India pushes smart city collaboration among BRICs countries

A senior Indian official is pushing for greater smart city collaboration among the group of countries knows as BRICS.

As reported in the Indian Express, Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje recently spoke as the BRICS Smart Cities Conference in Jaipur, India. The acronym BRICS stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

Raje’s presentation emphasized the potential opportunities emerging for fellow BRICS nations to cooperate in developing smart cities and related infrastructure. As well, she encouraged further information sharing between these nations to enhance and accelerate the smart city learning process.

“Member countries of BRICS can learn many things from each other,” said Raje. “The collaborations within BRICS shall strengthen ties and improve our appreciation of each other’s cultures and peoples.”

She drew attention to innovative urban environmental management practices currently being developed in such cities as Beijing, Shanghai, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Cape Town, Johannesburg and Saint Petersburg.

Innovative projects in these cities can be explored for potential application in India, with scholars and urban planners developing deeper exchanges of knowledge with fellow nations. She said that such knowledge exchanges will improve smart cities by enhancing safety and resilience.

“Growth of population in urban settlements is posing many challenges. It has placed additional loads on the infrastructure in every city,” said Raje. “Our thinking is that cities of tomorrow require technology-driven inputs to make life of our citizens easier and safer.”

BRICS may have more pressing citizen needs than others

In her presentation, the minister discussed the support of the Indian government for smart city transformations of Jaipur, Ajmer, Kota and Udaipur.

She added that a critical element in the process of developing smart cities is the tandem development of smart citizens. This echoes a growing sentiment among smart city pundits that governments are forgetting about citizens in the rush to implement whizzy new smart city technology.

“To make our citizens smart and skilled, our government has taken skill development as a top most priority,” she said.

“We have engaged with numerous partners in skilling up our youth in a wide range of trades,” continued Raje. “ITIs have been taken up by industrial houses to impart skills and all our industry partners are collaborators in creating job and imparting world class training to our youth.

IoT and analytics powering record tech M&A feeding frenzy

The Internet of Things (IoT) and data analytics are driving mergers and acquisition activity to new heights, as both tech and non-tech firms look to evolve their business models.

A Forbes article delved into the recent Ernst & Young (EY) report that examined M&A activity in the second quarter.

The EY report found that deal activity between April and June broke the all-time record for technology M&A valued at or above $1 billion. Aggregate value for Q2 reached just over $127 billion, nearly doubling the value from the previous quarter.

“The combination of digital disruption and slow organic growth drove Q2 2016 to near unprecedented deal-making levels for the technology sector overall,” according to the report’s authors. It added that many of the quarter’s 28 deals were driven by the emergence of IoT and data analytics, and the ensuing rush to capitalize on these burgeoning technologies.

With IoT-related M&A activity increasing by 28% compared to the same time period last year, the technology is proving to have strong momentum.

“…seven of the quarter’s eight connected car deals involved IoT technology (including mapping and tracking technologies). Six deals also targeted IoT security technology,” said the report.

The study included a mention of Brocade’s $1.5 billion acquisition of enterprise WiFi provider Ruckus Wireless, which is connected to the IoT space.

Big data analytics deals booming

Meanwhile, deal volume related to big data analytics increased 13% for the quarter compared to Q2 last year. EY attributed this growth to companies from many sectors recognizing the power of data to evolve and modernize their firms.

“Tech and non-tech companies alike pursued transformational deals, often to build broader end-to-end solutions in response to customer demand,” it said.

And EY sees the technology sector M&A frenzy continuing on into the future, as companies from all sectors seek out acquisitions to compete in a fast-evolving global marketplace.

“Because the technology industry is in such major transformation, we expect 2016 technology M&A to continue at a record or near-record pace for the foreseeable future, driven by the disruptive digital technologies that the industry is itself bringing to market,” said the report.”

“Tech companies will continue turning to M&A to accelerate their transformations and to build end-to-end solutions. Some will continue going private to manage their transformations away from public-market scrutiny,” said EY. “Non-tech companies will increasingly acquire tech, driving up cross-industry blur — and all will pursue security technologies.

Research suggests sleep wearables could reduce PTSD risk

Wearables that are able to relax the brain could reduce PTSD, according to new research provided by Brain State Technologies and Wake Forest School of Medicine.

The research suggests that people suffering from insomnia, a sleep disorder that 10 to 30 percent of adults suffer from each year, are at a similar PTSD risk level as ex-military service members.

Brain State also claims that sleep disturbance is one of the hardest PTSD symptoms to treat, since medication for sleeping tends to have side effects like illness and addiction. With a wearable that relaxes the brain, it may reduce the chance of waking up in the middle of the night.

“We are excited about presenting this analysis to military health researchers, because prevention efforts tend to get too little attention. We think that focus on sleep quality could reduce PTSD not only in the military, but also in police, medical first-responders, and others who have high exposure to trauma,” said Brain State CEO Lee Gerdes.

Brain State provides a wearable, the Braintellect 2, which offers this type of brain relaxing functionality. The patient wears the device on their head and listens to rhythms of varying pitch, which reduce the amount of stress or excitement in preparation for rest.

The Braintellect 2 is quite an expensive piece of kit, at $1,195. It is also not the most compact design—it comes with the headband, a Bluetooth wireless control box (that connects to the headset through a wire), a pair of headphones, and a customized Windows tablet.

That’s a lot, but may be worth it for those suffering from insomnia or PTSD. Hopefully in the next few years, Brain State or some other firm can reduce the footprint of the device. Swapping the Windows tablet with an iOS/Android app and integrating the Bluetooth control box into the headband would be two smart moves.

Morgan Stanley: IoT to see major growth in 2017

The Internet of Things (IoT) could explode in popularity next year, as semiconductor manufacturers prepare for an onslaught of product launches and customer engagement.

Financial services firm Morgan Stanley compiled data from 117 decision makers at manufacturing firms, and found that 90 percent are developing new chips and sensors with IoT in mind.

It will take 12 to 18 months for those chips to arrive on the market, when they do, Morgan Stanley predicts a surge in consumer interest for IoT products and a similar rise in the amount of products available.

IoT has already seen a good amount of growth in the past 12 months, as consumers start to warm to the idea of a smart thermostat or door lock. That said, Nest’s struggle to launch new products may have slowed down the market, as the company is still seen as a leader in the market.

Morgan Stanley bullish on manufacturing side

Any issues on the consumer side are not being felt in the boardrooms of major manufacturing firms, where the SoftBank-ARM deal has forced them to speed up research and development of chips for IoT.

SoftBank has already signalled its interest in pushing ARM towards building chipsets specifically tailored to the IoT market. If the acquisition is approved, which seems very likely, it could force heavy investment from rivals in the industry.

For a lot of homeowners, smart home devices are still not something on their radar and we doubt 12 months will be enough to change most people’s opinions, but these devices are starting to become more recognizable. Some analysts expect growth to be higher in the enterprise market, at least for the first five years, as businesses start to look into ways of saving money and improving productivit,

New LoRa devkit opens doors to faster IoT prototyping

Three companies involved with the LoRa Alliance have combined forces to create a new development kit aimed at making it easier for IoT developers to quickly prototype new IoT technologies.

The LoRa Alliance is an open, non-profit association of members focused on bringing about a global standard communications avenue for the Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning, industry, and other applications.

One of the avenues the LoRa Alliances is banking on is the LoRaWAN cloud network, a specially-designed for IoT things that use battery power, benefiting from a low-powered wide-area network (LPWAN) connection. The global success of LoRaWAN is among the LoRa Alliance’s top priorities.

Another important benefit of the LoRaWAN standard is support for bidirectional communications with end-points in addition to multicasts – a useful tool for delivering software updates.

There are also battery-saving benefits to the standard. From the official LoRa website:

LoRaWAN data rates range from 0.3 kbps to 50 kbps. To maximize both battery life of the end-devices and overall network capacity, the LoRaWAN network server is managing the data rate and RF output for each end-device individually by means of an adaptive data rate (ADR) scheme.

LoRa member firms all worked on the devkit

The alliances’ member companies — Semtech, Libelium, and Loriot — each worked on the development kit, which ships in 915 MHz and 868 MHz bands to meet American and European requirements. The kit comes complete with a gateway, 10 Semtech sensor devices, software, and the ability to interface with the Loriot LoRaWAN cloud network. The gateway in the kit is used to deliver messages to and from devices and the server.

LoRaWAN includes three different classes of devices. These classes enable for a variety of different applications.

• Class A – Bi-directional end-devices
• Class B – Bi-directional end-devices with scheduled receive slots
• Class C – Bi-directional end-devices with maximal receive slots

The LoRA Alliance is releasing the development kit in an effort to broaden adoption of its communication standard. Recently, Cisco has been added to its list of members.

Particle brings IoT cloud to enterprise users

Internet of Things platform provider Particle announced its enterprise deployment platform, Particle Cloud, on Tuesday.

The platform has been in beta for a few months and Particle claims it has already been used by Fortune 500 companies.

Particle Cloud makes IoT deployment a faster and less cumbersome experience. In a press release, the firm said it aims to ship “secure, reliable, and easy to use” IoT products in under six months.

“IoT is a new industry with huge potential. However, the unfortunate reality is that many businesses’ IoT initiatives flounder or fail,” said Zach Supalla, Particle co-founder and CEO. “The strongest business case for building an IoT product is irrelevant if you can’t execute. Companies who work with Particle actually ship their products.”

That’s evidenced by the company’s work with Keurig, which used the Particle Cloud to start collecting data on thousands of brewers.

“We made more progress on our first day with Particle than we had in months without them,” said Michael Cunningham, chief information officer of Keurig. “Within six months we began collecting data from thousands of connected brewers in the hands of consumers.”

Particle Cloud has a passel of projects

Particle has also worked with Briggs Healthcare and French utility giant Engie. It cites more than 20 crowdfunded projects it has worked on, which have raised “millions of dollars.”

Companies working on the Particle Cloud platform are able to prototype devices for under $20 and have a working model in a few weeks. From there, developers can choose to launch the product or scale it to meet demand. Large firms can take advantage of Particle’s Device Management Console, to manage an entire fleet of IoT devices.

Particle has partnered with a wide range of companies to make the enterprise platform inclusive. Google, Microsoft, and IFTTT provide customer insights to Particle customers, Broadcom, Cypress, u-blox, and ST deliver hardware solutions, and T-Mobile, Twilio, and Telefonica provide networking for IoT devices.

Could this be the first smart car for quadriplegics?

In a time where the driverless automated car is becoming a modern reality, we are provided with great potential to make things previously improbable if not impossible suddenly possible.

My interest was piqued when I came across design plans for car that could be controlled by a driver with quadriplegia. At first the idea seemed mere fantasy but as I spoke to transport designer Rajshekhar Dass and learnt move about the control of technical devices through brain waves, facial gestures and infinitesimal movements the idea seemed more of conceivable.

Rajshekar Dass is a car designer from Mumbai, India currently based in Turkey. He has an impressive design history which includes fronting a winner team of the 2016 Michelin Challenge Design for the Google Community Vehicle and  Winner of the  Vehicle, Mobility and Transport Design 2014-15 A’Design Award for a Micro Taxi among awards. He’s interned for Volkswagen in Germany and worked in a range of car dealerships, so has seen car technology from a range of angles.

He detailed his rationale for a car designed specifically for people with quadraplegia, a cohort of people who until now have only featured in the automated cars of the future as mere passengers. Such a design is the first of its kind:

“Audric Design basically was designed with a particular person in mind, Sam Schmidt, former Indy Racing League driver. He was made paraplegic due to a racing car accident in 2000.  He wanted to get back on the track but came back as an owner rather than driver. Everyone loves driving so my interest was how can we use today’s technology to solve these problems for an audience that are generally overlooked? How can today’s tech be used to enable the same driving experience that he enjoyed previously?”

It’s always interesting to learn how a designer approaches the design experience, Dass revealed:

“the first point of research is the capabilities of the human body when functionality has been impaired. In paraplegia the brain signals do not reach the human organs  bellow the neck, so the brain signals are basically lost. I thought, what if you could use today’s technology to enable the signals to be transferred to the computers onboard of a car instead, so you can give a rebirth to the whole driving experience?”

Dass explained that emerging technology like movement through brain wave signals,  gesture and facial recognition and sensor technology s along with  augmented reality made his design more than a well intentioned concept.

There’s precedence here. For example, in 2010  Emotiv released the Emotiv Epoch+, a commercial wearable device designed to enable users to play computer games on a screen through functioning as a brain-computer interface device (Admittedly the design was not without it’s challenges as this review attests).

Then in 2014, Ian Burkhart became the first paralyzed person to use neural bypass technology to pick up and hold a spoon using his own brainpower, with his abilities increasing overtime.

How could it work?

Dass stresses that the car would be completely autonomous in the first instance. But over time, the driver’s gestures and motions would be recorded by the car; for example, as the car is taking a right turn, the driver might be tilting his head. In this way, the car is learning from the driver instead of the driver learning from the car.

Dass explains further:

“There would be a series of levels which would be detected by the AI in the car, that slowly give the control to the driver. e.g. starting with audio and air-conditioning controls first. The next level could be controlling a little bit of the motion and slowly you’d graduate levels as you would in a game with the help of gesture recognition, eye movements and brain mapping. Once the car is confident as to the skill of the driver the complete controls would be available to the driver. but at the same time the car would still have the control over all the systems, as a built-in safety feature.

I’m aware that many people with paralysis experience involuntary movement such as spasms and jerking. I wondered if a car could be smart enough to distinguish these movements from voluntary actions.

Dass agreed:

It’s a good point. The car is completely autonomous and the AI is constantly monitoring the driver’s motions to learn his/her actions, and since the AI is specially developed for paralyzed drivers it can recognize such involuntary movements. Since the AI is also scanning the brain and can understand that the motion has no connection with the brain signals it can be tagged as involuntary action and not require a reaction”.

As well as its driving capabilities, the car would also be designed specifically with the needs of the driver in mind with a rear entry door suited to a wheelchair which would be specially designed to become the driving seat in the vehicle. Dass explained that the project has only been recently published online and he is keen to explore his ideas further with people with disabilities and associated organizations to enable further development.

In an era where ideas as seemingly bizarre as Google’s patent for“sticky” technology to protect pedestrians if they get struck by Google’s self-driving cars, a mind powered car doesn’t seem all that strange at all.

Dass is working on a range of diverse projects currently and judging by the ingenuity inherent in his design portfolio, this is simply an example of things to come.

Britain to host Europe’s first track day for autonomous cars

A host of autonomous cars are set to converge on Bruntingthorpe, an airfield and proving ground located 40 miles east of Birmingham, in November.

It will be the first track day for autonomous cars on the continent, allowing manufacturers, software developers, and enthusiasts to come together and work on building the next generation of transport.

The event is backed by the government’s Innovate UK organization, which funds emerging technology projects in the country. The fund has backed another event at the Longcross Test Track, near Surrey.

“Driverless vehicle technology is a young discipline which pools expertise from different areas of mechanical, electrical and software engineering skills,” said Self-Driving Track Days co-founder, Alex Lawrence-Berkeley. “We’re keen to close the skills gaps between education and what industry is telling us is missing in the talent pool.”

Looking for startups focusing on autonomous cars

Innovate UK hopes that startups and universities will converge on the event, instead of it being all about large manufacturers like Volvo, Jaguar Land Rover, and Nissan testing their latest self-driving system.

RDM Group, one of the first firms Innovate UK backed, may bring its new pods to the event. It recently launched UK Autodrive, a £19 million ($24 million) project to integrate driverless pods into urban environments.

The British government is keen to grab as many automotive firms as it can away from other European countries, especially Germany, which does the lion’s share of automotive manufacturing. It should be noted that Audi, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz have not made plans to test vehicles in the U.K., focusing instead on Germany and the United States.

European countries are catching up with Britain’s burst into the scene. Germany announced public road testing earlier this year and France followed this week with a series of public initiatives. Spain and Italy have yet to launch similar projects.

BMW will launch iNext autonomous car in China, too

BMW has every intention of launching iNext, its first autonomous car, concurrently in China, Europe, and the United States, barring any regulatory resistance.

Speaking at an artificial intelligence and robotics conference in Shenzhen, Maximilian Doemling, the senior manager of the autonomous group, said:

“If you’re expecting autonomous function where you can be on the highway, press the button and the car does everything for you, like lane changing and driving, and you can play with smartphone, and you’re al1ways safe, we had the big announcement with Intel and Mobileye that we will have the iNext in 2021.”

It’s not surprising that BMW is prepared to launch iNext in China in the opening year. The country buys more cars than anywhere else, and in the past ten years people have started moving from General Motors, Toyota, and Volkswagen to more luxury brands, like BMW and Mercedes Benz.

BMW wants in on booming China market

Electric cars are also becoming a lot more popular in China, as residents in large cities see the impacts of pollution everyday and seek to reduce their own.1 Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk has said in the near future the company may start manufacturing cars in the country, due to the high demand for the Model S and expected demand for the Model 3.

BMW has a 2021 release date for the iNext, though that is only preliminary. While Tesla and Google may boast that self-driving is already safer, it still needs to get through a lot of regulatory hurdles before people can drive without looking at the road.

That said, BMW is positioning itself as a key player in the market, partnering with Intel and Mobileye to build a driverless system. BMW is also part of a consortium of German manufacturers that purchased Here Maps, giving them another resource for its self-driving endeavour.

You can bend phones, so why not wearables?

Lenovo has previewed its “holiday product launch” for IFA 2016, which includes a bendable smartphone. But will they extend that tech to a new generation of wearables, too?

The 50-second teaser video showed someone bending the phone, which appears to be running on the Android platform. Google has not, as far as we are aware, added functionality for devices that change shape.

Internally named CPlus, the device has a 4.26-inch display and supposedly has a variety of color options. Lenovo did not confirm if it plans to launch the device at IFA 2016.

Bendable devices have been at media events for a few years now, but to date commercial successes have been few and far between. Worries about app compatibility and frequent crashes are the main reasons for the lack of consumer traction to date.

Instead, vendors like Samsung have launched “edge” smartphones, like the Galaxy S7 Edge. These aren’t bendable, but do have slight bends on the edges, which can be an options menu or app draw.

Lenovo also hinted at more Moto mods for the Moto Z at the event. Motorola launched the smartphone earlier this year, with the ability to attach large “mods” on the back that offer additional battery life, loud speakers, and other upgrades.

Is the next step moving beyond smartphones?

The mods are seen as the baby step into modular smartphones, which Motorola has worked on for a few years.

In the video, Lenovo also hinted at a next generation Moto 360 smartwatch1. We expect the device to run Android Wear and come with additional battery life and a sleeker frame.

Lenovo also mentioned a new type of keyboard for tablets, servers and a tablet-PC hybrid in its teaser video…and all shall apparently be explained at IFA 2016.

Cameras and IoT: Going from smart to intelligent

Eyes are considered to be the most powerful human sense. The equivalent technological tool is an intelligent video camera that can observe, analyze and act on provided information. This technology is know as Intelligent Video Analytics or Video Content Analysis.

Vendors such as Cisco and IBM are key companies in the market. Internet of Things (IoT) technologies are only beginning to integrate intelligent cameras. Here are some examples of IoT platforms that are already using this innovative tech and the potential future market segments.

What is an intelligent video camera?

An intelligent video camera is connected to a cloud that analyzes live video content. Events captured by the camera can instantly lead to desired actions. The ability to take action without a human operator is what makes the camera intelligent.

Imagine the video camera capturing a car accident or someone falling on the ground. Instead of manually monitoring the traffic or a public place, the intelligent camera will instantly call emergency central or other necessary assistance, thus lower the reaction time from accident to action.

Key vendors in the market are Agent Vi, Axis Communications, Bosch Security Systems, Cisco, Honeywell Security and IBM. Research and Markets suggests the main market sectors to be transportation and logistics, banking and financial services, governmental, industrial, retail, healthcare and banking and financial services.

Intelligent traffic cams

Intelligent cameras in traffic can monitor, solve logistical problems and help you get home safe and sound. Intelligent cameras can notify you of empty space in a lane or optimize your driving path. The video camera can be installed along roads or in your car. Intelligent cameras can detect who drove on a red light and only capture and save that exact moment. The transition from smart to intelligent cameras makes the analytics select only the necessary data to be saved for later investigation. Intelligent cameras can also recognize a license plate. Imagine that the garage door opens by itself when recognizing your license plate in the driveway or analyzing who is in the car in front of you.

IntelliVision — its demo is below — and other vendors such as Infinova, Nice Systems, ObjectVideo, Verint and VideoIQ are noticeable leading companies contributing and shaping the intelligent video market.

Facial recognition also helps

Face recognition can become an essential feature in public security and home monitoring. Detecting or tracking people, observing a person’s behavior, counting number of steps or identify who left a bag on the train station. For home monitoring, features as your door unlocking once you get home only by recognizing your face. The camera might even give you a push notification on your phone about who is outside your front door or in your backyard.

Thanks to other contributors who added to this article: Caroline Myrland and Henrik Evensen

Could this be the first smart car for quadriplegics?

In a time where the driverless automated car is becoming a modern reality, we are provided with great potential to make things previously improbable if not impossible suddenly possible.

My interest was piqued when I came across design plans for car that could be controlled by a driver with quadriplegia. At first the idea seemed mere fantasy but as I spoke to transport designer Rajshekhar Dass and learnt move about the control of technical devices through brain waves, facial gestures and infinitesimal movements the idea seemed more of conceivable.

Rajshekar Dass is a car designer from Mumbai, India currently based in Turkey. He has an impressive design history which includes fronting a winner team of the 2016 Michelin Challenge Design for the Google Community Vehicle and  Winner of the  Vehicle, Mobility and Transport Design 2014-15 A’Design Award for a Micro Taxi among awards. He’s interned for Volkswagen in Germany and worked in a range of car dealerships, so has seen car technology from a range of angles.

He detailed his rationale for a car designed specifically for people with quadraplegia, a cohort of people who until now have only featured in the automated cars of the future as mere passengers. Such a design is the first of its kind:

“Audric Design basically was designed with a particular person in mind, Sam Schmidt, former Indy Racing League driver. He was made paraplegic due to a racing car accident in 2000.  He wanted to get back on the track but came back as an owner rather than driver. Everyone loves driving so my interest was how can we use today’s technology to solve these problems for an audience that are generally overlooked? How can today’s tech be used to enable the same driving experience that he enjoyed previously?”

It’s always interesting to learn how a designer approaches the design experience, Dass revealed:

“the first point of research is the capabilities of the human body when functionality has been impaired. In paraplegia the brain signals do not reach the human organs  bellow the neck, so the brain signals are basically lost. I thought, what if you could use today’s technology to enable the signals to be transferred to the computers onboard of a car instead, so you can give a rebirth to the whole driving experience?”

Dass explained that emerging technology like movement through brain wave signals,  gesture and facial recognition and sensor technology s along with  augmented reality made his design more than a well intentioned concept.

There’s precedence here. For example, in 2010  Emotiv released the Emotiv Epoch+, a commercial wearable device designed to enable users to play computer games on a screen through functioning as a brain-computer interface device (Admittedly the design was not without it’s challenges as this review attests).

Then in 2014, Ian Burkhart became the first paralyzed person to use neural bypass technology to pick up and hold a spoon using his own brainpower, with his abilities increasing overtime.

How could it work?

Dass stresses that the car would be completely autonomous in the first instance. But over time, the driver’s gestures and motions would be recorded by the car; for example, as the car is taking a right turn, the driver might be tilting his head. In this way, the car is learning from the driver instead of the driver learning from the car.

Dass explains further:

“There would be a series of levels which would be detected by the AI in the car, that slowly give the control to the driver. e.g. starting with audio and air-conditioning controls first. The next level could be controlling a little bit of the motion and slowly you’d graduate levels as you would in a game with the help of gesture recognition, eye movements and brain mapping. Once the car is confident as to the skill of the driver the complete controls would be available to the driver. but at the same time the car would still have the control over all the systems, as a built-in safety feature.

I’m aware that many people with paralysis experience involuntary movement such as spasms and jerking. I wondered if a car could be smart enough to distinguish these movements from voluntary actions.

Dass agreed:

It’s a good point. The car is completely autonomous and the AI is constantly monitoring the driver’s motions to learn his/her actions, and since the AI is specially developed for paralyzed drivers it can recognize such involuntary movements. Since the AI is also scanning the brain and can understand that the motion has no connection with the brain signals it can be tagged as involuntary action and not require a reaction”.

As well as its driving capabilities, the car would also be designed specifically with the needs of the driver in mind with a rear entry door suited to a wheelchair which would be specially designed to become the driving seat in the vehicle. Dass explained that the project has only been recently published online and he is keen to explore his ideas further with people with disabilities and associated organizations to enable further development.

In an era where ideas as seemingly bizarre as Google’s patent for“sticky” technology to protect pedestrians if they get struck by Google’s self-driving cars, a mind powered car doesn’t seem all that strange at all.

Dass is working on a range of diverse projects currently and judging by the ingenuity inherent in his design portfolio, this is simply an example of things to come.

Come out for the next season of America’s Greatest Makers

After a premiere season that saw Grush — an IoT-enabled gaming toothbrush aimed at getting kids to brush their teeth more effectively — take home the $1 million top prize, America’s Greatest Makers is coming back for another season of bringing IoT inventors together in a head-to-head battle for a sweet cash prize.

The primetime television show is produced by reality TV giant Mark Burnett, in partnership with Intel. Last season was especially exciting here at ReadWrite. Not only did we get to see emerging IoT technologies displayed on a national stage, but winning team was also an alumni of the IoT accelerator run by our parent company, Wearable IoT World.

This year, two IoT startup alumni are confirmed as auditioning  – SoundSight and Metron Force.

SoundSight produces an integrated video recording smart headphone that connects to your smartphone. Metron Force is a smart wristband for device radio control that uses intelligent wrist gestures.

“America’s Greatest Makers would be a good opportunity to explain how our technology differentiates us from the competition,” said Alex Hai, founder of Metron Force. “If we can tell our story to a national audience, our product will speak for itself.”

Makers to use new IoT technologies

Television series have a habit of upping the stakes. So for season two, in addition to Intel’s Curie Module that was used last year, Intel is making new technologies available to be integrated into the product.

The next-generation Intel Atom processor-based platform can provide contestants with advanced display, graphics and high-speed I/O in a low-power, small form-factor configuration for product ideas. And Intel’s RealSense ZR300 camera offers makers a small form-factor solution for contestants who want to add visual depth sensing and tracking capabilities to their product ideas.

“We’ve already been getting excited about what we can do with the Intel Atom,” says Stephen Chase, founder of SoundSight Smart-Headphones, about the audition process. “One of the things we’re most excited about with this competition that we would get to work closely with the brilliant people of Intel.”1 

The shows producers hope that the new technologies will elevate the competition. From Grush founder Ethan Schur’s experience, the lack of ability to code should not scare a potential applicant away. “If you find a problem big enough (to solve), you can prototype quickly,” he said. “There’s help out there. The maker community is there.”

Interested? You have until August 19th to apply here.

White House offers $400 million in research for next-gen wireless

Wireless broadband is an essential part of the United States’ digital infrastructure. Millions of Americans are presently connected to 4G and LTE networks, but with a swarm of new IoT devices demanding resources from these networks, the White House is taking steps to give development of a new generation of wireless devices a boost.

The Advanced Wireless Research Initiative was announced by the White House and includes a $400 million in investment in 5G technology. The initiative will be led by the National Science Foundation (NSF) building on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)Spectrum Frontiers vote which took place this past week.

From the official statement from the White House announcing the initiative:

That vote made the United States the first country in the world to make vast quantities of high-frequency millimeter wave spectrum available for both licensed and unlicensed use. This spectrum, in combination with other spectrum already available, promises to enable faster speeds, quicker response times (“lower latency”), and increased capacity in future wireless networks.

5G wireless technology is expected to have the bandwidth to house a lot more devices than the current leading networks. With greater speed and lower latency, this network will be able to scale to include a massive number of new connected devices as subscribers add them to their home and person.

Is 5G impacting wireless carrier profitability?

For wireless carriers that have already invested billions into research and testing on their existing and growing 4G LTE networks, and concern over the profitability of providing services for IoT and other next-generation connected devices, there is limited financial incentive for them to spend massive amounts on developing a new network technology.

Its in this that the White House hopes the Advanced Wireless Research Initiative will step in by funding the research necessary to develop efficient systems management strategies that form a base blueprint for wireless network providers to build their own solutions.

Once 5G networks are made available, they are expected to enable carriers to offer speeds that meet or exceed 100 times the speed of presently-available 4G LTE.