Tangible Computing – Details, episodes & analysis

Short conversation between Andrew and Gareth about the highlights of Season 1 (first 20 episodes) and the rational for the second season.

In this episode, we talk with Benno Broer, CCO of PASQAL, about what types of problems Quantum Computing will help solve.  We also dive deeper into what it takes to develop algorithms for quantum computers, what are the constraints, and how one can build a company around this.

Daniel Rohr discusses helping trucks predict fuel efficiency and produce less CO2 with data science at Tracks.  He talks about how much data is available from telematics, how to use random forests and Natural Intelligence to create insights and his career journey from quantum chemistry to data science.

This episode we interview Iris Soute, an entrepreneur in the Netherlands who founded Picoo which creates toys for children to play outside, empowered with technology. Picoo faces unique challenges in creating engaging outdoor games for groups of children on their handheld device, such as packing powerful electronics into a device that fits in small hands, and bringing it to market. We dive deep into her entrepreneurship journey and hear how she interacted with hundreds of children to come up with and code the games. 

Wouter Kuijpers a former team captain of Tech United one of the most successful teams in the RoboCup (Middle Size League) explains the motivation for having a team of robots playing football autonomously. In addition, we learn how the RoboCup Federation organizes multiple leagues and how each league has different objectives and how constantly changing the rules helps accelerate research and development to get to the ultimate goal - 2050 team of robots be able to play 11 a side football against world cup winners. Check out the Tech United YouTube Channel to see some of their past games.

Giel Van den Broeck, co-founder of Direct Energy Partners is building software to help design and simulate DC microgrids. We also discuss value of DC compared to AC distribution,  programming in Julia and React and some of our favorite books on economics.

Christopher Bailey , @digiglean is the host of the Real Python podcast, which helps people around the world learn, and master python. He talks about his experiences starting from recording engineering, to SQL programming then hosting a podcast and some hobby projects where he is building guitar pedals programmed in Python.  Christopher has interviewed many of the people behind python and we discuss where the language is evolving and how forks like circuit python play a role in taking it to the embedded space. 

Bartosz Górecki, CEO of QuickerSim shares some real examples of running CFD simulations to help predict battery degradation, discusses some of the challenges and tradeoffs of doing simulations and talks about scaling up a technology company. 

Joost Brilman is an electronics expert in Eindhoven who runs Studio String Art (https://www.studiostringart.nl/tc) Joost creates personalized art using a robot to wrap a single string, sometimes kilometers long, between a circle of nails around a canvas growing from a single line, to a fully formed image as the machine threads the wire. Join us to hear about how he mathematically transforms images into machine instructions then into a unique artistic canvas. We’ll talk about how his curiosity got him into electrical engineering and how that led him to this unique art form. 

Luís Oliveira shares his motivational story from doing volunteer work to explaining how his company, Aircision, helps people stay connected using free space optics instead of putting down expensive fiber optics. In addition, he shares some insights on how companies are evaluated in the start up ecosystem.

Luis Oliveira is Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Aircision. He holds a BSc in Economics and a MSc in Finance from University of Porto, Portugal.

He is a former Financial Advisor from Deloitte Portugal, where he worked in M&A and financial consulting projects within the Telecom, Media, Manufacturing and Financial Services industries, among others, in Portugal and Angola. 

Prior to joining Aircision, Luis was a Ventures Acceleration Manager and Portfolio Analyst at HighTechXL, where he directly supported high-tech entrepreneurs building and strengthen their business cases.