Delft-based MEMSYS, a company that is developing technologies and applications for self-powered devices, announced on Thursday, July 13, that it has secured €350K from the UNIIQ Fund.
MEMSYS says that the raised capital will help the company to develop its product and make it suitable for market introduction in the rail sector.
UNIIQ will help the Dutch startup to create a prototype and launch the initial pilots.
MEMSYS: Powering efficiency
Founded in 2022 by Thijs Blad and Gerrit-Jan Mollink, MEMSYS is a spin-off from the Delft University of Technology. Its goal is to create technology and apps for self-powered gadgets.
“We envision a future in which batteries never have to be replaced and it is our mission to develop energy harvesting technologies as a sustainable power source for wireless applications,” says MEMSYS.
The company believes ‘energy harvesting’ will become a platform for hundreds of IoT goods.
According to the company, inspecting trains and infrastructure required a lot of time and work and couldn’t be done while driving. Founder Thijs Blad, while pursuing his PhD at TU Delft, created the “energy harvester” which guarantees that the sensors have their own energy source.
The company says unnoticed flaws like flat patches on waggon wheels cause harm to the infrastructure of the railway as well as the rolling equipment. The longer these flaws are ignored, the more expensive it is to maintain the infrastructure and the waggon.
These types of flaws are hard to see during visual inspections and can go unreported for a considerable amount of time. This results in:
- Escalating costs for waggon and rail infrastructure maintenance and repairs, partially as a result of extended downtime
- Train breakdowns
- Risks to carriers’ safety
- Deteriorated rail transportation noise and vibration disturbance
The energy harvester
The current solutions for trains include visual checks before departure or entrance into service and planned overhauls in a workshop. Visual examinations take time and are unreliable. Equipment failure is frequently caused by costly checks and adjustments made in a workshop.
MEMSYS says it will put up a system that will allow for continuous monitoring of the infrastructure and equipment’s technical state. They accomplish this via IoT and energy-collecting technologies.
Energy harvesting is the process by which the sensors, which are positioned on each wagon, produce the necessary energy from the vehicle’s vibrations.
The sensors no longer require a connection to an energy source since energy is harvested from the vibrations. This makes the sensors simple to install and battery-free.
The technology was created by Thijs Blad while pursuing his PhD at TU Delft. He is followed by co-founder Gerrit-Jan Mollink, who has knowledge of operational management in the railway sector.
Brieg about UNIIQ Fund
UNIIQ is a € 28.8M investment fund focused on the “proof-of-concept” phase. UNIIQ assists entrepreneurs in South Holland in bringing their innovative ideas to market more quickly.
The fund is managed by a team of investment specialists including Innovation Quarter, Leiden University, Erasmus MC, and TU Delft. Erasmus University joined the fund in 2021.
Since 2021, UNIIQ has committed resources in Early Phase Financing (VFF), and an application for VFF is in accordance with the proven UNIIQ investment methodology. UNIIQ is made possible in part by the EU.
