Butlr, founded by former Media Lab researchers, uses insights from thermal sensors to make buildings safe and efficient.

Enter Butlr: a San Francisco-based startup that makes people-detecting sensors to anonymously measure space and movement inside buildings. Today, the company announced it raised $38 million in a Series B round to expand its presence in senior living communities across the United States, with the hopes of countering the massive labor shortages by using its sensors to track the health and well-being of people living in those communities.

Cofounded by Under 30 alums Honghao Deng and Jiani Zeng in 2019, Butlr’s latest round was led by VC firm Foundry, bringing its total funding to $68 million. The raise also saw participation from Pacific Alliance Ventures, Draper Nexus and Ray Stata. Neither party would disclose Butlr’s new valuation.

Had a fun chat with Nour Diab Yunes discussing my research, Illusory Material. Using computational modeling and simulation, I strive to strike a fine balance between aesthetics and functionality, all grounded in scientific principles. Instead of diving headfirst into digital design and mixedreality, I'm intrigued by how digital tools and information reshape our tangible experiences.

We delved into design& creativity in STEM education and the tech industry. To me, design is like cooking: knowledge and creativity are your raw ingredients; design thinking is your recipe; and STEM and computer science are the tools to help designers craft their unique gear. In the era of generativeai, "creativity" is evolving and, in some aspects, receding. What truly sets designers apart is their ability to fashion their own creative tools.

Technology serves as the cornerstone of the future. By embracing computational design/thinking, designers can reinvent their toolkit and whip up even more delectable creations.

Deng and cofounder Jiani Zeng launched Butlr while they were both students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After spinning their ideas into a startup in 2019, early experiments with their sensing technology envisioned smart homes that could turn on lights as a dog walked up the stairs or dim a room when an inhabitant lay down for a nap.

The use case evolved to something a bit simpler: a low-resolution sensor system that could give the operators of offices and other facilities an accurate but noninvasive idea of how spaces are being utilized.

The pandemic broadened the technology’s applicability, especially in commercial real estate. Companies that suddenly found themselves with millions of square feet of empty offices began to use Butlr’s sensors to better understand everything from when they could turn off lights and air-conditioning on empty floors to when expensive office space could be subleased or eliminated.

And though Butlr is hardly the only company exploring the potential of occupancy tracking—other players include Cisco and Sightcorp—its low-resolution thermal sensing approach gives it some advantages over other more complicated and intrusive technologies.

The implications for tenants and landlords alike are significant. The company recently raised $20 million in a series A funding round, including from the heating and cooling giant Carrier. Zeng says the commercial real estate sector is especially interested in gathering insights about how space is being used. “They can make the decision, for example, next year do I want to expand my office space, do I need to renew office leases or build more offices,” she says.

But the technology isn’t just for big real estate companies trying to optimize their spending. Butlr’s sensors are increasingly being used by the operators of elder care and assisted living facilities. Butlr’s sensors and technology can alert caregivers when a person has stopped moving in an unexpected place, indicating they may have fallen.

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The SSYS 2Y22 REFLECTION Collection was created using Stratasys J850TM TechStyleTM 3D printer, powered by 3DFashionTM technology.This is a high-end series of 3D printed garments, bespoke accessories and luxury goods that reflect on the influences of the recent pandemic. This unique line was created in close collaboration with 7 design groups and focuses on 3 main pillars:

Personal SPACE

The pandemic has exposed us to the necessity of intertwining our intimate personal and public space. This is being expressed through fashion and identity design that reflects intimacy, emotion, vulnerability, comfortable clothing, home wear and softness.

Social INCLUSION

The pandemic has forced us to face critical social injustices such as equality, gender and ethnicity.This collection is a celebration of our shared humanity and highlights the growing sensitivity towards community building, social inclusion and nationality.

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Mindful MANUFACTURING

Our goal is to create designs that will last for years, across all seasons. This reduces waste and since the manufacturing process is more intentional, each piece has its own unique story.This collection focuses on slow fashion, mindful manufacturing, longevity and respect for the planet and its ecology.

“2019 年，哈佛大学毕业生邓鸿浩、麻省理工学院毕业生曾佳旎两位“90 后”在美国旧金山创立了自己的科技公司 Butlr Technologies（以下简称 Butlr）。

该公司研发了一款无需布线、精准监测人流及用户行为的传感器系统，其技术通过算法解析低像素热感数据，进一步生成并分析人在建筑空间中的行为动态，为智慧城市、智慧建筑、智慧家庭的普及奠定了基础。”

"Honghao Deng, a computational designer who is the company's CEO, and cofounder Jiani Zeng created a wireless sensor that uses body heat to infer anonymous activity on how space is being used. They launched the company as a spinout of MIT Media Lab in 2019. Butlr's patented technology is now being deployed for fall detection in senior living facilities and to help people age in place."

"Everything from houses to pharmaceuticals can now be 3-D-printed, but the inventors behind Illusory Material are aiming even higher—their goal is “to create things that were previously impossible to bring into the physical world,” says co-founder Honghao Deng, who helped develop the technology last year alongside co-founder Jiani Zeng. Illusory’s device prints colors and patterns beneath a layer of tiny digital lenses that cause a material’s appearance to change based on the viewing angle—think hard materials that appear soft, or “blank” packaging that only displays information about the contents when picked up. The tech, Deng says, could be used to create innovative apparel, medical braces and more. —Simmone Shah"

"The work of Jiani Zeng & Honghao Deng, working in San Francisco, is guaranteed to make you gasp. Does 3D printing really look like this?"

China Academic Journal (RCCSE authoritative core journal, ISSN1003-0069), 2021 January Issue.

"Our Next Generation 2021 showcase shines a light on 21 outstanding graduates from around the globe, Wallpaper’s pick of the best new talent in seven creative fields. Here, we profile MIT and Harvard University graduates Jiani Zeng and Honghao Deng.

Designers Jiani Zeng and Honghao Deng of MIT and Harvard University have been exploring the potential for 3D-printing to create products with entirely unique optical and physical properties, and experiences that have previously seemed impossible.

Their lenticular 3D-printing framework, ‘Illusory Material’, enables users to create dynamic colour and texture in real-life objects. Rather than simply replicating materials that already exist, they have looked beyond traditional methods of design, bringing the freedom of creating material from the digital world into reality..."

"ILLUSORY MATERIAL BRIDGES THE DIGITAL AND ANALOGUE WORLD OF DESIGN. TEAM MEMBER JIANI ZENG EXPLAINS EXACTLY WHAT A 3D LENTICULAR PRINTING FRAMEWORK IS, AND WHY SUCH A TECHNIQUE IS AN OPEN DOOR FOR DESIGNERS."

"MIT researchers Jiani Zeng and Honghao Deng have developed a "truly minimalist", 3D-printed flacon, which is entirely transparent at first glance and only reveals its branding when it is tilted at just the right angle.

If the Nseen bottle was standing in front of a sign, onlookers would be able to see straight through it to read the words behind, without being able to see the writing on the bottle itself..."

"As 3D printers become more sophisticated, creatives are quick to exploit their potential. Take, for example, Massachusetts-based industrial designer Jiani Zeng and architect and computational designer Honghao Deng.

They recently launched the 3D-printing method Illusory Material — a collection of printed polymer objects using Voxel printing, a facility in some of the new-generation machines designed to produce realistic anatomical models for surgeons to practice on.

Voxel printing allows pigment to be applied not just to the surface of an object but to all layers. Building up base strata of varying colours and opacities, then overprinting a transparent wrapper of varying thickness, Zeng and Deng obtain a lenticular effect, where the see-through upper layers act as lenses, changing the perception of the pattern and colour underneath.

At its simplest, the effect is like an old-fashioned ridged “magic” postcard in which a picture seems to move when tilted.

The pair see subtle possibilities for a technology described by Zeng as bringing digital world effects into the physical one. A prototype lamp known as Unream has multiple layers of blue and red, overlaid with vertical transparent ridges, varying in width and depth up and down its 30cm height.

Illuminated from inside, the colours shimmer and change as the viewer moves round the lamp. Such interactive homeware is only the start, says Deng: “You can make millions of variations. This is just an example to inspire designers to do more.

”3D-printed objects may, so far, have been slow to reach our homes. But when they do, they are very likely to add an intriguing dimension to them."

"Illusory Material" was selected as the top winner of “Experimental” category in "Innovation by Design" awards.

"A new project by two MIT designers makes it easy to 3D-print object with shapes and optical qualities that can’t be obtained with other manufacturing processes or workflows."