Spectral Engines’ headquarters in Helsinki, Finland, has been a busy place this spring. Company took big steps during the year 2016 and it was evident that as company is growing strongly, there is also a need to revise the strategy and brand. For this process Spectral Engines selected marketing agency Avalon as its partner and they have had a key role in the brand development process.
Spectral Engines’ new strategy will be focused more on OEM sensor which was launched successfully last year, and the new scanner platform which can be private labeled for customers. This new core sensor is affordable and it is designed for medium to high volumes, and it is now known as NIRONE.
“The name was selected as it describes perfectly where we would like to be now and especially in the future. We are committed to develop the best NIR sensor for customers who are aiming to build a new product for material sensing,” tells Janne Suhonen, CCO of Spectral Engines. “We are truly proud of our core module, but we are ready and able to offer more complete products to our customers as developing partners” Janne Suhonen emphasizes.
NIRONE sensors offer excellent performance at affordable price point
Spectral Engines’ new NIRONE sensor platform includes also ready-made devices and scanners. The idea is to help customers’ market entry by offering more mature building blocks. Strategy lies strongly on the core sensor, NIRONE, that is the smallest spectral sensor working at a true NIR range in the market today. However, we have noticed that whereas the sensor creates a strong foundation, the meaningful intelligence needs to be built beyond the hardware layer. We have been working intensively to support our customers' development work on the construction of complete sensor networks that can have hundreds or even thousands of sensors.
We have also compared NIRONE sensors with other microspectrometer and laboratory analyzers. Based on these results, NIRONE sensors are able to offer performance well comparable to expensive laboratory instruments but with a fraction of the cost and size. These test results are presented in more detail in our downloadable white paper. LINKKI
Meaningful intelligence through cloud computing
The challenge of broader usage of spectral sensors in the future is not related into the price of the hardware but how to build complete solutions I sensor network. NIR spectroscopy is mainly used by professionals in central laboratories. The real challenge will be faced when there will be hundreds or thousands of sensors in the field making real-time analyzes. This will need sophisticated new cloud based tools to optimize the performance of individual sensors and also easy maintenance for them. New cloud computing technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence or machine learning will open new opportunities to create intelligence sensor networks.
“ The role of machine learning algorithms is going to open new opportunities for material sensing. NIT spectroscopy is already proven in many applications, but it is still lacking of broader use. One major issue has been pricing of NIR analyzer, but also how to make chemometrics easy” explains Uula Kantojärvi, CTO, Spectral Engines. “We have tackled these issues by combining an affordable mass-producible MEMS spectral sensors with advanced cloud computing and machine learning algorithms. We are sure that with this combination the obstacles will be removed ad broader use of this powerful material sensing technology like Near-Infrared Spectroscopy will take place” continues Kantojärvi.
New strategy pays attention to complete solutions
The new strategy got an excellent kick-start when Spectral Engines’ entered the European Union’s food scanner competition last year and bagged the main prize in March 2017. The winning solutions FoodScan, was based more on cloud-based tools that will also be the platform for the up-coming modern machine lea
The new strategy got an excellent kick-start when Spectral Engines entered EU’s Food Scanner competition last year and bagged the main prize in March 2017. The winning solution, FoodScan was based more on cloud-based tools that will also be the platforms for the upcoming modern machine learning algorithms and chemometrical toolboxes, which will reduce the entry-to-market-time significantly. “The new tools will be launched later this year, but as a company, we are very confident about the added value they will bring to our customers” Suhonen sums.
If you like to know more about Spectral Engines new NIRONE sensor platform, please visit at our booth in ICNIRS 2017 conference, Copenhagen or Laser of Photonics 2017 trade show, Munich.
We are also happy to share the performance and technical details of NIRONE sensor family. Please download the white paper from the following link in order to get more information.
