□ On October 24 (Tuesday), Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology (DGIST; President Young Kuk) announced that employee startup It’s Sensor (CEO DGIST Senior Researcher Dae-cheon Kang and Principal Investigator Hyun-ki Lee) and student startup Clebrain (CEO Woong-chan Park, an undergraduate junior) were selected for the Ministry of SMEs and Startups’ Tech Incubator Program for Startup (TIPS) and each will receive 700 million KRW in R&D funds for the next two years.
□ The TIPS program is designed to select startup teams with technology items, which will take the lead in the global market, by the private sector and focus on fostering promising startups. The selected teams will receive investment, mentoring, and R&D funding.
□ Among the startups selected for this program, It’s Sensor is a company that develops visual sensors, which play the same role as human eyes in robots. While current sensors have an error of about 50 mm, It’s Sensor’s have an error of only 0.5 mm, which is 100 times better than existing sensors. Furthermore, it is expected to play a critical role in replacing and automating many tasks performed by people in industrial sites and daily life.
□ In particular, It’s Sensor is a startup team that was established in January 2023 based on research outcomes at DGIST and selected and supported by the Laboratory Specialized Startup Leading University Project. It is a good example of a leading company in a new startup culture, in which research in the laboratory translates into the actual industry.
□ Clebrain, founded by an undergraduate at DGIST, is a company that provides PianoKiwis, a sound recognition-based sheet music learning platform. PianoKiwis provides sheet music to users for free, and users can use a simple flip solution. It is a key feature that recognizes sound sources played in real time and tracks the location to automatically flip the sheet music accordingly.
□ CEO Dae-cheon Kang of It’s Sensor said, “With only 8 months of its history, It’s Sensor has outstanding technology that has been validated in industrial sites. We will offer a solution that will impress the world based on the technology we have successfully internalized through a sufficient preparation process for commercialization in industrial sites.”
□ Furthermore, CEO Woong-chan Park of Clebrain said, “We want to advance our playing location tracking technology and develop it into an offline AI lesson tutor. We will use the funds received from the TIPS to advance our technology and enter the Korean and global markets, and ultimately make a sheet music platform that improves all processes, including learning, practice, and playing.”
