Blind Engineer Invents A ‘Smart Cane’ That Uses Google Maps To Help Blind People Navigate

Andželika Jasevičiūtė
BoredPanda staff

Today, many products have been reinvented through technology. From smart planters to smart TVs, the power of technology doesn’t surprise us anymore. While many of the newest technological creations are dedicated to entertainment, there are many which contribute to our well being, especially to those who experience a disability of some sort.

More info: Instagram | Facebook | wewalk.io

 

Recently, a revolutionizing smart cane called WeWalk has been introduced to help blind people navigate their surroundings much more efficiently when they are on their own.

The cane was invented by a visually impaired engineer Kursat Ceylan, who is the CEO and co-founder of Young Guru Academy (YGA), the Turkish non-profit behind WeWALK. Being blind himself, Ceylan knows firsthand what challenges people like him face and decided to put his knowledge into inventing something that could greatly improve people’s life.

“In these days, we are talking about flying cars, but these people have been using just a plain stick. As a blind person, when I am at the Metro station, I don’t know which is my exit… I don’t know which bus is approaching… which stores are around me. That kind of information can be provided with the WeWalk,” he told CNN.

The smart cane assists visually impaired people using smart technology, some of which we use every day.

It’s equipped with built-in speakers, a voice assistant, Google, and sensors that send vibrations to warn about obstacles above chest level.

The smart cane is available on the company’s website and runs for around $500.

Tech News: This autonomous security drone is designed to guard your home

This autonomous security drone is designed to guard your home

Darrell Etherington@etherington / 12:40 pm EST • January 7, 2020

One of the new products unveiled at CES this year is a new kind of home security system — one that includes drones to patrol your property, along with sensors designed to mimic garden light and a central processor to bring it all together.

Sunflower Labs debuted their new Sunflower Home Awareness System, which includes the eponymous Sunflowers (motion and vibration sensors that look like simple garden lights but can populate a map to show you cars, people and animals on or near your property in real time); the Bee (a fully autonomous drone that deploys and flies on its own, with cameras on board to live-stream video); and the Hive (a charging station for the Bee, which also houses the brains of the operation for crunching all the data gathered by the component parts).

Roving aerial robots keeping tabs on your property might seem a tad dystopian, and perhaps even unnecessary, when you could maybe equip your estate with multiple fixed cameras and sensors for less money and with less complexity. But Sunflower Labs thinks its security system is an evolution of more standard fare because it “learns and reacts to its surroundings,” improving over time.
The Bee is also designed basically to supplement more traditional passive monitoring, and can be deployed on demand to provide more detailed information and live views of any untoward activity detected on your property. So it’s a bit like having someone always at the ready to go check out that weird noise you heard in the night — without the risk to the brave checker-upper.

Sunflower Labs was founded in 2016, and has backing from General Catalyst, among others, with offices in both San Francisco and Zurich. The system doesn’t come cheap, which shouldn’t be a surprise, given what it promises to do on paper — it starts at $9,950 and can range up depending on your specific property’s custom needs. The company is accepting pre-orders now, with a deposit of $999 required, and intends to start delivering the first orders to customers beginning sometime in the middle of this year.

Tech News: Delivery robots will soon be allowed on Washington sidewalks

Washington has become the eighth state to greenlight the use of delivery robots on sidewalks and crosswalks. Governor Jay Inslee signed the bill yesterday, following support from Starship Technologies, which specializes in autonomous last-mile and local deliveries.

Proponents of delivery robots tout reduced congestion and pollution, since the robots are primarily electric, plus they give local business a competitive advantage. Companies that are otherwise lacking a delivery infrastructure can use the technology to regain an edge from the likes of Amazon.

However, others say that such devices pose a risk to pedestrians, although there's no evidence of any major safety incidents as yet. Using a combination of computer vision, GPS and machine learning, the robots are designed to autonomously map their environment, navigate crowded areas and avoid obstacles.

Virginia paved the way for delivery robots back in 2017, and Idaho, Wisconsin, Florida, Ohio, Utah and Arizona have since followed suit. Other states, such as San Francisco, are still grappling with the legislation involved. But with major global companies such as FedEx taking an increasing interest in the technology, states around the US will have to address the issue sooner rather than later.

Rachel England, @rachel_england

1h ago in Robots

Tech News: Foldable phones are about to make the US very jealous - PhoneEnvy

Foldable phones are about to make the US very jealous - Phone envy

            
Photo by Vlad Savov / The Verge
 

The US is falling behind on phone design, and foldables are the proof. This year’s Mobile World Congress was full of foldables, from Huawei’s sleek Mate X to Xiaomi’s triple-folding model to TCL’s angular DragonHinge design to Oppo’s prototype to the clunky Royale FlexPai to LG’s sort-of-cheating V50 second screen.

But all of those devices have one thing in common: like the last few waves of innovative phone designs released overseas, they won’t be available in America in any meaningful way. Looking at the foldable landscape, there’s basically only one device out there that will actually be sold in the US, from carriers, without requiring to deal with import fees or cellular compatibility: Samsung’s Galaxy Fold.

This isn’t a new phenomenon. Cool phones from overseas have always had a tough time making their way to America, due to market demand, trade agreements, and complex other geopolitical factors. The current distrust various US intelligence agencies bear toward Chinese telecom communications companies is an obvious example.

But the problem isn’t just about US customers missing out on cool and interesting phones, although that’s plenty frustrating. It’s also that flagships from companies like Oppo and Huawei are increasingly some of the best hardware in the world, offering new ideas and specs on par with the best phones in the US, but at far more affordable prices. And that means less competition in a stagnant domestic phone market that largely just consists of Apple and Samsung phones.

Right now it’s not even a competition at all

Huawei, Xiaomi, and Oppo are the No. 2, No. 4, and No. 5 smartphone makers in the world by marketshare, but in the United States there’s a virtual duopoly. According to Counterpoint Research, in the fourth quarter of 2018, Apple controlled a 54 percent chunk of the market, while Samsung had 22 percent — together, the two brands make up more than three quarters of all phones sold in the US. The next closest competitor is LG, at 12 percent, and it’s been struggling with smartphone sales for years. Even seeming juggernauts like Google, with its Pixel line critically lauded and benefitting from the full firepower of the company’s marketing behind it, and Sony, a brand US consumers are incredibly familiar with, can barely make a dent.

So even if Chinese brands could sell in the US, odds are they’ll face an uphill battle breaking into the market. But it’s largely a moot point, since right now it’s not even a competition at all. Additionally, the boringness of US phones also hurts innovation. Right now, major devices in the US are dull, with notches and iPhone X-ish designs. As far as most US customers are concerned, that’s the height of innovation, so much so that when Samsung comes out with its notch-avoiding hole punch S10, it feels like a victory. But Chinese phones have already far surpassed those notched designs due to the faster and more experimental pace of technology.

Outside the US, the phone world is filled with truly weird and innovative ideas. Bored of dull, black and white phones? Check out these neon-hued gradients that shimmer in the sun:

 

Photo by Vlad Savov / The Verge

Hate your notch? How about a pop-up camera that appears when you need it, and leaves your screen gloriously unmarred when you don’t?

 

Photo by Sam Byford / The Verge

Or maybe just try a double sided display that flips around for selfies, or sliding screens, or completely port-less phones. Sure, not all of them are the most practical, but they’re pushing the envelope forward in a way that Apple and Samsung’s hardware simply aren’t.

The foldable space is a free for all, but the US is only getting a fraction of it

Plus, with the entirely new form factors of foldables on the way, the fact that only one or two of those devices will be available in the US for now is going to severely limit their adoption. Right now, the foldable space is a free-for-all, with widely varied ideas of what styles of folding phones work and don’t. But US customers are only going to get to see a fraction of what’s out there. Right now, Samsung’s Galaxy Fold is the only game in town for US customers, and even if you prefer the slim style and inverse fold that Huawei is using on the Mate X, you’re likely out of luck.

Now, it’s possible to circumvent some of the issues — if you’re willing to pay a premium, you can import all the latest and greatest phones from outside the US. In theory, unified telecom standards mean unlocked cell phones aren’t restricted to any carrier: you can simply buy any phone on the internet and be good to go.

But the reality is more complicated. Different carriers and phones support different LTE bands and different cellular technologies (hello, GSM vs. CDMA). Without the partnership and blessing of a carrier, it’s a crapshoot as to whether your new device will actually work properly when it’s powered on stateside.

 

Photo by Vlad Savov / The Verge

These compatibility problems are only going to get worse in the future as 5G starts to roll out. It’s bad enough finding an unlocked phone that supports your carrier’s best LTE bands in the US. Throwing in the chaos of different chunks of 5G spectrum that vary from carrier to carrier with different modem and antennas requirements will only make things worse. With sub-6, space-consuming mmWave antennas, different spectrum bands, and gradual rollouts in cities that may mean 5G coverage gaps, it seems virtually impossible that you’ll simply be able to buy an unlocked 5G phone and have it work in the US, at least not for years to come.

5G will only make it worse

It’s not like Chinese companies haven’t tried to enter the US market. Xiaomi did a push a few years back, but only ended up selling smart home products and accessories and even electric scooters that underpinned scooter startups like Bird — but no phones. Huawei has arguably gotten the closest of all. At CES 2018, Huawei was on the verge of announcing a deal with AT&T to sell the Mate 10 Pro in the US, but AT&T pulled out at the eleventh hour due to pressure from the government over security concerns. Verizon was reportedly scared away as well.

Both those efforts ended in failure, and with the political winds blowing the way they are, it’s increasingly looking like the US phone market won’t have to worry about competition from companies like Huawei or Xiaomi anytime soon. But that doesn’t make it any more enjoyable to be stuck on the sidelines watching all the cool hardware from afar.

By Chaim Gartenberg@cgartenberg 

Tech News: BMW’s Alexa integration gets it right

BMW  will in a few days start rolling out to many of its drivers support for Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant. The fact that BMW is doing this doesn’t come as a surprise, given that it has long talked about its plans to bring Alexa — and potentially other personal assistants like Cortana and the Google Assistant — to its cars. Ahead of its official launch in Germany, Austria, the U.S. and U.K. (with other countries following at a later date), I went to Munich to take a look at what using Alexa in a BMW is all about.

As Dieter May,  BMW’s senior VP for digital products told me earlier this year, the company has long held that in-car digital assistants have to be more than just an “Echo Dot in a cup holder,” meaning that they have to be deeply integrated into the experience and the rest of the technology in the car. And that’s exactly what BMW has done here — and it has done it really well.

Update: just to clarify, the update with Alexa functionality will be available for all BMW’s that were produced after about March 2018 and that run the new BMW OS 7.0.

What maybe surprised me the most was that we’re not just talking about the voice interface here. BMW is working directly with the Alexa team at Amazon  to also integrate visual responses from Alexa. Using the tablet-like display you find above the center console of most new BMWs, the service doesn’t just read out the answer but also shows additional facts or graphs when warranted. That means Alexa in a BMW is a lot more like using an Echo Show than a Dot (though you’re obviously not going to be able to watch any videos on it).

In the demo I saw, in a 2015 BMW X5 that was specifically rigged to run Alexa ahead of the launch, the display would activate when you ask for weather information, for example, or for queries that returned information from a Wikipedia post.

What’s cool here is that the BMW team styled these responses using the same design language that also governs the company’s other in-car products. So if you see the weather forecast from Alexa, that’ll look exactly like the weather forecast from BMW’s own Connected Drive system. The only difference is the “Alexa” name at the top-left of the screen.

All of this sounds easy, but I’m sure it took a good bit of negotiation with Amazon to build a system like this, especially because there’s an important second part to this integration that’s quite unique. The queries, which you start by pushing the usual “talk” button in the car (in newer models, the Alexa wake word feature will also work), are first sent to BMW’s servers before they go to Amazon. BMW wants to keep control over the data and ensure its users’ privacy, so it added this proxy in the middle. That means there’s a bit of an extra lag in getting responses from Amazon, but the team is working hard on reducing this, and for many of the queries we tried during my demo, it was already negligible.

As the team told me, the first thing it had to build was a way to switch that can route your queries to the right service. The car, after all, already has a built-in speech recognition service that lets you set directions in the navigation system, for example. Now, it has to recognize that the speaker said “Alexa” at the beginning of the query, then route it to the Alexa service. The team also stressed that we’re talking about a very deep integration here. “We’re not just streaming everything through your smartphone or using some plug-and-play solution,” a BMW spokesperson noted.

“You get what you’d expect from BMW, a deep integration, and to do that, we use the technology we already have in the car, especially the built-in SIM card.”

One of the advantages of Alexa’s open ecosystem is its skills. Not every skill makes sense in the context of the car, and some could be outright distracting, so the team is curating a list of skills that you’ll be able to use in the car.

It’s no secret that BMW is also working with Microsoft (and many of its cloud services run on Azure). BMW argues that Alexa and Cortana have different strengths, though, with Cortana being about productivity and a connection to Office 365, for example. It’s easy to imagine a future where you could call up both Alexa and Cortana from your car — and that’s surely why BMW built its own system for routing voice commands and why it wants to have control over this process.

BMW tells me that it’ll look at how users will use the new service and tune it accordingly. Because a lot of the functionality runs in the cloud, updates are obviously easy and the team can rapidly release new features — just like any other software company.I 

Business News: Body scanning app 3DLOOK raises $1 million to measure your corpus

3D body scanning systems have hit the big time after years of stops and starts. Hot on the heels of Original Stitch’s Bodygram, another 3D scanner, 3DLOOK, has entered into the fray with a $1 million investment to measure bodies around the world.

The founders, Vadim Rogovskiy, Ivan Makeev, and Alex Arapovd, created 3DLOOK when they found that they could measure a human body using just a smartphone. The team found that other solutions couldn’t let them measure fits with any precision and depended on expensive hardware.

“After more than six years of building companies in the ad tech industry I wanted to build something new which was not a commodity,” said Rogovskiy. “I wanted to overcome growth obstacles and I learned that the apparel industry had mounting return problems in e-commerce. 3DLOOK’s co-founders spent over a year on pure R&D and testing new approaches and combinations of different technologies before creating SAIA (Scanning Artificial Intelligence for Apparel) in 2016.”

The team raised $400,000 to date and most recently raised a $1 million seed round to grow the company.

The team also collects “fit profiles” and is able to supply these profiles based on “geographic location, age, and gender groups.” This means that 3DLOOK can give you exact sizes based on your scanned measurements and tell you how clothes will fit on your body. They have 20,000 profiles already and are working with eight paying customers and five large enterprise systems. Lemonade Fashion and Koviem are both using the platform.

“3DLOOK is the first company that managed to build a technology that allows capturing human body measurements with just two casual photos, and plans to disrupt the market of online apparel sales, offering brands and small stores an API for desktop and SDK for mobile to gather clients measurements and build custom clothing proposals,” said Rogovskiy. “Additionally, the company collects the database of human body measurements so that brands could build better clothing for all types of body and solve fit and return problems. It will not only allow stores to sell more apparel, it will allow people get the quality apparel.”

3D scanners have gotten better and better over the years and it’s interesting to see companies being able to scan bodies just from a few photos. While these things can’t account for opinions of taste they can definitely make sure that your clothes fit before you order them.