Gado Robot Nominated for Best Tech Product of the Year in Baltimore Innovation Week Awards

Online, August 16, 2013 (Newswire.com) - Project Gado, an initiative that uses technology to create sustainable models for large-scale archival digitization and advance the use of digitized materials, announced today that Baltimore Innovation Week (BIW) has nominated the Gado robot for its 2013 Best Tech Product of the Year award.

"BIW Awards is the Baltimore region's only people's choice award for technology, entrepreneurship and new thinking and it is a tremendous honor to be nominated for Best Tech Product of the Year," said Project Manager Thomas Smith. "I invented the Gado robot in 2010 when I observed a lack of photos of the East Baltimore community, found that the Afro American Newspapers had a tremendous collection of historic photographs hidden away in its archive, and realized the need for a new technology that organizations like the Afro could use to make their photo collections available to the community." Out of this problem, the idea for the Gado robot was born.

Under Smith's leadership, Project Gado developed the Gado 2, an inexpensive, open source archival scanning robot which small archives can use to digitize their photographic collections. The Arduino and Python based robot uses a suction lifter to lift sensitive archival photographs, place them on a flatbed scanner, autonomously digitize them, and gently place them down. The Gado 2 also uses a camera to capture images of the back of each photograph, and uses other methods to automatically generate metadata. The Gado 2 can be built from parts which cost $500 or less.

Baltimore Innovation Week recognizes people and organizations that are advancing the city in new and inspiring ways, by growing businesses, increasing regional economic activity, publishing high-quality works of media, creating new gateways to the technology community and much, much more. The Best Tech Product of the Year award recognizes the software or hardware developed that best shows new thinking.

Winners will be determined by online voting counts. Voting closes on Friday, September 13th and awards will be announced at the Baltimore Innovation Week closing party on Fri. Sept. 27. To vote for Project Gado, please visit http://baltimoreinnovationweek.com/awards/ and select "Gado robot, the image-digitizing device from Project Gado" under #16 - Best Tech Product of the Year.

About Project Gado
Project Gado uses technology to create sustainable models for large-scale archival digitization and advance the use of digitized materials. Project Gado is currently partnered with the archives at the Afro American Newspapers in Baltimore. Project Gado is sponsored by the Abell Foundation, the Johns Hopkins University Sheridan Libraries, and the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA). For additional information, please visit the project's web site: http://projectgado.org/.

About Baltimore Innovation Week
Baltimore Innovation Week is a week-long celebration of technology and innovation in Baltimore. The annual week of events is intended to grow the impact of this innovative region through programming focused on technology, collaboration and improving Baltimore. BIW is organized by Technical.ly Baltimore, a news site that covers the people who use technology to make Baltimore a better place to live, and takes place September 20-29, 2013. For more information, please visit Baltimore Innovation Week's web site: http://baltimoreinnovationweek.com/