CUNY is a national leader in Partnerships for Innovation (PFI) grants, which provide grants to professors and their labs that are working toward commercializing a technology but have not yet formed a company. Nearabl, which provides a computer vision AI-powered tool for trade workers to navigate unknown spaces and “see behind the wall” before they commence mechanical, electrical, or plumbing work, is fulfilling the ideal path from PFI to I-Corps to STTR grant. And it all began at a CUNY lab.
Nearabl Chief Technology Officer Jin Chen moved from China to the United States while in middle school. During her sophomore year at City College, a friend persuaded her to join a computer science class. That led Chen to the lab of Professor Zhigang Zhu, Herbert G. Kayser Professor of Computer Science at the City College of New York and the CUNY Graduate Center.
“I joined his lab, and everything I’ve done has come from that,” said Chen. Zhu’s lab was working to develop assistive technology that could help individuals with disabilities to improve how they managed in unfamiliar environments to help improve their quality of life. In particular, the lab had a PFI grant to create a smart transportation hub with minimal infrastructure change.
“Our work began with an indoor navigational tool for people with low vision,” Chen said. “The team was struggling to improve the accuracy.”
The technology behind this tool was rooted in augmented reality, or AR. AR provides an interactive experience that overlays computer-generated digital content, primarily perceptual information, onto the real world. If you’ve ever used an app to see how a pair of glasses would look on your face before you bought them, you’ve used AR.
Chen decided to continue graduate school at City College, working in the same lab. “I started to take classes that would help me to solve this ‘unsolvable’ issue,” she said. While working to complete her master’s in data science and engineering, Chen figured out how to make the technology scalable.
“We could only offer navigation for a small area; when we moved to a larger area, our tracking accuracy decreased,” Chen explained. “I was able to solve that by dividing the larger area into smaller ones and creating smooth transitions between them.”
The inspiration for Chen’s solution initially came at home rather than in the lab—a circumstance created in part by COVID. “Our lab is a single floor—it’s just one big room,” she said. “At home, I was able to modify and break out different areas more readily. I could do more experiments than in the lab; there was more opportunity for me to find errors that might happen in a larger scale. It finally clicked.”
“That said, even during the height of the pandemic, our team made significant efforts to set up test pilots and continue with customer discovery,” said Chen. “This allowed us to identify and address real-world problems related to our products. These pilot programs were crucial to our progress.”
Over time, by doing more testing in the home environment, as well as multiple test pilots across NYS, including the Central New York Biotech Accelerator, the Cornell Dairy Center, the ASRO conference at Long Beach, and residential and commercial buildings in NYC, the Nearabl team was able to refine its approach.
The Nearabl team wanted to participate in I-Corps as early as 2020. They ultimately participated in a national I-Corps cohort in Spring 2021, as the PFI grant enabled them to go straight to national. At that time, the team was still working towards offering an indoor navigation tool for the blind, with customer discovery primarily focused on transportation centers. The team formed Nearabl in October 2021 and demonstrated their technology at the New York State Innovation Summit.
Chen’s key lesson from I-Corps was to take a step back from the technology. “My biggest takeaway was recognizing we should more fully understand the client’s needs before diving deeply into technical development,” she said. Nearabl’s customer discovery ultimately led them to the pivot Nearabl is now pursuing. The team learned that the navigation system alone was not a sustainable business—particularly because those clients who might be interested in it were not willing to pay much for it.
“While participating in regional and national I-Corps, as well as doing dozens of pilots for indoor navigation, we realized there were three potential users—visitors who don’t know where to go, delivery folks trying to save time, and trade workers—say, looking to fix a broken pipe in an unfamiliar building,” explained Chen. “That third customer was our breakthrough. We can give them navigation, but our big ‘aha’ moment last summer was when we realized that what they really needed was the ability to see behind the wall before they start work—that was the ‘must have,’ whereas the navigation piece was ‘nice to have.’ Other companies are doing this, but our navigation feature is the differentiator.”
Right now, the best way to “see behind the wall” accurately is to use a Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR)—essentially an X-ray scanner for buildings. But it’s large, extremely expensive, and requires specialized training. Another option is to do ultrasound scanning of a building, using a drone—which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Nearabl takes the same goal and enables trade workers to use their phone to do so, with minimal training. “We learned from customer discovery that workers in the construction and maintenance field are more inclined to use a tool that is mobile-device based,” added Chen.
Chen also shared how Nearabl had benefited from the resources of the CUNY I-Corps Hub and the NYC Innovation Hot Spot. Nearabl participated in the Prototyping Reimbursement Program (PRP) and Demo Day, which provided funding for prototyping, enabling Nearabl to develop its own AR glasses application, reach new potential clients, and showcase its product. Nearabl also participated in numerous programs, including the NSF, DoD, and NIH SBIR/STTR workshops, which helped them to understand the requirements and processes for each agency. Nearabl relied upon Hub-sponsored consultant hours to revise its STTR proposal, which ultimately led to an award. Nearabl also participated in the Discovery Bootcamp at TechConnect in Maryland, where they met with various agencies to learn more about the SBIR/STTR programs and other government initiatives.
Nearabl currently has a team of three—all cofounders: Chen, as CTO, is leading technology development and handling the collaboration with the research lab. Arber Ruci is CEO, and E'edresha Sturdivant, a software engineer, is CIO. The company is an NSF SBIR/STTR success story. The STTR got underway on September 1.
Nearabl continues to work with the CUNY Computational Vision and Convergence lab, with a team of about 25 students. “We hope new student innovators also have the experience of participating in the I-Corps process and testing new products in the market,” added Chen.
Just recently, Nearabl was selected as one of 35 New York State businesses to receive an award from the Empire State Development’s Division of Science, Technology, and Innovation (NYSTAR)’s Innovation Matching Grants program, an opportunity the company was eligible for because they had already received an STTR grant. The Innovation Matching Grants program offers support for services not covered by federal awards, such as marketing and legal assistance, to SBIR- and STTR-supported projects in New York.
“We are excited about where we are headed,” said Chen.” It’s been quite a bit of work to get here, from PFI to publications and a patent and licensing the tech from the university and I-Corps, and all the field tests and pilots and awards. In many ways, we are just getting started!