Friday, September 26, 2008

Cache & Packets

Diapers, displays and DOE hunting in Maine

By Efrain Viscarolasaga

Random notes while wondering if the karma train on which New England’s professional sports teams have been riding for the past seven years has been derailed.

Time for a change?
Mobile order fulfillment robots from Woburn-based Kiva Systems Inc. have been used in warehouses all over the country to move a variety of goods, from health and beauty supplies with Walgreens Co., to office supplies with Staples Inc., and shoes with Zappos.com.

But this week the company deployed its mobile deployment system with a customer whose product may be more mission-critical to many families than lip balm, printing paper or sling-back sandals — diapers.

Diapers.com will install Kiva’s system, which uses a small army of robotic “platforms,” electronic sensors and logistics software to automate order picking in fast-paced warehouses, in all three of its distribution centers. Based in New Jersey, Diapers.com has a distribution center at its national headquarters, as well as centers in Pennsylvania and Nevada.

Founded by Apple Inc. and Webvan.com executive CEO Mick Mountz in 2002, Kiva is backed by more than $18 million in venture funding from several investors, including Bain Capital Ventures.
(No word on whether or not the company is working on robots that can be programmed to move diapers post-use.)

Bright lights, big city
Luminus Devices Inc.’s PhlatLight light emitting diode (LED) technology is well-known to videophiles as the driving technology in a number of flat-panel displays, including several projectors and televisions from Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.

But with the electronics business well-established, executives have begun to put more focus on the firm’s other division, illumination. Last weekend, that division went on very public display at the John W. Weeks footbridge, which links Cambridge and Allston, during the during the fifth annual RiverSing event.

Last Sunday, the organizers of RiverSing, including the Charles River Conservancy and local performing arts group Revels, flipped a switch bathing the Weeks bridge and the Charles River in solid state light.

While not a significant revenue generating project for Luminus, the project holds a special place in the firm’s collective heart, said founder and CTO Alexei Erchak, an MIT graduate who used the bridge frequently while developing the company’s base technology at the nearby Cambridge university.

The project is also a practical promotion for the company, he said.

“This wasn’t really a strategic project as much as it was a way for us to show what we can do at a local landmark,” he said.

Luminus’ illumination division, which includes architectural lighting, theatrical lighting, avionics, medical devices and other non-consumer electronics applications, has, at least publicly, taken a back seat to the more sexy display unit. But Erchak said the company is working to change that by shining more light on its illumination division.

While the bridge will initially be lit in single colors using four LEDs, Luminus executives and lighting artist and designer John Powell of Light Time in Space Inc., hopes to extend the project in the future, possibly incorporating seasonal color changes for the bridge, and event specific shows.

DOE in Maine
Earlier in September, the U.S. Department of Energy announced two sets of new fundings related to clean energy, and while most of New England was absent from the list of awardees, Maine was included in both.

In one, the University of Maine at Orono was selected as part of a $4.4 million advanced biofuels award for U.S. universities. Six projects were selected to share the $4.4 million, though specific amounts to each university weren’t released. UMaine’s biofuels proposal aims to determine the “optimal yield and productivity of high potential bacteria at moderate to high temperatures,” and includes the examination of local feedstock options, such as wood extracts and seaweed sludge.

In another award, the state of Maine received $500,000 for research into demand-side energy efficiency as part of the DOE’s $6.6 million grant program for state energy efficiency policies and projects. Under the same grant program, but focused on advancing building codes to keep up with efficiency concerns, the commonwealth of Massachusetts also landed $500,000 to “work with other states in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic regions to develop and implement plans to upgrade, implement and enforce building codes that are a 30 percent improvement over” current standards.