Newsletter - New Year 2019

Main Story

2019 has been a year filled with unbelievable experiences and events, as well as challenging times. It’s hard to go through every important event we had in 2019, but we will try to sum up the most important experiences throughout the year. We started the year by going through a tough process deciding the future of the company and determined eventually to pivot from the B2C market to the B2B market and becoming Ntention.

We had an extremely busy summer, combining a summer project with Norconsult and the NASA Haughton-Mars Project. These projects led to a storm of PR and news articles and make up a great framework for what’s happening in 2020. By the end of 2019, we announced that Ntention will be part of the valuable ESA BIC network and were granted funds from the Norwegian Space Agency.

3 highlights of the last year

• Pivoting business model and becoming Ntention
• NASA Haughton-Mars Project at Devon Island
• Implementing our technology into Virtual Reality with Norconsult

Long list of content

• Pivoting business model and becoming Ntention
• Implemented glove technology into Virtual Reality
• NASA Haughton-Mars Project
• China Start program by CKGSB
• Funds for further space research and development

Pivoting Business Model and Becoming Ntention

After research and development of our proof-of-concept did come to an end in late 2018, we consider it valuable to review the potential of commercialization of the Drone Glove or implementation of the technology in other applications. With our market research and conversations with experienced people within the field, we considered it unreasonable to rush the Drone Glove as a B2C product into the market. We pivoted our business towards the B2B market, specialized at interaction systems and became Ntention.

Implemented Glove Technology into Virtual Reality

Our three summer internships at Norconsult this summer saw us delving into Virtual Reality to create an innovative way of interacting with a virtual world. We created gloves that use state-of-the-art stretch sensors, IMUs (sensors that combine accelerometer, magnetometer, and gyroscope) and VR-trackers (infrared light technology used to estimate position in VR) to produce a picture of how hands and fingers are placed and moved.

NASA Haughton-Mars Project on Devon Island

Back at the Energy:Connected conference in April this year, we met Dr. Pascal Lee and we were invited to the testing site for the Haughton-Mars Project, Devon Island. At Devon Island, we were testing our technology implemented in a concept spacesuit for various missions. Controlling a drone for scouting, searching, and gathering samples is some of the tasks that are intended use cases at the Moon, Mars and beyond. This project resulted in numerous inquiries and mentions in over 110 news articles all around the globe.

China Start by CKGSB

This year we managed to attend the 7th China Start program, which is hosted by one of the top business schools in China, CKGSB. During the program, we visited China’s most valuable companies, e.g. Alibaba and Tencent, we pitched for Chinese investors and learned a lot about expanding into China.

Funds for Further Space Research and Development

December 2019, we announced that Ntention will be a part of the valuable network within the European Space Agency Business Incubation Centre. With the support from Kjeller Innovasjon and partners of ESA BIC, we will continue the research on space-related technology, in particular, the Astronaut Smart Glove. In addition to funds from the ESA BIC cooperation, we were granted funds for next year’s national financial resources from the Norwegian Space Agency.