See the original story in Japanese.
Japan’s Xenoma, developing a smart apparel product called E-skin, announced today that it has fundraised 200 million yen (about $1.8 million) from UTokyo Innovation Platform (an investment firm backed by the University of Tokyo) in addition to two existing investors; Beyond Next Ventures (BNV) and Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST). This follows their previous 180 million yen (about $1.6 million) funding from BNV and JST’s SUCCESS Program.
Using the funds, the firm will strengthen their company structure so that they can receive orders for a customized version of the business-use product while aiming to develop an optimized technology to produce a low-price version for consumers.
E-skin consists of a compression-fit E-skin shirt with 14 stretch/strain sensors and a controller named E-skin Hub which is attachable to the shirt. These sensors are directly mounted on shirts, so that it is lightweight and can detect the user’s motion accurately. The controller has a 3-axis accelerometer and can monitor overall body motion without requiring Lighthouse or other 3D scanner motion capture devices.
The firm had been running a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter from August 2nd to September 7th, where they made an amazing success by raising more than their initial target of $50,000 during the period.
See also:
- 77: The Real Reason Japan Can’t Innovate & What to Do About It – Xenoma (Disrupting Japan)
Edited “Tex” Pomeroy