Category Archives: Gadgets

2016 – The Year of AI

Well the long festive season is over and I’m back at my desk after a well deserved break and contemplating this New Year with renewed energy, vigour and excitement. This is going to be a great year for ideas and making new connections and sharing common visions to discover your purpose. Which leads me onto my first topic of the season and one which is going to make a lot of ripples in knowledge based industries.

Microsoft has hailed 2016 the “Year of AI,” according to its annual trend list. Microsoft asked 16 members of its technology and research team to forecast the biggest breakthroughs for 2016, and AI was the area generating the most excitement. Virtual assistants, conversation assistants, AI-enabled user interfaces and customer service AIs were some of the user cases described.

The tech giants see this era as an important step to focus on artificial intelligence, and they’re predicting major breakthroughs in 2016 — we shall see more evidence of this technology’s rapid advancement from deceptive to disruptive growth phases as the year progresses..

In 2015, artificial intelligence went mainstream. Major tech companies including Google, Facebook, Amazon and Twitter made huge in roads into AI, almost all of technology research company predictions included AI, and declared that AI-driven technologies were the next big disruptor to enterprise software. This makes it likely that in 2016, new inventions will increasingly come to market from companies discovering new ways to apply this wonderful technology versus building it. With game changers now having access to cost effective quality AI platforms to create new products, we’ll also likely see an explosion in new startups using AI.

Smart machines will assist employees being more productive, not replace them. Analytics industry leader, Tom Davenport, predicted that “smart leaders will realize that augmentation—combining smart humans with smart machines—is a better strategy than automation.”

Business leaders will be given the choice to use these intelligent vehicles so that AI sourced information has the option to present solutions and explain how they arrive at their answers to common problems and allow better, more efficient decisions be made as part of a companies growth.

AI-powered applications will start to infiltrate companies other than technology firms. Employees, teams and entire departments will champion process re-engineering efforts with these intelligent systems whether they realize it or not. As each individual app eliminates a task, employees will automate many of the mundane parts of their jobs and assemble their own stack of AI-powered apps. Teammates eager to be competitive will follow, along with team managers who are looking to execute on cost-cutting efforts.

With innovation progressing rapidly within large organizations in sectors such as retail, finance and pharmaceutical will focus even more efforts on remaining competitive and discovering the next big thing by forming innovation hubs. Innovation laboratories have existed for some time, but in 2016, we’ll begin to see more resources devoted to innovation and more technologies discovered in these think tanks actually implemented across different company functions and business lines.

2016 will be a big year for AI. But what is even more significant, 2016 will bring about a major shift in the perception of AI. It will cease to be an intimidating, hypothetical set of notions and theories and will be better understood and accepted as more people realize the advantages of AI to supplement what we do to make our lives even more rewarding.

To your Success in 2016

Steve

Weed Free Soil – A Gardeners Paradise

This Weed-Killing Robot Makes Herbicides Obsolete

The Bosch BoniRob is a LIDAR-enabled robot that identifies weeds you don’t want and squashes them into the ground with impressive force. It can run for up to 24 hours at once, killing about two weeds a second.

According to Bosch, the robot is about the size of a small vehicle, and uses the same type of laser-radar vision system that Google’s self-driving cars use to navigate the world. BoniRob is programmed by being shown pictures of leaves from plants farmers want to harvest and differentiates them from weeds. Using machine learning—a form of artificial intelligence that allows it to make decisions based on what it’s been shown—it applies its own information to what it sees when it’s in the field, stamping down only on the weeds it’s been asked to eliminate. BoniRob could potentially rid farms of the need to use herbicides or other weed killers on crops, which have been seen as potentially harmful to humans.

Machine learning systems get better with more information, so with each new weed or plant it sees, BoniRob refines its interpretation of what each of them are, getting more advanced at doing its job each time. In tests on carrot patches, BoniRob stamped out about 90% of weeds, according to “Popular Science”.
BoniRob is currently being tested on real farmland, and IEEE Spectrum says that it can run autonomously for about a whole day before it runs out of fuel. Bosch intends to rent or sell the robot to farmers looking to cut down on labour costs. According to the company, farmers today can harvest about 3-4 times what they could from the same amount of land in the 1950s, and as our population continues to increase, we’ll have to find new ways to keep growing crops efficiently and safely.

This self-driven robot shows how machine learning and sensor technology can create better, more powerful agriculture robots. One day, robots like this one will eradicate the need for herbicides and pesticides.

Imagine a future with an army of self-driving BoniRobs could be all that’s needed to harvest our fields. Once self-driving lorries can bring the food to stores, and self-driving robots can stack it on supermarket shelves, just like in an Amazon warehouse hub; we’ll be able to have a completely self-driven robot farm-to-table meal. Future foody hipsters will be in heaven .

To your healthy future.

Steve

Jeans That Fit – At Last

Retail is going through a radical transformation and online purchasing has seen incredible exponential growth over the last 5 years as our lifestyle becomes more mobile online. Many start ups have started to experiment with how the market will play out next – but the most fundamental area that needs addressing are “returns” and that 15 lost minutes( in the dressing room) when sizing becomes a real problem on hitting your bottom line on customer refunds. A smart US start up “LikeAGlove” hopes to close that gap & to demystify online clothing shopping using a smart fabric. Its sensor-equipped, conductive fiber-woven leggings discreetly measure a woman’s figure and create an accurate digital representation of her figure. Shoppers can then instantly browse clothing of their choice in the exact sizes that will fit them.

This is a very important step up as a game changer ; Because of the large variance in women’s sizes between designers, it’s difficult to find a good selection of right-sized clothing online. LikeAGlove’s sensor-packed leggings make measurement accurate, private and, fundamentally easier. I see this company moving forward and partnering with other online retail disrupters out there ( maybe even me) with new ideas that get away from traditional bricks ‘n’ mortar shopping.

The company is hopeful that they’ll be able to expand the technology to include other types of clothing, like tops, dresses, and more.

If you’re in search of some seriously high-tech leggings that will simplify your search for your perfectly fitting pair of jeans, search no longer. Just grab a pair of LikeAGlove leggings.

I’ll be watching this company closer as I have a few ideas of my own that compliment the whole social shopping experience.

Hope the size works for you.

To your success

Steve

Does your Cabbie speak English?

There’s been a lot of news in the UK on the subject of cabs vs Black Taxis and the battle of app driven booking systems that under cut the cost of travel in the London marketplace. I’m all for disruption if it saves money doing everyday tasks. But Uber has created quite a stir in Blighty across the pond. And the traditional Black Cab owners are up in arms about this online platform that threatens to erode their livelyhoods.

I’m all for a level playing field so our UK Taxis need to compete or dominate on a similar scale and develop a robust booking system that attracts the masses so they can hold onto marketshare.

In the meantime other players like Hailo will come onto the scene to provide additional competition.

But the latest tech breakthrough is even more extraodinary…

Uber has teamed up with Duolingo to enable its drivers in Colombia to self-certify their proficiency in the English language — and for riders to specifically request an English-speaking driver. The Duolingo proficiency test takes $20 and about 20 minutes for drivers to complete remotely; organizations like the Harvard Extension School, the Max-Planck Institute, Carnegie Mellon, LinkedIn and Upwork all accept it. To date, Uber reports that 1,000 of its drivers have been certified.

This is so important as only last year, Uber launched a similar “Uber English” service in Shanghai, but interviewed and selected English-speaking drivers in person, one by one. By dematerializing this vetting process and using Duolingo, a crowdsourced language service with 100 million users, Uber can scale its English-certified drivers quickly and easily. No doubt a major opportunity of employment for new arrivals of foreign nationals embarking on a new life in Europe and other countries if Uber rolls-out this additional feature.

What disruptive idea interests you?

To the next

Steve

Download apps at the speed of light!

Fujitsu has developed the world’s first 300 GHz band compact receiver with an internal antenna. It’s capable of high-speed wireless communications at a rate of several tens of gigabits per second — over 100 times faster than current mobile technology. Radio signals with a frequency greater than 100GHz, called the terahertz band, allow for increases in usable frequency range and communication speed of more than 100 times compared with the 0.8-2.0 GHz range used by current mobile devices. Now, Fujitsu has developed technology that combines a receiver-amplifier chip and terahertz-band antenna with a low-loss connection. This has made it possible to reduce the receiver’s size to one tenth that of previous receivers, making use in mobile devices possible.

One of the main hurdles was that existing high-sensitivity terahertz-band receivers consist of a receiver-amplifier module and separate antenna, with a specialized component called a waveguide to connect them, which makes for large receivers. The most effective way to miniaturize them is to build the antenna directly into the receiver-amplifier module and eliminate the waveguide. Modules with built-in antennas are built by connecting the antenna and the receiver-amplifier chip through an internal printed-circuit substrate, making a waveguide unnecessary. The problem then is that the most common materials for printed-circuit substrates for high-frequency waves are ceramic, quartz, or Teflon, but when used in the terahertz band, there is significant signal attenuation and loss of receiving sensitivity.

Why is this important: Imagine visiting a download kiosk at an event hall, station, bus terminus, shopping mall or theme park and being able to instantly download 4K or HD video straight to your smartphone. Fujitsu envisions “split-second data transfers between mobile devices and split-second backup between mobile devices and servers,” according to Next Big Future.

Fujitsu and Fujitsu Laboratories will begin field trials of multi-gigabit-per-second, high-speed data transfer using this newly developed compact receiver, aiming to commercialize this technology around 2020.

This will dispel the common frustrations felt from ‘on the hoof’ downloads from highly expectant video hungry consumers.

These are the topics that interest me; Sign up and join in with what could be!

To the next

Steve

Kids Breakfast time …….. becomes a Virtual Experience!

Remember those days as a child when you tore open a new cereal packet to collect your next favourite plastic spaceman freebee.
Well science has just taken another leap in to the future of cereal branding .

Kellogg’s just launched a promotion in New Zealand in which customers can create their own Virtual Reality headsets out of Nutri-Grain boxes. The makeshift device is akin to Google Cardboard in that it uses your smartphone as the display. Scanning the box’s QR code will take you to the NG Bolt app, which contains three VR videos to watch.

It’s very important as this represents Demonetization in action as a disrupter to the value of currency as a unit — this VR headset is the price of a box of cereal. It’s also a creative marketing move for Kellogg’s to appeal to younger consumers and their parents. Leading the mental pathway of new technology and the rewards of informative consumer stimuli.

If you want to discuss this and other topics please drop me a line through the opt in box.

To your success

Steve

Smartphones become Solar Panels

Transparent Batteries That Charge in the Sun Could Replace Smartphone Screens –

A group of smart Japanese techies have managed to improve the design of a transparent lithium-ion battery so that it’s now able to recharge itself when exposed to sunlight without the need for a separate solar cell.

The transparent battery was first developed by the researchers, led by Kogakuin University president and professor Mitsunobu Sato, back in 2013. The electrolyte used for the battery’s positive electrode is made mostly from lithium iron phosphate, while the electrolytes used for the negative electrode include lithium titanate, and lithium hexafluorophosphate a stronger chemical bond at subatomic level.

Those are all common ingredients used in Li-ion rechargeable batteries, but the thickness of these electrodes are just 80 to 90 nanometers, which allows a lot of light to pass through and makes these batteries almost completely transparent. Imagine that! Where else could this technological discovery be applied.

But by changing the chemical makeup of the negative electrode, the Japanese researchers have found a way to make these transparent batteries now recharge themselves in the presence of sunlight, or other bright sources of illumination, say a lamp or street light.

This is important because future iterations of this battery could become smart mirrors for buildings and vehicles that can auto-dim when it’s bright outside during the heat of the day, but also store power as they’re recharged by the sun. And as an extension of that idea, one day your smartphone’s display might even serve as an additional battery, using sunlight to charge the device whenever you’re outside.

Harvesting energy is becoming more and more portable. Have any ideas to join in the discussion?

Whats the next disruptive vision that will enter the solar market place?

To the next

Steve

Marty Mcfly would be proud ——— HoverBoard comes to life

We’ve all seen the trilogy of Back to The Future …we’ll those crafty scientists at Lexus tech have finally come up with a design that may just bring a dream to reality. The race has been on to develop a hoverboard by many companies over the years with a few falling short of production and application. But now in 2015 seems the year that hurdles have been overcome.

This Hoverboard is called Slide by Lexus and has been teased in a viral video released on you tube to millions of fans. Apparently more videos will be released during the summer.

The Hoverboard “uses magnetic levitation to achieve amazing frictionless movement.” with the added benefit of “liquid nitrogen cooled superconductors and permanent magnets combine to allow Lexus to create the impossible.”

The ‘Hoverboard’ by Lexus has of course got tech geeks excited all over and if you’re a ‘Back to The Future’ fan, you are likely one of those who got excited by the teaser video. I know my 7 year old son was who is a keen skateboarder.

Because Lexus has opted for a superconductor, this creates a different kind of magnetic field, one that does not die away …….. more on the physics of this in a latter post.

Magnets aside, the Lexus video does not really tell us much about if and when the ‘Slide’ hoverboard will really hit the market. Lexus has clarified that it isn’t looking to build a widely available hoverboard just yet.

Lexus spokesperson Maurice Dumand said “Back to the Future messed my whole generation up. The world so desperately wants someone to mass produce a hoverboard. Let’s be frank, it’s not novel. There are other hoverboards. To a degree, we weren’t expecting [the reaction].”

In short, BTTF fans should calm down. While the Lexus hoverboard is ‘real’, it’s not hitting the stores anytime soon. Like with many exponential ideas they have a purpose to fulfil design improvements in current tech and this may only be an experimental process that Lexus is going through to bolster their market position.

On the other hand there is the Hendo Hoverboard>>>…

http://hendohover.com

The technology that allows this to happen is called Magnetic Field Architecture( MFA). This involves electromagnets attached to the base of the board that repel any non-ferrous (i.e. does not contain a significant amount of iron) conductive surface.

Greg and Jill Henderson, who are behind the Hendo Hover project, believe that the hoverboard is just the first of many innovations this technology allows. “It enables a new generation of lift and motion technology that will change the way we view transportation,” the Hendersons explained. “Additional applications for MFA technology are virtually limitless – from business, to industry, to healthcare, and beyond.”

The company is hopeful that a model will be on sale in 2015 – coincidentally, the year in which Marty McFly rode around on his own hoverboard.

Christmas comes early for teenagers the world over 🙂 The application of this tech is definately one to watch and is a cue for a future Q & A on those of you wanting to join in the discussion.

Comments welcome in the chat box below.

Enjoy

Steve