New Zealand

StretchSense built an actually comfortable hand-motion capture glove • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 3, 2022Posted in Gaming, metaverse, New Zealand, Robotics & AI, Social, Virtual realityNo Comments

New Zealand-based StretchSense, a maker of hand motion capture technology, believes virtual and augmented reality are going to replace the smartphone as the dominant way we interact with digital worlds and each other. And when that happens, we’ll need natural ways be immersed in those spaces, which means being able to touch and control virtual stuff with your hands. The startup has built a glove that captures the intricate motions of human hands, along with the software that then translates those movements into an animation. Currently, StretchSense’s tech is used by more than 200 gaming and visual effects studios worldwide to create realistic hand gestures for everything from sign language videos to cinematic fight scenes to virtual health and safety training. In fact, it was recently used to make Snoop Dogg’s ‘Crip Ya Enthusiasm‘ music video. Benjamin O’Brien, co-founder and CEO of StretchSense, told ZebethMedia he thinks StretchSense can “be the future of human machine interface for virtual worlds by building garments, not devices.” StretchSenses’s glove is made using the startup’s proprietary stretchable sensor technology that precisely measures the human form. Before it’s been sewn into the glove, the stretchy material looks and feels like elastic rubber with some light black lines running through. Those black lines are referred to as a stretchable capacitor — a capacitor is the same type of sensor used on the screens of smartphones to measure the amount of energy the screen is storing based on where you put your finger down, which is how it works out what you’re touching. In StretchSense’s case, when the material stretches with hand movements, the amount of energy it can store increases. “If you can measure the amount of energy that this can store, you can then work out its geometry very, very, very accurately,” said O’Brien. I tried the glove on myself during a demo in Auckland and can admit that it was indeed a comfortable fit, which O’Brien says isn’t always a given in the hand motion capture world. “The really core advantage is that we actually make garments, not devices. And by that we mean we make garments that are comfortable to wear, that don’t interfere with movement, that don’t break easily, and don’t have hard, lumpy bits of plastic,” said O’Brien. “And so the way we were able to beat out the competition in the motion capture space, if you look at any competitive product, it’s got all these lumpy bits of plastic all over and interferes moving the hand, it breaks easily. And it’s based on technology that just doesn’t naturally conform to the body.” StretchSense closed a $7.6 million Series A investment Thursday, led by Scotland-based Par Equity with participation by existing StretchSense investors GD1, the NZ-based venture capital firm, and Scottish Enterprise, Scotland’s national economic development agency. The startup intends to use the funds to grow out its center of excellence in Edinburgh which is focused on AI and spatial computing and will work on machine learning problems to constantly improve the product — things like making a finer and more accurate capture of details, lowering the threshold of the uncanny valley in animations, and transitioning from a 2D screen to a 3D virtual world. The startup is also working on developing a haptic glove which it will launch into VR training next that will stimulate both touch and motion in virtual worlds. “We want to be the future of how people control and influence and touch virtual worlds, but you have to ground that in realistic business models,” said O’Brien. “And so realistic business model number one was content creation for gaming and movie studios. Number two for us would be VR training. And that’s all about solving the retraining crisis where you have people with shorter and shorter careers, but the complexity of those jobs is increasing. So you’ve got this issue where you actually need to be able to train people really quickly and often in time-critical, safety critical situations where there’s money or lives at stake.” Once StretchSense has built a viable business in the VR training sense, the startup hopes to use a next iteration of that tech to move into the VR gaming and experience space. “We want to create tools that the creators of the metaverse will use to build amazing virtual spaces and experiences,” said O’Brien.

Blackbird’s latest $1B AUD fund signals maturation of Australian, New Zealand venture scene • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 2, 2022Posted in Australia, Blackbird, New Zealand, Startups, VentureNo Comments

The Australian and New Zealand startup community will see a boost in funding this year. Blackbird, a VC fund based in the two south Pacific countries, on Wednesday closed a fund at over AUD $1 billion, which is about USD $640 million, which the firm says is Australia’s largest fund to date. This is Blackbird’s fifth fund, and it’s double the size of the VC’s last fund which closed in August 2020. Several institutional investors participated, including superannuation funds like AustralianSuper, Hostplus, Australia’s sovereign wealth fund, the Future Fund, New Zealand’s sovereign wealth funds and New Zealand Growth Capital Partners Elevate fund, which is a government-backed fund. A decade ago, most Australian and in particular New Zealand institutional investors didn’t want to put their money anywhere near tech startups. Their support today signals a maturation of the Australia/New Zealand venture capital space. “[Superannuation fund] capital can go anywhere. It can go into the best Silicon Valley VCs,” Sam Wong, a partner at Blackbird, told ZebethMedia. “And so the fact that they are choosing to invest their money at this scale with an Aussie and Kiwi fund marks a moment for the ecosystem and shows that we have earned our right on the global stage to manage that capital.” According to Wong, it makes sense for superannuation funds to back the tech space because they have horizons in the decades and can afford to be patient. “What they really care about is high returns so people can retire in dignity,” she said. “And when you have that long-term horizon, you can seek higher return assets that don’t have liquidity profiles that, say, public markets do. And that’s exactly what we found in the Australian superannuation system — they love tech because it’s high growth, high return. It’s very long dated, and they don’t mind that it’s locked up for 10 years.” The fund is also supported by over 270 individual investors, many of whom are tech founders and operators that Blackbird backed through earlier funds, according to the firm. Those founders will support the fund both with their own capital, but also their expertise, knowledge and connections, said Wong. The total AUD $1 billion consists of three separate vehicles: an AUD $284 million (USD $182 million) core fund for pre-seed and seed stage Aussie companies, an AUD $668 million (USD $472 million) follow-on fund to support Blackbird portfolio companies anywhere from “Series A to the last round at Canva,” and a NZD $75 million (USD $44 million) dedicated New Zealand fund, which is also largely for pre-seed and seed stage companies. Blackbird prides itself on cutting the earliest checks, which could be anywhere from $25,000 for a small pre-seed to up to $5 million for a seed round, said Wong. The firm’s mandate is to invest in founders with an Aussie or Kiwi connection, which usually means they’re based in those countries, but often ends up extending to those who founded companies abroad. Around 40% of Blackbird’s portfolio companies are actually headquartered in the U.S., said Phoebe Harrop, a principal at Blackbird. The fund has already made 18 investments into startups in a broad range of industries from AI to manufacturing to e-commerce. Last month, Blackbird invested in Sonder, an employee and student wellbeing company, and Spice AI, a data and AI-driven infrastructure platform. Blackbird said it predicts tech companies will contribute 20% of Australia’s GDP by 2032, which would be up from 8.5% today, according to the Tech Council of Australia. “We’re here to change the culture of Australia and New Zealand’s ecosystems, to make a difference at a country level,” said Niki Scevak, partner at Blackbird, in a statement.

New Zealand Uber drivers win case declaring them employees • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 25, 2022Posted in Apps, gig economy, labor, New Zealand, Transportation, UberNo Comments

A group of Uber drivers in New Zealand won a landmark case Tuesday against the ride-hail company which will force Uber to treat them as employees, rather than independent contractors. New Zealand’s employment court decision only applies to four drivers who were part of a class action lawsuit filed last July, but the ruling may have wider implications for drivers across the country keen on qualifying for worker rights and protections. The move in New Zealand comes just a couple of weeks after the U.S. Department of Labor proposed widespread changes to how gig workers should be classified. Specifically, the proposed ruling seeks to classify gig workers as employees if they are economically dependent on the company for which they work. The formal decision in New Zealand was made in respect to the individual drivers in the case. The court doesn’t have jurisdiction to make broader declarations of employment status for all Uber drivers, according to chief employment court judge Christina Inglis. That means all other Uber drivers don’t immediately become employees; however, Inglis did say the decision “may well have broader impact” because of the “apparent uniformity in the way in which the companies operate, and the framework under which drivers are engaged.” In the ruling, the Employment Court said that even though a worker’s contract might define them as an independent contractor, that definition depends more on the “substance of the relationship and how it operated in practice.” “The Court accepted that some of the usual indicators of a traditional employment relationship were missing,” reads the ruling. “However, it was found that significant control was exerted on drivers in other ways, including via incentive schemes that reward consistency and quality and withdrawal of rewards for breaches of Uber’s Guidelines or for slips in quality levels, measured by user ratings.” The court found that Uber had sole discretion to control prices, service requirements, guidelines, terms and conditions, marketing, relationships with riders and more. “Uber was able to exercise significant control because of the subordinate position each of the plaintiff drivers was in and which its operating model was designed to facilitate and did facilitate,” according to the ruling. Two unions, First Union and E tū, took up the case last year on behalf of more than 20 drivers. Their goal was to override a legal precedent set in the Employment Court in 2020 that ruled a driver was not an employee. Labor rights activists argued there, as in the U.S. and everywhere else, that because an Uber driver’s rate is set by Uber, the company controls wages, which puts it in employer territory. At the time, the judge ruled that the driver actually had control over their wages because they could be paid less or improve the profitability of their business through adopting cheaper business costs. Tuesday’s ruling will grant the drivers in the case sick leave, holiday pay, minimum wage, guaranteed hours, KiwiSaver contributions, the right to challenge an unfair dismissal and the right to unionize, according to New Zealand’s labor laws. First Union is now accepting Uber drivers to join as members for a discounted fee of $3.05 per week and would move to initiate collective bargaining. The union says Uber drivers may be owed backpay for lost wages, holiday pay and other entitlements. “This is a landmark legal decision not just for Aotearoa but also internationally,” said Anita Rosentreter, First Union strategic project coordinator, in a statement. Uber did not respond in time to ZebethMedia for a comment, but a spokesperson for the company told The Guardian that the company would be appealing the decision, and that it was “too soon to speculate” how the court ruling would affect the company’s operations in New Zealand more broadly. The decision in New Zealand is the latest in a string of international cases where workers have fought for employment rights from gig economy companies. Last December, the U.K. High Court dealt a massive blow to Uber by declaring the business was unlawful and by classifying gig workers as “workers,” a new classification that allows for the flexibility of independent contract work and the rights of employee status. Last year, an analysis from the International Lawyers Assisting Workers Network, a membership organization of trade union and workers’ rights lawyers, showed gig companies like Uber and Deliveroo had faced at least 40 major legal challenges in 20 countries, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, South Korea and across Europe.