Route Konnect

Route Konnect

 

 

Founders: Mohamed Binesmael, Daniel Harborne and Matteo De Rosa

 

The Problem

Traditionally in the video analytics industry, facial recognition would be used to connect the path of a person from one camera to the next. Our algorithm removes the need to use that technology, allowing for privacy to be preserved whilst still providing the full picture of how people are moving across a location.

We are currently focusing on the road sector use cases as this is where we have seen the most demand for video analytics technology. As the existing market needs is not being met with advanced analytics. Customers within the road sector such as traffic surveyors have to resort to manual processes of counting traffic from video footage. This approach is cumbersome and relatively slow by comparison to an automated solution. Not only this, the analytics they are provided are not detailed, and do not offer additional insights such as speed or gaps between vehicles unless more expensive technology is used.

 

The Solution

We are the first to have developed an approach that allows us to connect the dots across multiple cameras, but anonymously and without using facial recognition. As a result of this innovation, we have had interest from local authorities and traffic surveyors over the past year to help develop a product offering to use our solution for improving junctions and spaces.

Studies have shown that implementing our solution across junctions to upgrade them to smart junctions could help to reduce emissions by 4%. For the UK market, this could mean a saving of £2Bn in fuel spent annually on petrol and diesel at the pumps!

With traffic surveyors, we will be able to open up entry for surveying analytics by providing more with less. It’s a win-win situation that will save customers money, and allow them to do more with their existing budgets.

 

The Company

When I was one of 6 finalists at The Telegraph STEM Awards in 2017 from over 3,000 applicants, I knew the concept of monitoring traffic would be an important one for the future development of our cities.

Having graduated from a masters in civil engineering in July 2017, I subsequently took on a PhD whilst working on Route Konnect on the side. This all changed when The Dubai Government invited us in September 2018 to collaborate with Dubai Police on our smart city concept, and I shifted to focus on Route Konnect full time, interrupting the PhD one year into it with only a book chapter published.

Our team came together from being involved in Cardiff Autonomous Racing at Cardiff University, a Formula Student team dedicated to the driverless challenge. The talent that we had working together became the cornerstone of our next step together.

We've persisted despite the difficulty to breakthrough this market because we truly believe in what we're building. It's only in this past year that we have seen a true indication of our validation, as we are beginning to work with our customer base to develop our product offering for their needs.

 

A Quote

Taking part in the Tata Varsity Pitch has been an exciting opportunity to showcase the persistence and effort we have gone through to pivot and develop as we continued to find product market fit. And it’s through those past lessons in prior years with Tata’s competition that we have been able to continue to learn and innovate.

 

Top Tips

Persistence and flexibility are key to making it with a startup. Persistent enough to know you have something, but flexible enough to adapt it to the market’s needs. If the market isn’t buying it, then you need to help make it easy for your customers to overcome their obstacles in working with you.