|
Have you ever imagined a football game played by robots? Well what may seem like a science fiction movie scene may soon be seen in the electronic games houses in the country.
The small technology based company Scientists Associated Technological Development (Cientistas Associados Desenvolvimento Tecnológico) should launch, in the beginning of 2006, the first units of the product 'Sci-Soccer' or simply, 'Robot Football'.
From the Incubator center for Technology Companies (Cinet) of São Carlos, city in the interior of the Brazilian southeastern state of São Paulo, Scientists Associated is made up by young doctorates - the majority in their 30s and with strong knowledge in the computational mathematics and computer science.
Everything started when two of them decided to invest in theoretical knowledge as a competitive differential in the world of business.
The project of the game 'Robot Football' will be the first of four that are being developed by the company to reach the market. Since November 2003, the company is dedicated to study the development of a software and base platform constituted of an autonomous mobile robot which can be moved by a radio-modem.
The launching of the product came closer after Scientists Associated received a new financial contribution of US$ 419,200 from the State of São Paulo Research Foundation (Fapesp), from the Technological Innovation in the Small Company Programme (Pipe).
The resources will be employed in four projects developed by the company: Integrated Robotics System for the Areas of Education, Research and Entertainment - whose first product is the 'Robot Football'; Computing System for Loss Reduction in Energy Distribution Networks with Virtual Reality Interface; Intelligent System for the development of antibodies based in the antigen structure; and Fluorescence Detection Systems for DNA Analysis.
Entrepreneurial Culture
Since May 2003 at the Cinet in São Carlos, managed by the Parqtec (Technological Parks Program), the Scientists Associated have gone through a good period adapting to the business world.
According to the general manager at Scientists Associated, Antônio Valério Netto, the company was born to unite academic research and business, but came across difficulties in the beginning of their activities, indeed due to the lack of the business touch by the majority of the scientists.
"To overcome this initial barrier it was fundamental to be in the incubator, which is the setting that allows you to try and even to make mistakes," he says.
He recalls that one of the main challenges in the company was people management, since part of the technical body started acting at Scientists Associated with the entrepreneurial vision.
The 'Robot Football' and the other three projects that are being carried out by the company, explains Antônio Valério, already are the result of the experience acquired in the incubator. This is because, before investing in the project, Scientists Associated made market studies to identify the viability of each one of them.
"We formed a commercial intelligence group to identify some products that still don't exist in the market or that aren't being made by the big companies, since there is no sense in competing with the great corporations," he says.
Pioneer Project
The Incubator center for Technology Companies of São Carlos was the first companies incubator founded in the country. It started its activities in January 1985, a few days after the Parqtec started operating.
The Parqtec is a pioneer project motivating the formation of technology-based incubators in Brazil. Since then, the organization graduated 62 companies in to the market.
Today, the Cinet, which has support from the Brazilian Micro and Small Business Support Service (Sebrae), has another 14 technology based companies. According to the incubator's manager, Luís Antônio Pereira, by finishing the new technological park, the incubator will have the capacity to meet another 56 projects.
Agência Sebrae, Anba
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.