Meet Icybit, a Kaunas-based boutique software development firm that spun off their internal project into a system that detects crowds of people in cities in real-time with Icybit’s proprietary Geo-Spatial Data Clustering Engine. This system/startup is called Wisebud and its CEO Giedrius Sirevičius explains what they are up to.

So what is Icybit and your Wisebud system? What problems does it solve?

Giedrius: Icybit is an advanced software development company with an emphasis on distributed computing. We help build scalable solutions for enterprises and startups facing difficult technological challenges worldwide.

One of our internal projects – the Wisebud system – is used to detect people crowds within cities in real-time. Imagine a dynamic map that would display how crowds of people gather around most visited places in the city at any given moment of time. The system is based on our proprietary Geo-Spatial Data Clustering Engine that can process huge streams of geolocation data and identify clusters as they form. The data streams can come from various different sources, including mobile network operators, IoT devices or mobile application providers, among others. The purpose of this system is to provide insight into how crowds behave, what people like doing most, where did they come from and where are they going, and respond to this by taking real-time actions. As our system can be deployed at global scale, we come closer to one of our main goals – to approximate the behavior of the entire world population.

How this idea was born? What were the reasons behind spinning off the Wisebud system into a startup?

Giedrius: The idea was born while staying at home one evening and wondering about what is the most trending event in the city right now that one could visit. The vision expanded rapidly into understanding where are the crowds of people and what are they doing at any given time. Pondering was started on how this could lead to new and improved personalized services for people, city planning and infrastructure improvements, mass disaster prevention and overall smart city development. The key point to understand is that our system would enable people to cooperate with businesses and governments in building modern cities that would benefit everyone. One might imagine all the technical, societal and legal factors at play to build a system of such capability, therefore, it was only logical to start the company and start building out the prototype, while searching for partners and all the help we could find along the way.  

Could you explain your technology in more detail and give us a few examples of its possible practical implementations?

Giedrius: The Wisebud system is implemented as a platform of distributed microservices and will be exposed as SaaS. By using the system our clients can select areas of interest within cities and specify how the system should respond to events that happen in that region. As the flow of people changes, new gatherings are formed from people with different demographic information, or traffic congestions emerge, the system reacts to these events in real-time by triggering any actions set by the client. These actions may range from sending out SMS messages to subscribers, calling API endpoints of external services to synchronizing digital billboards at their shops as the flow of people changes outside. For example, a restaurant may want to adjust their greatest offerings as the flow of people outside the door increases. Furthermore, it is our intention to allow our clients to describe these triggers and actions themselves, thus allowing each client to benefit from using our system in the most optimal way. It is also possible that clients will find various use cases for the Wisebud system that we have not even considered ourselves – and we provide the tool, powerful enough to handle such use cases. By using the Wisebud system in such a way, clients may build new personalized services for their users via interest groups or contextual and demographic information, create entirely new and unseen services, optimize their expenses, marketing costs and infrastructure, but most importantly – respond to changes in a business environment as they occur. Moreover, people themselves will receive various new services and enhancements to their daily lives, due to a constantly technologically improving environment.

What are your target markets and customers?

Giedrius: The Wisebud system is targeted towards the Business Intelligence & Analytics market with potential for expansion to related markets as the project progresses. Therefore, the SaaS may be used by businesses and enterprises interested in being the first ones to know about events happening at their areas of interest and responding to them as they occur. However, an interesting fact is that the system may also be used by governments, non-profits or even researchers. This could help improve infrastructure within cities, reduce traffic congestions, etc. From the perspective of people, it is our main goal to provide everyone with an adaptive, smart city environment that changes itself with the flow of people.

What is the team behind Wisebud?

Giedrius: The team behind the Wisebud project comprises two heavily-technical software engineers who are also the Co-Founders. Simonas Stepanovas is the brain behind the advanced clustering algorithms and data-sturctures used in our core engine, while I guard the vision and build out the scalable topology of the system. However, as it goes with any startup, we perform all the tasks of running the company as well. The fact that we have known each other for quite a long time and supplement one another with various qualities and knowledge of different fields helps us progress more rapidly.

So what’s next then? When will you launch?

Giedrius: We are currently building out the core of the entire system – the Geo-Spatial Data Clustering Engine. Afterwards the SaaS web application part follows. Due to the fact that we are constantly working with big data and solving difficult technological problems, we also expect to expand our core team with gifted software engineers that would help us evolve the system more quickly and deliver the first versions of the platform to our clients next year. Additionally, we are building out the system architecture in such a way that it would scale globally and would be able to process data streams generated by the entire human population. For this purpose, we expect to partner with mobile network operators and social networking application providers to solve the questions of data acquisition and usability. By creating the Wisebud system we expect to bring us closer to what we envision as a smart city – one that seamlessly adapts to the needs of its inhabitants. A traffic light that dynamically optimizes traffic flows and prevents congestion, shops providing us with only the offers that best suit our needs by age, mood or likings, city infrastructure adapting to people as they flow through it – this is how we see the future.

Thanks for your time, Giedrius! We also thank KTU Startup Space where Icybit/Wisebud are located for their help whilst preparing this piece.