“Our device does it in a quarter of an hour the work that two people do in 3-4 hours”. She doesn’t take it away from them, she helps them do it faster. That job, in the words of Nicolò Spallarossa, CEO and founder of The Meter, is measuring and mapping an environment, a space, a place. A 100 square meter apartment, in the reference example.
The Meter is a startup born in Genoa in 2019, has offices in the historic center, in two apartments of 250 and 360 square meters overlooking the historic church of San Matteo: everything is done here, from marketing to design, from communication to production. It’s one of 51 startup italiane brought to CES in Las Vegas this year by ICE (here is our selection), the agency for the internationalization of Italian companies. And the story of The Meter somehow began right at CES.
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From the center of Genoa to the Las Vegas Strip
The startup was born within the Officine IADR incubator: “In 2019 we started making first tests in the world of detection, which were (and still are, ed.) all made by hand, on paper, with very slow times – Spallarossa told us – We have filed the patents for Italy, the EU and the USA. Then in 2020 we brought the first prototype to CES and the following year the first product”. Which is called Cube and is the one still on sale on the company website.
Simplifying, the Cube is a distance meter, a 2D scanner that does environmental detection, a little box that uses a lidar and a laser to measure the dimensions of a space: “You place it in the center of a room and proceed with the scan, mapping 1600 points per revolution – he told us Alessandro Guasti, the designer, when we met him in Las Vegas – And he is able to see up to 60 meters away”. Once the measurements are finished, the device generates a file that can be used for CAD: “This is one of the main advantages compared to how things were done before – Spallarossa explained to us again – In our example, the two people who measure the apartment must then transfer all the data to the computer and create the file. Our device takes the measurements and also creates the file to work on. It does everything together, and in much less time.”
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The next steps: Cube 2 and Cube 3D
The Meter’s ideal customers are architects and surveyors, but also students of architecture, experts, those who work at certifications land registry, even those who install kitchens: the Cube analyzes the space at 360 degrees and produces a detailed floor plan directly on the smartphone or tablet screen, thanks to the app for Android and iOS. From the app you can also take photos of the environments, so as to have the cartography with the measurements and images. The Cube starts at a price of 1499 euros, and will soon be joined by a more performing version: “Cube 2 can already be pre-ordered and will be on sale from autumn 2023 – Spallarossa told us – It is capable of detecting double the points and doing so in a third of the time and will have an autonomy of approximately 30 days, much longer than the previous one”. How much will it cost? “About 2 thousand euros, but we will then make a more accessible version, around 1000 euros”.
The Meter it employs almost 50 people and with Cube 2 it will also begin to move in the field of AI and algorithms: “We will develop a cloud infrastructure and use machine learning for learning – the CEO told us – The device will learn what the windowsthe porte and other components of furnitureso as to become even faster in measurements.”
That’s not all, because by the end of the year Cube 3D should also arrive on the market: it will cost around 5 thousand euros and, as the name suggests, it will be able to make three-dimensional surveys, then generating BIM files, which are the standard in the world of construction and design.
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– 2024-03-17 07:07:15
