Jim Pedersen and his daughter, Ellis, with the sensor she inspired ( Photo Provided )
Ten years ago, Jim Pedersen came within seconds of losing his daughter after she was almost backed over by a car in their driveway.
On the way to the hospital, he pictured the device that could have prevented the accident, and put his brainchild to paper — on a coffee shop napkin.
His design of a sensor to detect objects behind a vehicle when backing up was given a $25,000 research grant from Carleton when it was first proposed in May 2001.
Pedersen began developing the sensor prototype as a part-time electrical engineering student at Carleton in 2003.
He attributes some of his success to his biggest early benefactor Luc Lalande, the director of the foundry program at Carleton, and to the department of electronics, who let him use their facilities while he was developing the sensor model.
In April 2002, Pedersen founded Ellistar — named after his daughter Ellis — a company specializing in sensors. After being named Ottawa Student Entrepreneur of the Year, winning the Eastern Ontario Student Technology Venture Challenge and being named one of Ottawa’s Top 40 Under 40, Pedersen said the publicity towards his product helped him make a name for himself in the technology sector.
Ellistar received patents in both the United States and Canada for pulse radar technology, which, according to Pedersen, is more accurate than Doppler radar — a sensor that uses microwave signals to sense objects in front of it.
Doppler technology is “the McDonald’s of radar,” Pedersen said: it is cheap and readily available, but the quality suffers.
Ellistar is unique in the aspect that it can differentiate between living and non-living obstacles, drastically reducing the number of false alarms.
This year Ellistar finished their design for a commercial product. Currently, the company’s goal is to bring the price of their commercial prototype down to a more affordable level of $400. He said he hopes to have the product for the consumer market in the new year.
Kids and Cars, an American organization that tracks injuries and deaths attributed to vehicles, states 44 per cent of American non-traffic fatalities involving children under 15 and vehicles are the result of the “back-over” accidents that Pedersen’s technology is designed to prevent.