Space technologies supporting business creation

From idea to start-up

The Intelligent Mobility Lab, a collaborative project bringing together players in the space and mobility fields, was set up to foster the creation of start-ups offering space-based solutions. After just 6 months, its first company is now coming into being.

INTELLIGENT MOBILITY LAB

Set up in October 2019 by CNES, MATRICE (the innovation and entrepreneurship program) and the VEDECOM Institute (one of France’s leading autonomous vehicle players), the Intelligent Mobility Lab brings together a multidisciplinary team of space players and mobility specialists around a common goal: to develop responses to the mobility needs of cities and citizens using Earth observation data.

The strength of this initiative lies in the partners’ complementary skills, along with a shared desire to help develop relevant and useful solutions, bring them to life, and support them in becoming innovative companies, generating employment and value for our society and regions.

ONE OF THE FRUITS OF THIS GROUND-BREAKING PROJECT, EPLEÏ USES SATELLITE IMAGES TO SERVE THE LOGISTICS FIELD

Epleï is a good example of how a collaborative cross-disciplinary project, involving players from the space sector and – in this case – the mobility sector, can lead to the creation of an innovative company working to meet society’s needs.

Epleï is a novel solution that uses satellite images to provide recommendations on the best sites to establish a logistics hub. It has several advantages:

• it can be implemented anywhere in the world in a very short space of time
• it does away with the need for travel and field studies
• it provides automated recommendations, not biased by human perception
• the tool is extremely precise and flexible, and can operate at different scales

THE IDEA HAS BECOME A BUSINESS IN JUST 6 MONTHS...

In only 6 months, the Epleï project has gone from the idea stage to the business start-up stage.

After being examined by the teams of the Intelligent Mobility Lab, the project was selected for a POC that was tested between January and March 2020. Following highly conclusive results from the demonstrator, a company will be set up to bring the project to market, with a commercial launch planned for the second half of 2020.

The solution is already of interest to many players, such as transport and logistics professionals, logistics real-estate players and financiers, planners, local authorities, etc.

Yet another example of how space technologies, combined with an open-minded approach and a willingness to cooperate with other sectors, can become a real source of value and innovation to benefit our companies, regions and fellow citizens.

Read the press release