Dublin's tech Web Summit attracts record crowds

A record 20,000 visitors converged on Dublin for this year’s Web Summit, one of Europe’s largest technology conferences.

Two thousand start-ups from around the globe travelled to the Irish capital to share project ideas and seek out potential buyers and investors.

From robotics to virtual gaming, wearables and smart cars – the stands were packed with young entrepreneurs brimming with ideas.

Euronews went along to the three-day fair to take a closer look.

One of the projects on show was Wevolver, a collaboration platform for open source hardware projects.

The stand featured a robot, whose makers used their knowledge to build the first part but needed a designer, a software developer and an engineer to finalise their work.

According to its developers, such an open source platform fuels innovation by empowering developers and making technology more accessible.

Another novelty was Uberchord, a guitar teaching app by a German start-up. Chord recognition software allows the app to listen to the player through the microphone on the user’s smartphone. The screen then shows the player if he has made any mistakes and how to correct them.

“When you practice chords, it shows you the chords that you have to play and if you play correctly, it just gives you the next one, that’s cool. But if you have forgotten how this chord goes, then it shows you where to put your fingers. And if you don’t do that because you make a mistake, like here (points at smartphone screen), it shows you exactly where your fingers actually were, so that you can correct your mistakes,” explained Eckart Burgwedel, co-founder of Uberchord.

Italian start-up ‘Trail me up’ creates virtual tours of footpaths by using a device carried on the shoulders, which includes six cameras, a GPS and a compass.

Users can visit a place virtually by following the trail seen from the eyes of someone who is actually walking it. They can move forward, backward and turn in every direction.

With Swiss start-up EveryCook, developers say you can prepare pretty much any kind of dish you want without cooking. Just place your raw ingredients in the bowl, go off and do something else, and when you come back, your food will be ready. You can control EveryCook with any of the internet-enabled devices you already own: your smartphone, your tablet or your PC.

Asked how to cook a good risotto, Alexis Wiasmitinow, chief executive and founder of Everycook, showed us.

“To make a risotto, for example, you start by peeling the onion – that’s the only thing you have to do by yourself. Then you can put it in here, push it in, and this blade here will cut it. And this spatula will stir it inside the pot, at the exact right temperature for the exact right time. Once everything is inside, you set the temperature, you can enjoy TV and we will call you when the food is ready,” he said.

Carmaker Audi produced an immersive 3D viewing experience of its next model through Oculus Rift, the latest in virtual reality technology.

Thanks to a 360 degree camera, users could experience what it would feel like to be taken for a drive round the world-famous Silverstone circuit by racing legend Allan McNish.

And French start-up VideoStitch was also at the Web Summit in Dublin, with its new software that offers users a stunning 360 degree experience, by using multiple cameras with overlapping fields of view to create a single high resolution panoramic video.

All you need is the right gear to visualise it and the immersive experience is yours, albeit at a cost.