in about the next nine months,” PreAct CEO Paul Drysch told Photonics Media. The product, TrueSense, uses time-of-flight technology to create near-field scans to anticipate collisions. Signals are sent to the vehicle’s computer to allow for the appropriate safety measures to be taken to mitigate danger and increase occupant safety. The technology enables measures such as early deployment of airbags (which, Drysch noted, currently takes place after a collision has already happened), raising the car’s suspension, or angling the seats away from the area of anticipated impact.

PreAct is currently in talks with Tier 1 companies around the world.

“We have been selected for some production programs already that start around model year ’25,” Drysch said, referring to vehicle production years. Production programs with trucking companies will begin earlier, he said.

“Luminate was a phenomenal program, and we’re looking forward to participating in the New York area now as a company,” Drysch said.

Among the prize winners were “Distinguished Graduates” by Owl Autonomous Imaging (Owl AI), which received $200,000; Mesodyne and DynoCardia, which each received $250,000; and “Outstanding Graduate” Andluca Technologies, which received $400,000. Taking home the $10,000 Audience Choice Award was Layer Metrics, which developed a cost-saving metrological process for 3D metal printing.

Using time-of-flight technology, PreAct’s TrueSense product creates near-field scans to anticipate collisions. The technology enables measures such as early deployment of airbags. Courtesy of Luminate via PreAct Technologies.

“Cohort four was by far our most mature cohort to date. We had the greatest number of companies that were approaching manufacturing,” Ramanujan said. “We felt that this cohort really understood the regional resources and what they would offer them in their acceleration of their time to market. PreAct is really a solid example of this.”

Ramanujan said quantum capabilities, as well as image processing, were technologies that she would like to see represented in Luminate’s fifth cohort. Applications are currently open for the accelerator program’s fifth cohort. They will be accepted until Jan. 10, 2022.

For more information, visit www.luminate.org.