Vivatech 2021 : Focus sur 3 start-ups

On the program for this somewhat special fifth edition, Vivatech has made it a point of honor to highlight local innovations. Indeed, the regions of France presented their pool of start-ups, whether in the field of artificial intelligence, robotics, the cloud, cybersecurity, or the transport of the future. The trend is towards eco-mobility, connected objects and hybrid collaboration tools. Some unusual technological innovations were also on the agenda, such as the robot dog from Boston Dynamics, the Levita box from LVMH showing products in levitation, or the drone taxi from the Chinese company EHang. Beyond these gadgets, our attention focused on three young companies, from three regions of France, WeeM, Aquilae and Malizen.

WeeM, the connected acoustic cabin

Made in France, with eco-designed materials, the WeeM cabin offers secure and isolated access from the outside thanks to its -43dB soundproofing. Already in place in some shopping centres, town halls or station halls in France, this “citizen’s booth” contributes to digital inclusion and provides access to various administrative services dedicated to employment, justice, health, accommodation or civil status using France Connect. La Poste and EDF are also part of the partner services and an emergency call service is available to help victims (116 006). “We realized that this service represented a third of uses,” explains Olivier Langlet, director of innovation and customer experience at WeeM.

The WeeM solution is available in shopping centres, station halls and town halls in the Normandy region and other towns in France. (Credit: Celia Seramour)

The cabin is also equipped with a camera and a videoconference system to help and guide the user in its use. An e-health WeeM also exists, equipped with connected medical devices to perform patient diagnosis. This development could lead to telemedicine in certain rural areas, believes Olivier Langlet. After a two-year experimentation phase in towns of 1,000 inhabitants or less, the company turned to larger cities, following the example of its hometown, Rouen. Concerned about the protection of each user’s data, WeeM specifies that all data is deleted at the end of the session as soon as the user expresses his wish to leave the cabin.

Aquilae, AI video analysis

The start-up, originally from Troyes, presents its video analysis solution supported by artificial intelligence, all “at the service of urban surveillance” as explained by Nicolas Cholet, technical director of Aquilae. The solution adapts to different fields of activity and makes it possible in particular to detect intrusions, count and track people and packages, or even help with regulatory masking. This last function, AI.Mask, makes it possible to blur the windows of houses and buildings filmed by fleets of mobile cameras, which are then found in Google Street View and Google Maps. Aquilea also has customers such as the Ratp or the Sncf concerning the counting and tracking of people, the detection of abandoned luggage or even lane crossing.

The AI.Mask solution, presented by Aquilae, automatically detects windows requiring regulatory blurring. (Credit: Aquilae)

Malizen automates and visualizes cybersecurity processes

Based in Rennes, the start-up was created in January 2020 and offers a platform called Zerokit, which aims to simplify the lives of cybersecurity teams and encourage collaboration. The solution, resulting from university research work (in particular that of Christopher Humphries) centralizes security events (log from SOCs) as well as information (compromising indices, Threat Intel, knowledge bases, ticketing). It combines them with data visualization to make it easier to read and above all to encourage the collaboration of security teams.

This initiative had been spotted by the 2020 radar on Wavestone’s cybersecurity start-ups, noting that the young shoot was positioning itself “on threat hunting and help with the investigations of incident response teams, a subject still underrepresented in the ‘ecosystem “. Starting to attack SMEs and large accounts, Malizen is continuing to develop its platform, in particular by integrating AI to recommend actions to be taken.

Malizen aggregates data from multiple sources related to cybersecurity to create reports relevant to security teams. (Photo credit: Malizen)