FUTURE TRENDS - CES 2017 Highlights Future of Technology

CES® 2017 (formerly called Consumer Electronics Show) celebrated 50 years of innovation and connectivity as its annual show closed on Sunday.

With more than 3,800 exhibiting companies and exhibit space of more than 2.6 million net square feet, CES 2017 was a record-breaker.

“This year’s show was all about connectivity – both in the form of the technologies unveiled and in the valuable face-to-face business connections happening throughout the show,” Karen Chupka, senior vice president, CES and corporate business strategy, Consumer Technology Association (CTA), said in a release.

The first CES opened its doors in the summer of 1967 in New York City and Featured 117 exhibitors showcasing technology like transistor radios, stereos and black and white televisions.

CES is no longer home to only consumer electronics.

Exhibitors from nearly every industry come together at CES as technology has become integral to all business.

Now CES plays host to automobile manufacturers, healthcare companies, software and hardware producers and more.

5G, cars, clothes, content, health care, sports, travel, smart cities, augmented reality, virtual reality, robotics, artificial intelligence and more debuted at CES 2017.

More than 175,000 industry professionals, including 55,000 from outside the US, attended the event which was covered by more than 6,500 members of the media.

Alexa, Amazon’s virtual assistant, was found in a lot of devices including Hubble’s Hugo a smart, rotating, connected camera shaped like an oversized robot eyeball.

The camera can track people around the room, recognize faces, respond to questions with Alexa and figure out your mood based on facial expressions.

Super thin televisions were a hit at the show with LG’s W7 just 2.5mm wide and housing all of the components that power it in a Dolby speaker bar.

LEGO Boost is earning praise and will be released in August 2017.

Aimed at ages 7 and up, the Boost kit allows kids to build LEGO robots and learn some coding.

A variety of autonomous or self-driving cars were featured at CES.

BMW’s i Inside Future concept has people talking with its take on what the interior of cars of the future will look like and HoloActive Touch system.

The system uses mirrors to project what appear to be holograms above a display embedded in the center console. A set of cameras track your finger movements as you interact with HoloActive Touch.

When the cameras detect you’ve made contact with an item in the virtual display, an ultrasound source will confirm your selection by providing tactile feedback - yes, that means you will feel it even though you haven't actually touched anything.

It’s worth viewing the BMW Blog video about HoloActive Touch to marvel at where technology is going.

DIGITAL - Transform Your Digital Marketing

To help businesses create compelling digital experiences across multiple devices, Adobe has created a series of four webinars.

The series is all about the customer experience, which is a priority for business with the growth in mobile and digital interactions with consumers.

Half of your potential clients change devices on their journey with your brand. With more users purchasing more smart devices, device and channel hopping is becoming the norm.

Session One - How to Create a Foundation for Omnichannel Experiences - focuses on understanding the factors influencing this digital trend, and how to build a foundation that connects web to mobile, complex transactions, and online and physical experiences.

The first webinar takes place this Tuesday, October 4th.

Other topics in the series include:

• Moving Beyond Web and Mobile Experience Silos, Oct. 26
• Connecting Transactions Across Channels, Nov. 17
• Connecting Online and In-store Experiences, Dec. 14

Register for Session One.

DIGITAL - Internet of Things for Wildlife and Conservation

(internetofelephants.com)

The Internet of Things (IoT) has the potential to revolutionize the way conservationists engage the public with their work, and even how they do their jobs.

Through sophisticated tracking equipment, Project RAPID (Real-Time Anti Poaching Intelligence Device) is able to protect endangered rhinos and other endangered animals.

The project relies on satellite signals, heart rate monitors, and even video streaming.

The monitoring team is notified when an animal’s heart rate spikes, and they can observe the animal through a small camera implanted in the rhino’s horn. From there, help can be dispatched.

Project RAPID highlights many of the benefits and also some of the challenges involved with using IoT technology in conservation. Every rhino being monitored this way needs to be caught, sedated, and the video camera implanted. Replacing the batteries will be a challenge.

Another collar-based wildlife project is Elephants Without Borders, which tracks elephant movement across political boundaries, and highlights the impact of human development on wild animals.

War and conflict can change wild animal’s behaviour as they avoid dangerous areas, and the EWB project has shown that in areas where conflict has ceased, such as Angola, elephants are returning.

This project also tracks other large herbivores, such as giraffes.

Most current GPS tracking devices for wild animals have a 9-12 month battery life, and each battery change requires capturing the animal again.

These project teams are probably looking forward to self-charging batteries, which have been in development for years now, and appear to be close to launching for some devices. Once they become viable they will be an important part of the IoT for animals and people!

Instant Detect is another IoT innovation in animal conservation, using a range of technologies to create early-warning systems for poaching activity in protected areas without having to capture the animals.

Camera traps, as well as seismic and magnetic ground sensors, collect data and are designed to recognize the presence of humans.

This information is sent via satellite to individual users. Rather than relying on information connected to the animal itself, Instant Detect takes advantage of the environmental sensors that are the hallmark of so many IoT applications.

As InfoStream previously reported, the International Space Station is going to be used for wildlife tracking and conservation efforts through the ICARUS Initiative - with the ability to monitor and track hundreds, or possibly thousands of birds, bats and other animals in real time.

The Internet of Elephants is using the IoT in yet another way, gamifying conservation to engage members of the public. The project uses game mechanics to allow users to interact with wild animals through the app.

Internet of Elephants founder Gautam Shah is also looking for future applications of the IoT for conservation.

The Hackathon for Wildlife, which took place in at Solstice Mobile’s Chicago headquarters last November, generated app ideas as varied as incorporating VR into child education, and a “Habitap” app that would allow users to follow animals in real time.

The Internet of Things offers huge potential for conservationists.

Whether they’re bringing wild animals into people’s phones, or deploying rescue teams in response to remote sensors, conservationists are bringing the wild closer in order to keep it safer.

By Tiffany Sostar

Tiffany is a writer, editor, academic, and animal lover who came late to her appreciation of pets. At 18, a rescue pup named Tasha saved her from a depression and she hasn't looked back. She has worked as the canine behaviour program coordinator for the Calgary Humane Society, and was a dog trainer specializing in working with fearful and reactive dogs for many years. She doesn't have any pets right now, but makes up for it by giving her petsitting clients (and any dogs she comes across on her frequent coffee shop adventures) extra snuggles.

DIGITAL - Internet of Things for Pet Professionals

The Internet of Things, with its ability to bring remote monitoring and highly sophisticated sensor technology to industries that have previously relied heavily on in-person observation and data collection, is significantly changing things for pet professionals.

Silent Herdsman collars

This is most obvious in farming, where new technologies like Silent Herdsman provides collar-based monitoring to detect estrus and other health issues in dairy cows. Silent Herdsman was developed in Scotland and is already being used globally.

The Moo Monitor, developed in Ireland, is another successful wearable device for cow health monitoring, and has been welcomed by farmers who are increasingly reliant on technology to increase profitability and animal health.

According to a 2015 Cambridge University case study, the IoT has the potential to help farmers by “capturing and recording multiple attributes for each animal, for example, age, pedigree, growth rates, health, feed conversion rates, meat quality and killing out percentage.”

As demand increases at a rate that current farming practices cannot sustain, finding ways to support farmers and farm productivity will become more critical.

Farmers are not the only pet professionals whose industry is changing to include more IoT devices.

Vets will be able to access information from consumer products like the FitBark and Anicall collar in order to gain a more comprehensive view of an animal’s daily eating and activity habits.

There is also Vetrax, a health monitoring system that allows vets to track the success of medical care programs for issues such as chronic illness, obesity, surgical recovery, and geriatric care.

Although it is directed at consumers, the implications for veterinary practice are significant. Even technology like Bistro, which has the potential to help keep cats healthy by monitoring weight and hydration, as well as by using facial recognition to ensure that even in multi-cat households, cats only have access to the right kibble, could show up in your vet’s list of recommended treatments for health-impacting obesity.

Another industry that is being impacted by the IoT is dog walking, with the introduction of the GoFetch dog-walking app in Canada.

Pet owners are matched with dog walkers and then tracks the walk through GPS so that owners can see how long the dog walked for, when they played with other dogs, and other information. It’s being referred to as Uber for dogs.

As consumers look for more and more on-demand service, the IoT will make it possible for other animal professionals to do their jobs more effectively and with more mobility.

Pet grooming, petsitting, vet care, dog training – as the IoT grows, so will the number of industry professionals who rely on it.

By Tiffany Sostar

Tiffany is a writer, editor, academic, and animal lover who came late to her appreciation of pets. At 18, a rescue pup named Tasha saved her from a depression and she hasn't looked back. She has worked as the canine behaviour program coordinator for the Calgary Humane Society, and was a dog trainer specializing in working with fearful and reactive dogs for many years. She doesn't have any pets right now, but makes up for it by giving her petsitting clients (and any dogs she comes across on her frequent coffee shop adventures) extra snuggles.

DIGITAL - Internet of Things for Pets and Pet Owners

There are few things as heartbreaking as a lost pet, a lonely pet, or a sick pet.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is here, and developers are working on technology that will help owners find their lost pets, interact with or care for their pets while they’re at work, and recognize signs of sickness early.

The most noticeable advance in smart technology for animals is wearables.

(voyce.com)

Wearable technology for pets is allowing owners to monitor their pets’ location, health, and behaviour, and it’s a quickly growing market with many opportunities for developers to try something new.

Earlier iterations of IoT for pets included the ongoing Cat Tracking Project, which uses GPS collars to track the movements of pet cats that are allowed to roam, and the Treat and Train, which allowed dog owners to deliver a treat remotely to help train dogs for better behaviour at the door and in the home.

These early ideas have evolved into the new marketplace of both wearable and remote pet tech.

A new San Francisco company, Whistle, hopes to use the information collected by wearable technology to create a social network for dogs (and their owners).

Anicall, a Japanese company, is also tying their wearables to a social network. Anicall collars use Bluetooth, rather than the standard GPS and Wi-Fi, which gives it better battery life (though limits the range). The system promises to help locate lost pets by notifying any nearby Anicall apps when a pet runs away, and also monitors health by tracking heart rate and respiration.

Other wearables such as Voyce and FitBark also help owners track their pet’s health by monitoring heart rate, respiration, and activity levels in addition to the standard GPS location tracking.

Just like human wearables, some of the devices being designed for animals feature a lot of flash.

Disco Dog is a smartphone-controlled, LED-lighted dog vest. The vest can display patterns, or custom scrolling text, and can be set to show an automatic “lost dog” message if the connection to the smartphone is lost.

Some of that flash will require further research. Anicall has a “mood monitoring” feature that promises to help you read your pet’s mind, and it will be interesting to see if their interpretations of behaviour hold up once the research catches up to the tech.

Wearables aren’t the only IoT technology for pets.

Remote devices include camera and microphone systems that allow two-way communication while the pet is at home and the owner is away.

PetCube, which is just finishing up a second Kickstarter campaign, promises to allow owners to check in on pets via two-way camera and microphone and either feed them a treat remotely or engage them in play with a built-in laser toy, and iCPooch allows video chat and remote treat delivery.

The IoT is growing rapidly, with an estimated 38 billion connected devices by 2020, and the range of devices being developed for animals is expanding in multiple directions at once.

More and more, the “internet of animals” is making its way into pet owner’s homes, veterinary offices, farms, zoos, wildlife conservation efforts, and almost every other element of human interaction with animals.

By Tiffany Sostar

Tiffany is a writer, editor, academic, and animal lover who came late to her appreciation of pets. At 18, a rescue pup named Tasha saved her from a depression and she hasn't looked back. She has worked as the canine behaviour program coordinator for the Calgary Humane Society, and was a dog trainer specializing in working with fearful and reactive dogs for many years. She doesn't have any pets right now, but makes up for it by giving her petsitting clients (and any dogs she comes across on her frequent coffee shop adventures) extra snuggles.

DIGITAL - The Internet of Things: What's Next?

The Internet of Things (IoT) promises smart systems for consumers, businesses, and governments – a growing network of objects connecting and communicating with each other in response to the people using them.

(dreamstime.com)

 

This network of devices already includes wearables such as smartwatches, fitness trackers, and health monitors, nearables such as app-interactive cars, voice-responsive appliances, and home automation systems, and more remote applications such as the many sensors and devices that make up smart cities.

The future of the Internet of Things is, in some ways, easy to predict. It will continue to grow, with an estimated 38 billion connected devices by 2020, giving users more along the existing trajectory of connectivity and data collection.

But knowing that it will continue to grow doesn’t mean knowing how and in what directions it will grow.

Although much of the infrastructure is already in place, accessibility and reliability are ongoing issues and will demand creative answers that may further revolutionize the Internet of Things.

New devices, and new ways to use existing devices, mean that change happens rapidly and sometimes unpredictably.

The coffee pot is an example of the trajectory of the Internet of Things.

In 1991, even before the World Wide Web, the Trojan Room Coffee Pot inspired the first Internet of Things application. Using a video frame-grabber, a camera, and some newly written programs, students at the University of Cambridge were able to check whether there was coffee in the pot before making the trek to the machine.

The Trojan Room Coffee Pot inspired the development of the first web cam, and coffee technology continues to develop.

Coffee pots today are wifi-connectable, programmable, and can be controlled by alarm clocks or phone apps. Coffee-addicted nerds know where their priorities lie.

That’s the fundamental principle behind the Internet of Things – the idea that devices can collect data that allows users to be more efficient, more informed, and better able to access what they need or want.

Whether it’s coffee or consumer data, the Internet of Things will give users more of it, more efficiently, using more devices connected in creative ways.

Data is the lifeblood of the Internet of Things.

Home automation relies on devices collecting and conveying data about use habits, and adjusting lights, temperature, locks, humidity, and a variety of other factors in response.

Smart cities similarly rely on use data to help governments provide services more effectively. Traffic control is one area where the data collected through the Internet of Things impacts civic planning – the road sensors, connected cars, even drivers’ phones providing GPS information all combine to give governments a better idea of how roads are used and how best to manage them.

It doesn’t stop with traffic control, though. The Internet of Things will impact every aspect of modern life, and already does.

Sensors in fridges will be able to tell when the milk has gone off, sensors in airports will be able to determine the presence of dangerous substances, cars (such as the Tesla) will continue to become more and more connected and data-loaded.

Humans are already surrounded by things, and those things are beginning to connect to each other in ways that will make life interesting, exciting, and potentially very risky.

By Tiffany Sostar

Tiffany is a writer, editor, academic, and animal lover who came late to her appreciation of pets. At 18, a rescue pup named Tasha saved her from a depression and she hasn't looked back. She has worked as the canine behaviour program coordinator for the Calgary Humane Society, and was a dog trainer specializing in working with fearful and reactive dogs for many years. She doesn't have any pets right now, but makes up for it by giving her petsitting clients (and any dogs she comes across on her frequent coffee shop adventures) extra snuggles.

DIGITAL - What Exactly is the 'Internet of Things'?

Defining the Internet is a challenge.

Is the internet what it contains? If so, it is a massive accumulation of data encompassing everything from the most esoteric to the most mundane, from digitized historical documents and academic research to community forums and personal content.

Is the internet the infrastructure that supports it? If that’s the case, then it is a global framework of servers, bundles of wires, routers, switches and satellites that enable devices to access the data of the internet.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is an ongoing evolution of the internet that expands both the content and the infrastructure of the internet.

According to a 2016 Special Report on Technology by Accountancy SA, “The next evolution in connectivity is creating a network of interconnected 'objects'.”

This interconnected network of objects is the Internet of Things, and it is already changing the way people interact with their homes, malls, cars, and even cities.

This network depends on “smart” devices – any electronic device that can connect to the internet or to other devices. These can be as simple as a device with an on/off switch that can be triggered by another device, or as complex as a device equipped with sensors and other information-gathering equipment.

People are already using utilities like location-based reminders on phones, which use a combination of GPS in the phone and reminder software to let users know when they’re near the grocery store, or give them a reminder to take dinner out to thaw when they arrive home.

These smart devices communicate with each other and with existing networks, gather information from the surrounding environment (both physical and digital), and work with other objects to create an interactive network of connected devices.

Upcoming projects like Knocki, which promises to turn any wall or table or solid object into a smart device, are expanding the IoT beyond devices that are designed to be “smart.”

Devices like Trackr and Tile similarly turn non-smart devices (such as a wallet, keys, or purse) into smart devices that are part of the Internet of Things.

These small attachables can be activated via smartphone app, and beep to help users find lost keys. They can also give alert users if their phone moves too far away from, say, their purse.

These two devices also use “crowd GPS,” meaning that the tracking device can use the GPS information from other people’s app-enabled smartphones to give users information about where items are even if the user is out of Bluetooth range.

Other evolutions in the Internet of Things include shelves that automatically order when stock is low, home appliances that order their own supplies or adjust their own settings (HP’s “Instant Ink” service is one example).

And, of course, Niantic’s wildly popular Pokémon GO is connecting the ephemeral Internet of data and servers to the physical Internet of Things by putting poké stops and gyms at physical locations, using GPS data to determine players’ movements, and typing specific types of Pokémon to specific locations. 

This internet evolution has wide-ranging implications for individuals, businesses, and professionals. Watch for future articles about what the next stage of this internet evolution might include.

By Tiffany Sostar

Tiffany is a writer, editor, academic, and animal lover who came late to her appreciation of pets. At 18, a rescue pup named Tasha saved her from a depression and she hasn't looked back. She has worked as the canine behaviour program coordinator for the Calgary Humane Society, and was a dog trainer specializing in working with fearful and reactive dogs for many years. She doesn't have any pets right now, but makes up for it by giving her petsitting clients (and any dogs she comes across on her frequent coffee shop adventures) extra snuggles.