This past June, Ynvisible and Enfucell, a leading Eurpean Cleantech company, collaborated on an integrated prototype for the 2011 edition of LOPE-C in Frankfurt. Both companies are now looking to extend this partnership in order to pursue integrated commercial applications and joint development projects. Potential joint products include magazine covers and greeting cards.

Furthermore, the YDreams spinout has a new edition to its team: industry veteran Jani-Mikael Kuusisto, previously Business Development Manager for Printed Intelligence at VTT, the largest applied research organization in Northern Europe, joins Ynvisible as its Chief Business Development Officer.

A few posts ago I mentioned that the YDreams Group was expanding; turns out our family across the Atlantic has also been growing. Both YDreams Brasil affiliates (Rio de Janeiro & São Paulo) have taken on new members over the past months and in part because of it, they’ve decided to implement the Close Encounter (CE) sessions originally launched here at Lisbon HQs a few years back.

Close Encounters are small internal weekly conferences whose format varies; it can be a round table discussion, a talk about a specific topic or an artistic presentation. Speakers may be volunteer YDreamers or invested guests. Nuno Artur Silva (Produções Fícticias), Artur Arsénio (Robotics), Manuel Lima (Data Visualization) or Prof. Rui Aço (Oficina do Desenho), are some of the wonderful speakers we have had the privilege of having at our CEs. Internally we’ve also had folks talk about ‘Interactive Narratives in Cinema’, the ‘Power of Collaborative Tools’, ‘Digital Art’, and ‘Managing Your Personal Finances for the Financially Challenged’, among others. As you can see the idea is as much to discuss themes related to our core business as to inspire and inform!

Brazil’s first Close Encounter is underway in São Paulo as I write. It’s actually been a day and a half affair, and from looking at the program it sounds much like Orientation meets Team-building Seminar! The session includes an inspirational interview from co-founder and CEO. António Câmara, presentations of the company’s more emblematic cases and talks about, amongst others, “how we as a society have moved away from a ‘heavy’ and ‘solid’, hardware-focused modernity to a ‘light’ and ‘liquid’, software-based modernity” (from Zygmunt Bauman’s ‘Liquid Modernity’).

Sounds like interesting stuff! Here’s to the first of many CEs in Brazil!

Ynvisible, YDreams first spin-out company, and Inês Henriques, its CEO and Virgina Tech alumna, were recently profiled on the university’s website. To read the article click HERE.

The WIRED UK August 2011 issues profiles ‘Sigas’: Santander’s friendly bank bots”, YDreams’ avant-garde project implemented in 2010 for the Visitors’ Center at Ciudad Group Santander, a gargantuan financial complex in Madrid, Spain.

Click HERE to view the article online; this edition is also available on WIRED UK for iPad.

For a complete overview of the project, click HERE to watch the video.

Ynvisible, YDreams’ first spin out, was recently at LOPE-C (Frankurt’s Large-area, Organic & Printed Electronics) Convention from June 28th to the 30th, 2011 to showcase the printed electronics developer’s various prototypes.

Ynvisible’s revolutionary technology was a key factor in convincing Jani-Mikael Kuusisto to come on board as Chief Business Development Officer, a position he previously occupied at VTT Finland. Mr. Kuuisto officially joins Ynvisible on August 1st, 2011.

The video below shows Ynvisible CEO Inês Henriques explaining the prototypes developed thus far:

Parent-company YDreams now counts three spinouts and one joint venture

The YDreams Group is proud to announce that its members are growing in number. A joint-venture with a North American partner brought us Audience Entertainment in December 2008; Ynvisible, dedicated to developing and producing electrochromic displays was officially launched in early 2010, and listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in February 2011.

2011 ushered in two more spinout companies – Yvision, developer and producer of software development kits, and more recently YDRobotics, which will specialize in robotics and mechatronics fields.

More information about each one HERE!

Today, YDreams’ Natural User Interfaces (NUI) division is officially releasing the free Beta version of its YVision software development kit (SDK), via its dedicated website at http://www.yvision.com.

YVision is the result of ten years of research and development in human-computer interaction. Created by the company division that focuses solely on NUI design and software architecture, this framework is behind many of YDreams’ interactive solutions and has been deployed in thousands of engaging and robust NUI applications.

According to Ivan Franco, YDreams’ Director of R&D, “Our framework is the missing link between traditional Game Engines and Natural User Interfaces. It promotes creativity and expressivity, by offloading the complex interoperability of the multiple technologies, which are indispensable to deliver state-of-the-art interactive products.”

YVision is a component-based framework that allows programmers to develop complex systems based on pre-built modules, which are operated by behavior trees. The .NET – based framework assures faster development, removes the need for complex resource handling and offers users multi-platform deployment for desktops, mobiles and consoles.

The SDK features a full abstraction layer for real-time 3D rendering and was also designed to support the upcoming Microsoft Silverlight 5, enabling users to build the next full 3D experience for the web browser. In addition, YVision offers state-of-the-art physics and computer vision. The creation of NUI applications also depends heavily on sensor acquisition and processing, so YVision is ready to process complex sensor data and manage several kinds of input devices.

“The current beta release is for PCs only. Because we want to offer the best possible experience, extensive testing is being carried out for the Mac and Silverlight platforms, and mobile platforms will soon follow”, explains Mr. Franco,“Stay tuned, because we intend to follow the ‘release often’ motto”.

The SDK, along with detailed information and instructions, is available for download via the following URL: http://www.yvision.com. We hope you will enjoy it and look forward to hearing your feedback!