The 2016 report of the Internet of Things Osservatorio of the School of Management of Politecnico di Milano, outlined the international situation of startup, in the field IoT to dwell on the Italian one.
Among the 42 Italian startup, reviewed the report also Laqy, winner of the second edition of Call4Ideas Cardif, contest dedicated to innovations in the insurance sector promoted by BNP Paribas Cardif and PoliHub Milan, startup classified in the field Smart Home, as it deals with the wellbeing of the people in the house, through a hardware and software technology.
Laqy is an electronic nose equipped with a series of sensors that can monitor the air quality in any indoor environment, then inside homes, places of work, schools. One problem often overlooked, that of indoor pollution. Typically the outdoor air in the city is thought to be polluted, but actually particulates, volatile compounds, formaldehyde, resulting from building materials and furnishings, paints, glues, fumes from cooking food, cigarette smoke, cleaners, cause heavy pollution of the air we breathe indoors.
The effects on our health? Awful: allergies, dermatitis, headaches, fatigue, lassitude, and many diseases of the respiratory tract nowadays constantly rising are caused by their stay in polluted indoors.
For this reason, Laqy is an interesting device also in the insurance sector: on the one hand provides a quantitative assessment of environmental risks in real time; on the other hand is proposed as a watchdog to protect public health.
The device can be easily carried in any environment to be monitored and, just turned on, it begins the analysis of the air with its sensors detecting PM, VOC and formaldehyde, and sending the data via WiFi to a digital platform that can be intuitively displayed. It also sends an alert message when one of the detected substances exceeds the recommended safety thresholds by the World Health Organization. Laqy has an architecture developed on the concept of IoT, then arranged to interface with other devices or other Laqy. A unique feature that allows, in the future, the establishment of a public community for air quality monitoring: In fact a digital platform where it will be possible to collect and display indoor pollution data, is under construction, with the ultimate aim of building an interactive picture of air quality in indoor environments.
Currently the Laqy device is not yet commercially available, the first test outside the lab, by testing the technology with the help of a small group of people, have just begun.
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