How Cube works, the portable surveyor from the startup The Meter

“Our device does it in a quarter of an hour the work that two people do in 3-4 hours”. She doesn’t take it away from them, she helps them do it faster. That work, in the words of Nicolò Spallarossa, CEO and founder of The Meter, is to measure and map an environment, a space, a place. An apartment of 100 square meters, in the reference example.

The Meter is a startup born in Genoa in 2019, has its offices in the historic centre, in two apartments of 250 and 360 square meters overlooking the historic church of San Matteo: everything is done here, from marketing to design, from communication to production. It is one of 51 Italian startups brought to CES in Las Vegas this year by ICE (here our selection), the agency for the internationalization of Italian companies. And the story of The Meter somehow began right at CES.

From the center of Genoa to the Las Vegas Strip

The startup was born within the Officine ADR incubator: “In 2019 we started making first tests in the world of surveys, which were (and still are, ed) all done by hand, on paper, with very slow times – Spallarossa told us – We filed the patents for Italy, the EU and the USA. Then in 2020 we brought the first prototype to CES and the year after the first product”. Which is called Cube and is still on sale on the company website.

simplifying, the Cube is a distance meter, a 2D scanner that carries out environmental surveys, a small box that uses a lidar and a laser to measure the dimensions of a space: “It is positioned in the center of a room and proceeds with the scan, mapping 1600 points per revolution – he told us Alessandro Guasti, the designer, when we met him in Las Vegas – And he is able to see up to 60 meters away”. Once the measurements are finished, the device generates a file that can be used for the CAD: “This is one of the main advantages compared to how things were done before – Spallarossa explained to us again – In our example, the two people who measure the apartment must then enter all the data on the computer and create the file. Our device takes the measurements and also creates the file to work from. It does everything together, and in much less time”.

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The next steps: Cube 2 and Cube 3D

The Meter’s ideal customers are architects and surveyors, but also students of architecture, experts, those who work at certifications cadastral surveyors, even those who install kitchens: the Cube analyzes the space at 360 degrees and produces a detailed plan directly on the screen of the smartphone or tablet, thanks to the app for Android and iOS. From the app you can also take photos of the rooms, so as to have the cartography with measurements and images. The Cube starts at a price of 1499 euros, and will soon be joined by a more performing version: “Cube 2 is available for pre-order now and will be on sale in autumn 2023 – Spallarossa anticipated us – It is able to detect twice as many points and to do it in a third of the time and will have an autonomy of about 30 days, much wider than the previous one”. How much will it cost? “Around 2,000 euros, but we will then make a more accessible version, around 1,000 euros”.

The Meter employs nearly 50 people and with Cube 2 it will also begin to move in the field of AI and algorithms: “We will develop a cloud infrastructure and we will use machine learning for learning – the CEO told us – The device will learn what the windowsthe doors and other components of furnitureso as to become even faster in the measurements”.

That’s not all, because by the end of the year Cube 3D should also hit the market: it will cost around 5 thousand euros and, as the name implies, it will be able to make three-dimensional surveys, then generating BIM files, which are the standard in the world of construction and design.

@capoema