One inventor who will be featured at the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship’s forum, Rory Aronson, created the Farmbot — a farming machine.
Elliot Stiller
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Students’ inventions will be put on display at an innovation-driven forum hosted by the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) in the Cal Poly Performing Arts Center Pavilion on Wednesday, Nov. 20 from 4:30 to 7 p.m.
For the first half hour, attendees will mingle and become familiar with influential community members, faculty and students. After the networking, seven featured inventors will display their creations to the audience; then, the attendees will be broken into groups to brainstorm further application of the product. During the final hour, selected panelists will answer questions posed by a moderator and the audience.
“These types of events didn’t exist in San Luis Obispo before CIE was founded,” Chelsea Brown, the program’s media coordinator, said. “We’re a start-up that helps create start-ups. We are trying to build an entrepreneurial ecosystem here.”
The CIE was established three years ago with the purpose of discovering innovative people and helping them successfully capitalize their ideas. CIE has close ties to the community, enabling them to use mentors and consultants. Their Founders’ Circle includes people who want to see the entrepreneurial ecosystem grow on the Central Coast.
“A lot of people in CIE are investors, mentors, and you get access to this insider club by being in CIE and being in a program,” outreach coordinator Tiffany Keller said.
Forums are held six times a year and typically draw 175 to 200 people, although October’s event had more than 220 attendees.
“Established inventors with a product in different stages of development will be featured,” Brown said. “Some have patents, some are patent-pending and some haven’t worked on a patent yet,”
Rory Aronson, a 2013 Cal Poly alumnus, is a featured inventor with a degree in mechanical engineering. He wants to revamp the food production system by developing the FarmBot prototype.
“FarmBot is an open-source automated precision farming machine and a software package designed to allow the user to graphically design their farm by telling the machine to complete the necessary operations to grow the desired plants,” Aronson said.
The robot will be computer controlled — if the user wants to grow something, they can access FarmBot’s online software. There, they can graphically design their farm. Instructions are issued to FarmBot, such as telling it to prepare soil, plant seeds, add water or fertilizer or even destroy weeds while the plant grows.
“It is a possible solution to our broken food production system,” Aronson said. “Our current system is not fulfilling the needs of the people — those needs being sustainably-produced healthy food — but we don’t have enough people who want to get out and be a farmer, so we need an automated solution. I think it will greatly improve lives, the food we produce and our planet.”
By the end of the year, Aronson intends to release the prototype, which will have two functions: to plant and water food.
Another featured inventor is Steven Zawalick, who created Bloxygen. Bloxygen is an inert gas preservation system that saves leftover finishes and chemicals and prevents oxygen or moisture damage. The product was created in the late ’90s and patented in 1999. Now, it’s sold in nearly every woodworking outlet and marine catalog, as well as in several other countries.
“This is the best time in the history of man to be an entrepreneur,” Zawalick said. “Amazing tools are available for production and testing, and communicating your idea has never been easier. I constantly draw energy and insight from other products and attend trade shows for inspiration.”
His product will be displayed during the first part of the forum — Pitches, Exhibits, Networking (PEN) — a facilitated networking activity to showcase various inventions. One of these inventions, Otto, is a surface-climbing robot capable of handling heavy loads while traversing any surface. Another, MegaMatter Acoustics, is a lightweight, moldable, noise-absorbing composite that is extremely fireproof and durable.
After the presentations, the audience, which is split evenly between students, community members and faculty, is broken into groups to discuss applications of the showcased inventions. The discussions allow the inventors to explore more uses for their product.
For instance, if the creator of Otto decided to use the robot solely for climbing walls, it would limit the product’s effectiveness. Instead, camera lenses could be attached to Otto for recording and photography.
PEN’s brainstorming will produce an array of ideas to push the inventor’s product to a different level. It also guides them toward shielding their product via patents.
Patents can be filed for many possible uses to safeguard an invention, Brown said.
The night will close with a panel discussion, which will focus on seizing opportunities, creating products, commercializing technologies and driving them to market.
Panelists will include Joe O’Connor, product sales and marketing expert; Christopher Kitts, professor and chair of Cal Poly’s Biological Sciences Department; Christine Tovee, chief technology officer at EADS North America; and Brian Riley, Cal Poly alumnus and co-founder and CEO of Slidepad Technologies. The panel moderator is Jim Dunning, program manager of the Research and Economic Development Office at Cal Poly.
“Innovation is driven by the human spirit and our innate curiosity to understand and improve our world,” Dunning said. “Inventors are typically focused on solving a specific problem. When the problem is solved, they sometimes think the invention is ‘market ready.’ It is extremely important for an inventor to understand that, in most cases, significant time and money are usually needed to bring an invention from proof of concept to market.”
Correction: The original version of this article stated “His product will be displayed during the second part of the forum — Pitches, Exhibitions, Networking (PEN). In fact, the product will be displayed during the first part of the forum, which is called Pitches, Exhibits, Networking.
In the original version of this article, a quote was directly attributed to Chelsea Brown. In fact, she was being paraphrased.