A local startup company with ties to Waterloo Engineering went public this week with a new home security system that uses wireless signals, not traditional cameras and motion detectors.
Cognitive Systems Corp., which was founded in 2014 and has offices at the headquarters of Quantum Valley Investments in Waterloo, unveiled the system, called Aura, at the huge Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Hind, the CEO of Cognitive, is a former BlackBerry executive who previously worked as an assistant mathematics professor and earned a master’s degree in electrical engineering at Waterloo.
Manku, a director at the company, is a serial entrepreneur who received a doctorate in electrical engineering from the University and was later a professor of electrical and computer engineering.
Aura, whose third founder is Oleksiy Kravets, uses patented technology to monitor wireless signals within a home.
Two small white boxes, a hub and a sensor, establish what the wireless signals in the home normally look like and then detect motion that is out of the ordinary based on disruptions.
'We knew we had something special'
“When we realized that our technology could understand motion by seeing how the patterns in wireless signals change in a home, we knew that we had something special,” Manku said in a news release at the annual gathering to showcase new consumer technology.
Members of the household are alerted to suspicious movements via their smartphones.
Billed as simpler and more reliable than traditional security systems, Aura is available for pre-order on a dedicated website, www.aurahome.com, for a limited-time price of $399. The company expects to begin shipping products by the end of February.