The acquisition of Whole Foods by Amazon has been the focus of much attention over the last week. And it’s not only retailers that are taking notice. With our increased desire for delivered goods, drone companies are looking toward Amazon as a way to shepherd in the use of drones in mainstream retail (see our review of the best drones).

Amazon is, in many respects, primed for success in such a market, especially with the creation of its Prime Air drone delivery platform. In March, Amazon completed its first public demonstration of drone deliveries, ferrying sunscreen to attendees at an Amazon-hosted conference in California.

Most recently, we saw news of the creation of a new research and development facility near Paris, where about a dozen software engineers and developers are working to ensure flying delivery vehicles don’t collide with buildings, trees, other drones, and birds.

In a quest to understand the impact of drones on retail services, I spoke to Yariv Bash, co-founder and CEO of full-service drone delivery logistics company Flytrex.

See also: Smart cities will soon buzz with (hackable) drones

Last year, Flytrex successfully rolled out a drone delivery service with the Ukranian postal service to deliver goods up to 1kg (2.2 pounds) over 23km (14.3 miles). Flytex’s main focus, however, is enterprise customers who not only want to purchase a fleet of drones, but also the accompanying control and monitoring systems. Perhaps the biggest selling point their drones is their convenience — they can be taken out of the box, charged, connected to an accompanying app, and used.

According to Bash, over 25 million parcels are transported around the world every day, with the majority weighing less than 2 pounds — ideal for drone delivery.

“By acquiring Whole Foods, Amazon gets its hands on prime real estate for drone stations in every major city,” Bash said. “By optimizing Whole Foods’ warehouses with Amazon’s Kiva robots, additional space can be created to store drones and to stock Amazon’s top selling products. This would allow Amazon products to be delivered locally and on-demand by drones from Whole Foods stores.”

Changing the transit experience

The Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) published new regulations for commercial drones in August last year. Under the new rules, operators can’t fly drones higher than 400 feet, or at night. The drones must also weigh less than 55 pounds and constantly remain in the sight of a human operator — a rule that prohibits any kind of long-distance drone use, including basic delivery. People also cannot operate drones from a moving vehicle unless in a “sparsely populated area.”

As a result, it’s likely that we’ll see drones as part of a logistics package where they complement road vehicles, rather than replace them.

“The drone will be a key component of the supply chain from warehouse to the customer, with increased benefits as goods warehouses become more automated,” Bash said. “They’re also highly cost effective as a drone costs a lot less than a delivery truck and operates with batteries instead of fuel. Maintenance is also much cheaper.”

One of the least-reported benefits of drones is their low carbon footprint. According to Bash, drones can “reduce road congestion in crowded cities and reduce air pollution.” It’s easy to imagine them replacing small-scale single-item deliveries, including food deliveries.

Drones will also change customer experience. While the idea of a drone arriving on our doorstep is still far off, it’s likely that we will soon see scheduled drone deliveries to designated drop off areas like a rooftops in residential areas.

“One of the great advantages of drones in delivering items is the scale of what they can deliver,” Bash said. “Imagine a warehouse full of 200,000 of the most popular items sold in your area. It could include everything from groceries to books and pharmaceuticals and be delivered to shoppers in just 10-15 minutes.”

How will drones change our skies?

Drones will undoubtedly change our skies; one of the biggest challenges to their success will be the struggle to regulate airspace to accommodate different vehicles.

NASA and various partners completed testing earlier this month of live, remotely operated drones at six sites around the country. According to Parimal Kopardekar, senior technologist for NASA’s air transportation system research and principal investigator for UTM, a traffic management system is essential “to ensure the safety of the nation’s manned and unmanned airspace.” The operational scenarios have simulated a variety of use cases including package deliveries, farmland surveys, search and rescue operations, railway inspections, and video surveillance operations.

Initial test results showed that when flying well beyond the pilot’s line of sight, operators could lose sync with their aircraft, demonstrating the need to develop better ways to strengthen these links. Developing a quality standard for these communications links will be a critical element for the success of the industry as a whole.

Big industry players like Amazon are reliant on the FAA to solve these challenges; the FAA’s efforts are aided by increased technological advances like spatial recognition and awareness of other drones, airplanes, and man-made objects like tall buildings and bridges. Drones also need to be adaptable to changing weather and changing flight paths and able to react to communication from land.

Flytrex signed a shipping agreement with American Duty Free, the largest duty-free company in the United States. American Duty Free’s partnership with a pharmaceutical company makes it interested in helping its fleet of drug makers supply medication in difficult-to-access areas of developing countries.

While Bash admits that he doesn’t know how long we will have to wait until drone deliveries become commonplace, he insists on its eventuality. That drone-delivered kale might be a way off, but it’s coming.

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In the era of connected technology Berlin company 1aim are carving a niche for themselves in connected security for commercial buildings. I met with Torben Friehe, CEO of 1aim to find out more.

1aim builds a complex array of hardware and software for a simple purpose: open any door by waving a smartphone in front of a retrofitted lock instead of needing a key, swipe card or access code. Administrators use a simple app interface to issue digital passes via email or SMS to anyone visiting including non-registered users like guests or contractors.

Friehe likens them to “a central nervous system for buildings” explaining that 1aim  has created an enterprise-grade access control system that serves two functions – first, to allow professional access and identity management and, second, to gather large amounts of valuable data to enable companies to identify space usage patterns in their commercial space.

Friehe explains that as the company ships more software, customers will be able to use the device to collect and analyze data and perform a suite of tasks to improve cost flows and efficiency, such as arm areas or turn off electricity to reduce utility expenses as employees leave their offices.Other features include allowing users to request conference rooms and automatically provide them with the ideal premises fitting their requirements.

“Since our platform knows who is where and when, it will also be able to allocate the right space to every employee on an individual basis and offer strategic work-layout suggestions to optimize operations.”

What are the cultural differences when it comes to smart locks in Germany compared to the US?

As an expat myself living in Germany I was interested to know the differences in how Deutsch and American people view security and technology. Friehe noted that:

“German homeowners would not trust doors that are seen as perfectly safe in America. In Germany, homeowners take enormous pride in the so-called “Resistance Class” that their door fulfills. But most U.S. doors would not even pass the lowest grade of such certification. The same goes for mechanical locks. Many German homeowners purchase high-quality lock cylinders that cost up to a few hundred euro per piece. Although there are security grades in America as well, German consumers have a much wider variety of choices and can select products offering more mechanical security. We have had meet extremely high-security standards in Germany as part of our partnership with the Hormann Group.”

Connected security in a crowded space requires complex solutions

Connected security is becoming a crowded space with the involvement of industry stalwarts like Honeywell and Yale. However, the majority are focused on the consumer market and fewer are equipped to respond to the challenges of older commercial buildings. Friehe explains that:

“In the building platform space, we see competitors attempting to build a “building operating system,” a software connecting all the hardware in a building. We don’t see this approach as working. Without a strong hardware foundation, there is just no way to connect legacy and modern systems. These companies might be able to supply middleware, but as long as they focus on software alone they will not be able to dominate this space. So our major differentiation point here is that we supply the hardware at the core of our system, providing quality ID-related data.”

Friehe also compares questions companies that monitor space utilization using sensor boxes as their hardware, noting that

“These companies cannot supply the same data quality that we can provide, as their data is not connected to the ID of users in any way and the number of potential data points is limited.”

The company sees the opportunity in the future to team up with companies in the HVAC and energy optimization sector where “We can make good use of their data, and they might require some of ours.”

How secure are connected locks?

One need only read the agenda of the latest DEFCON or Black Hat conference to know that there will be security researchers showing their prowess in hacking connected home security devices.  Then over the last week, we’ve seen spirited discussion after Amazon revealed they are sealing smart door locks that enable Amazon to deliver packages inside your home with a smart lock and connected camera. Walmart recently offered to deliver groceries straight to people’s fridges with a similar system. When polled about the idea of Amazon in-home delivery three different surveys suggested strong opposition to the idea, perhaps in the spirit of ‘just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.’

In regard to security, Friehe believes that:

“As an industry, we must guarantee that companies are not developing software to a negligent degree. They need to implement accepted industry practices, which should be enhanced to demand more regular audits when it comes to how data is collected and stored. Companies need to have security in mind and be held accountable if they fail to observe best-practices. This is especially so with connected devices, where extremely personal life data is concerned.

Ultimately, the free market will serve as the catalyst for ensuring that security in the IT sector catches pace, but there will be much more bloodshed and massive attacks.”

Presently, 1aim’s access control product LightAccess Pro can be purchased on Amazon Germany, UK and France, or by contacting their offices directly.

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With all the hype around blockchain, it’s a technology that’s still finding its feet when it comes to wide, mainstream adoption. Therefore it’s not every day when you come across a company that uses both IoT sensor technology and the blockchain to solve a common agricultural problem. Zest Labs have created a fresh food management solution that focuses on consistent food quality, reduced waste, and improved food safety and use technology to achieve this. I spoke to CTO Scott Durgin to find out more.

Durgin explained:

“We provide a solution from grower to grocer. We use sensor-based technologies to help suppliers and retailers manage the freshness and quality as well as tracking and traceability. And core to this concept is the fact that waste is a fairly big problem in the industry. This stems from the fact that 30% of products aren’t handled correctly, and it is difficult to differentiate them from the 70% that are. There are literally tens of millions of tonnes of produce shipped. You can’t individually check all the pallets.”

Food waste costs the nation an estimated $218 billion per year according to the NRDC. Produce picked on the same day is not all equal and will not necessarily have the same shelf life, depending on metrics such as humidity and field and storage temperatures. This brings best by dates into question. In response, Zest Labs has derived a single freshness metric — the ZIPR code — which is based on the specific product type, growing location, and actual harvest and processing conditions, that enable significantly improved freshness management decisions.

Zest Fresh software calculates a ZIPR code for each tracked pallet, using patented methodology and sensors, ensuring inventory and shipping decisions are based on actual freshness.  Growers, retailers, and restaurateurs can benefit from intelligent routing, meaning that produce with a closer best-by date can be re-routed earlier, to a nearer location or a juicer.

Testing has shown that using Zest Fresh with the ZIPR code can reduce that waste by roughly half, and significantly improve the customer experience. This provides continuous real-time visibility of the remaining freshness capacity of produce and then directs intelligent routing to optimize delivery for required shelf-life.

As Durgin explained:

“We see an opportunity to help suppliers in that they get paid the same amount today regardless of the freshness capacity of the product they’re putting out. So imagine if you could differentiate your product offering to be a competitive advantage in regard to its freshness.”

Zest labs introduces the blockchain

Zest Labs announced this week that they are now also offering free blockchain set up for growers and shippers using the Zest Fresh platform. Durgin believes that the blockchain creates an added layer of security and trust throughout the fresh food supply chain by creating true transparency about all key food freshness factors to all participants within the network.

“Zest Fresh quickly delivers access to blockchain technology for its customers by leveraging secure and authenticated data collection from its wireless IoT sensors, through its intelligent access points, and into the secure Zest Cloud. Further, by combining our predictive analytics, we can extend the value of blockchain through smart contracts that can automatically recognize when fresh products meet contracted specifications throughout the supply chain.”

With most industries considering how the blockchain may benefit their operations, food suppliers, in particular, are paying close attention since there’s a very real possibility that large companies may eventually require their supply chain partners to participate. This could mean many growers are forced to adopt blockchain, whether they like it or not. Forced technology adoption has happened before such as with RFID where adoption was successful until large companies mandated its use and none of the smaller suppliers could afford the tags.

Durgin believes that the blockchain solves the problem of trust but it isn’t a replacement for conventional IoT data processing and storage:

“Would we use blockchain for our core internal processing of the system? No, it’s not designed to do that. We have the Zest platform underneath which is actually a data streaming complex event processing system and it’s designed to scale in the world of IoT and it does things in a very real time fashion and handles very complex event streams that could never be applicable to being processed in a blockchain.

If you think about quality in freshness, it’s more than just sensor data thrown into a block or a transaction in a block and so we see the opportunity to take this universal ZIPR code and for those folks where blockchain makes sense to their business. Given the very nature of what blockchain does it creates a very interesting information sharing network opportunity that ensures consistency up and down the supply chain.”

Durgin also likens the blockchain’s adoption challenges to his days as Product Manager at IBM working on Lotus Notes :

“Back in the day we actually used to license the TCAP IP protocol and the AppleTalk protocol amongst others. We had to license the protocols and include them in the product so that it could talk with a client server. Such a thing would be unheard of today. So when you think about blockchain technologies, I liken them to when we had to do extra heavy lifting to build a platform like Lotus Notes, designed to make it easy for people to solve business problems also.”

As agtech becomes increasingly automated and connected, the blockchain may just become another business tool in a farmer’s arsenal.

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Researchers at a Belgian University earlier this week revealed the discovery of a break in the security protocol used to protect the vast majority of Wi-Fi connections (WPA2 based).  Mathy Vanhoef of imec-DistriNet, KU Leuven University, released his findings explaining that an attacker within range of a victim can exploit these weaknesses using key reinstallation attacks (KRACKs) to read information that was previously assumed to be safely encrypted. This can be abused to steal sensitive information such as credit card numbers, passwords, chat messages, emails, and photos.

Vanhoef stressed that “Depending on the network configuration, it is also possible to inject and manipulate data. For example, an attacker might be able to inject ransomware or other malware into websites.” Further, The KRACK attack is universal and works against all type of devices connecting to or using a WPA2 WiFi network. This includes Android, Linux, iOS, macOS, Windows, OpenBSD, and embedded and IoT devices. If your device supports Wi-Fi, it is most likely affected.

See Also: 6 technologies you need to know to secure your IoT network

The weaknesses are in the Wi-Fi standard itself, and not in individual products or implementations. Therefore, any correct implementation of WPA2 is still likely affected. Consumers are advised to update all their devices once security updates are available.

I spoke to cybersecurity researcher Nadir Izrael, CTO and co-founder of Armis, the company responsible for the discovery of BlueBorne, a set of vulnerabilities that impact any connected device using Bluetooth. Nearly all devices with Bluetooth capabilities, including smartphones, TVs, laptops, watches, smart TVs, and even some automobile audio systems, are vulnerable to this attack. If exploited, the vulnerabilities could enable an attacker to take over devices, spread malware, or establish a “man-in-the-middle” to gain access to critical data and networks without user interaction.

Izrael explained:

“It’s not shocking to learn Wi-Fi is vulnerable, but it’s still disturbing to see how the technology we all rely on every day can’t be trusted. This is the second time in two months that we’ve seen all connected devices being vulnerable to widespread airborne vulnerabilities; we recently discovered vulnerabilities in Bluetooth and the BlueBorne threat. The difference is that with KRACK we can’t tell people to just turn off Wi-Fi. The majority of all traffic is now wireless. It’s how we connect, communicate, and live.

KRACK shows us we are now living in the new age of exposure. It is a combination of a world of devices that either can’t be updated or cannot have any security software running on them. Since we can’t stop using smartphones, remove all the smart TVs, take away the connected healthcare unit, or remove the quality control sensors from the manufacturing line, we need solutions that will see each device and its activity – and take action on whether that device is behaving properly or inappropriately.”

The challenge to update connected products

While companies are rushing to release security updates and patches (Tech blog Charged offers an ongoing list of firmware patches as they become available) the reality is a little more complex for IoT. As Izrael notes:

“Updating devices has become very complex. Some devices can be updated; in fact, updates are a part of a standard process. Other devices make updates very difficult. The vast majority of these simple connected devices in the home and at work do not allow for easy software updates or security patches. Many lack a decent interface for a consumer or IT professionals to easily access a way to update them. Some have default passwords that may not be known (default passwords that themselves create risks as we have seen with the Mirai attack). Others have simply no way to get an update onto the device.”

Is this proof of vulnerabilities ripe for future attack?

Fortunately, the world as we know it is not going to end for now, but the Izrael notes that KRACK is a proof-of-concept. As patches are now being released, the hope is that it will not be exploited in the wild, but it’s likely that criminals will try. He suggests that for protection,  businesses must ensure that all their corporate and employee devices are updated with the latest software and patches. For devices they don’t control or can’t update, businesses need to ensure devices can’t connect to a critical network.

Izrael warns that poor industry focus on security due to connectivity being the first priority has set up an ecosystem ripe for attack: :

“In a world of a glaring lack of security standards across IoT protocols, we see an attack surface that is expanding rapidly, exposing enterprises to attacks they are ill-prepared to defend against. Unfortunately, we know that companies can’t even see 40% of the connected devices in their environment. This is why IoT and all these connected devices are a big security concern. It’s a huge security blind spot for organizations, with serious consequences.”

As researchers scramble to determine the origin of and people responsible for KRACK, it’ll only be a matter of time before the next Wi-Fi (WPA2 specific or not) vulnerability with potential for serious consequences is brought to light.

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Many of us are impatient for a future where telehealth reduces our visits to health professionals. Whether you are geographically isolated, tired of waiting hours in a waiting room for an overdue appointment or simply have felt the pain of dragging yourself from your sick bed to a doctor’s surgery to acquire a sick note for an employer, consumers are keen to see a change. Current health providers are expanding their services to include remote health. Health tech startups such as mediconecta and couch are creating new stand-alone services for remote care.

However substantial barriers exist for telehealth in practice according to a new survey of the 114 chief information officers, IT directors, telehealth managers and other professionals by the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives and KLAS.

About 59% of respondents listed reimbursement as a limitation, noting that some payers have been slow to reimburse telehealth visits and or reimburse at rates lower than face-to-face care. Most said integration between their electronic medical record and virtual care platform vendor was nonexistent or unidirectional. They also cited improved patient access as a major benefit, and three-quarters reported that they were actively planning to either expand the number of specialties served or expand patient access to providers using their present solution.  

According to Adam Gale, president of KLAS: “Telehealth holds enormous promise. However, the underlying technology needs to evolve faster. In particular, integration of telehealth with provider EMRs is still at a primitive level. Vendors need to step up in terms of technology and improved support.” 

Remote health is already here in wearables and diagnostic tools

TytoHome is a connected health system by Tyto Care that provides a complete telehealth visit and comprehensive medical exam of the heart, lungs, ears, skin, throat, and temperature through the use of an advanced digital stethoscope, otoscope, thermometer and examination camera with a secure data exchange, clinical repository, appropriate instructions and live telehealth visits. The company has announced a number of partnerships including  Allied Physicians Group and American Well.

We’re also  seeing telehealth embedded into the aged care facilities of the future such as those partnering with K4Connect where sensor technology already enables health professionals to gain accurate lifestyle and biometric data about their patients.

In regard to diagnostics, scientists have developed a home HIV testing kit that speeds up diagnosis and allows patients to monitor their own treatment. Teams from Imperial College London and DNA Electronics collaborated to create a USB stick containing a mobile phone chip. A drop of blood gets placed on the USB stick. If any HIV virus is present in the sample, this triggers a change in acidity which the chip transforms into an electrical signal.  This electrical signal connects to a corresponding software program.

Initial research shows the device to be highly accurate. Of 991 blood samples tested, the technology was accurate 95% of the time. The device also significantly reduces the testing time-traditional HIV tests take. A minimum of three days is required by traditional methods whilst the USB stick can produce a result in under 30 minutes. The application is also used for at home monitoring of virus levels in the bloodstream, enabling health providers to determine firstly medication adherence and secondly, if the virus has developed a resistance to the prescribed drugs.

Another company has removed the requirement of health clinic visits for sperm tests with YO Sperm Test a male fertility kit that is FDA approved for at-home use with the use of a smartphone.

The autonomous car as a health provider

Companies are pushing the idea of the autonomous car as the third most important tech of the future. This essentially creates a moving room where mobility as a service means a vehicle’s utilization expands to a range of tasks, including doctor’s visits. This could include a  self-driving clinic such as that proposed by AI health for remote areas, minimizing the logistical burden on the patients and makes them more likely to engage in their care before conditions and costs escalate. Such a clinic would be embedded with sensors to gain accurate biometrics of the consumer through a self-guided assessment.  If the results indicate that the patient needs to consult a specialist, the Aim platform would connect the user to one of the on-call specialists from participating fleet partners.

The unexpected costs of telehealth

Unexpected downsides still exist with telehealth. While cheaper than the traditional doctor or hospital visits, more people may seek care because it is easier to use, driving up healthcare costs, according to a recent study. Another study from the University of Wisconsin found that encouraging patients to use online care options increases the number of office visits and phone calls and that physicians accept 15% fewer new patients each month following e-visit adoption. Additionally, researchers found “no observable improvement in patient health between those utilizing e-visits and those who did not.”

There have also been some unanticipated problems in the health consultation, an influx of male patients flashing doctors, particularly where patients who are exposing themselves often use an alias during the sign-up process to skirt detection.

Yet for people without access to a healthcare specialist in their district, telehealth reduces the barrier to entry and ensures (at least in theory) that the same treatment is not restricted by geography. It’s highly likely in the foreseeable future that we’ll see a healthcare system with the mainstream 3D printing of drugs on demand at pharmacies (already we have Spritam) and medication delivery by drone (reports suggest Amazon is secretly working on telehealth). That long waiting room wait might just be a thing of the past before we know it.

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Dell Technologies this Tuesday announced the formation of a new IoT solutions strategy, a new IoT division and a $1bn commitment in IoT R&D. Chairman and CEO Michael Dell called IoT “the infrastructure of the next industrial revolution. And that’s what we’re co-inventing with our customers and our partners,”

The company’s new IoT Division, led by VMware CTO Ray O’Farrell, is chartered with orchestrating IoT products and services. The IoT Solutions Division will combine internally developed technologies with offerings from the vast Dell Technologies ecosystem to deliver complete solutions for the customer.

“Dell Technologies has long seen the opportunity within the rapidly growing world of IoT, given its rich history in the edge computing market” explained O’Farrell. “Our new IoT Division will leverage the strength across all of Dell Technologies family of businesses to ensure we deliver the right solution – in combination with our vast partner ecosystem – to meet customer needs and help them deploy integrated IoT systems with greater ease.”

Distributed computing and the need for edge 

Much of the underlying conversation was about a move away from a focus on cloud-based delivery towards distributed computing. As well as much commentary about the benefits of edge based computing, particularly in regard to latency, IIoT security and cost benefits. According to Michael Dell:

“Dell Technologies is leading the way for our customers with a new distributed computing architecture that brings IoT and artificial intelligence together in one, interdependent ecosystem from the edge to the core to the cloud. The implications for our global society will be nothing short of profound.”

The company also announced a number of new product development initiatives including:

• Dell EMC ‘Project Nautilus’: Software that enables the ingestion and querying of data streams from IoT gateways in real time. Data can subsequently be archived to file or object storage for deeper advanced analytics;
• ‘Project Fire’: a hyper-converged platform part of the VMware Pulse family of IoT solutions that includes simplified management, local compute, storage and IoT applications such as real-time analytics. ‘Project Fire’ enables businesses to roll-out IoT use cases faster and have consistent infrastructure software from edge to core to cloud;
• RSA ‘Project IRIS’: Currently under development in RSA Labs, Iris extends the Security Analytics capability to provide threat visibility and monitoring right out to the edge;
• Disruptive technologies like processor accelerators will increase the velocity of analytics closer to the edge. Collaboration with industry leaders like VMware, Intel and NVIDIA and the Dell Technologies Capital investment in Graphcore reflect opportunities to optimize servers for AI, machine learning, and deep learning performance.
• Project ‘Worldwide Herd’: for performing analytics on geographically dispersed data – increasingly important to enable deep learning on datasets that cannot be moved for reasons of size, privacy, and regulatory concern.

Investments in IoT Future through Dell Technologies Capital

Dell Technologies Capital, the venture arm of Dell Technologies, is partnering closely with the new IoT division, providing industry insight and relationships to support its strategic agenda. Through its investments in promising startups and founders, Dell Technologies Capital provides a valuable link to the external innovation ecosystem. effectively accelerating the development and deployment of new IoT, AI and ML technologies and solutions.

An interesting investments is with Edico Genome, creator of the first processor, DRAGEN, designed to analyze next-generation sequencing data. The processor has been successfully utilized by diagnosticians for ultra-rapid whole genome diagnosis for critically ill newborns. CEO Pieter van Rooyen detailed their partnership with Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego whereupon the presenting of an unwell newborn “A physician has 4000 diseases to rule out. The fastest the leading doctor can do it is in 50 hours. But with DRAGEN, health professionals can do the 24 hours of data analysis in 20 minutes, getting the diagnostic process down to 26 hours.”

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Anyone who likes to binge watch TV while cooking knows the pain of having to stop kneading dough to pause a show or move to the next episode. In comes Bixi, a device that’s the brainchild of French startup Bluemint Labs. It connects with iOS or Android phones and tablets via Bluetooth LE.

However, Bixi does more than just control smartphones. It can operate a GoPro Camera, adjust connected lighting or other smart home devices through gesture control. There’s also a built-in microphone and support for Amazon’s Alexa meaning it can accept verbal commands also.  Bixi currently supports eight gestures, with the intention to add support for more types of gestures as people get more comfortable with Bixi. The device’s sensors easily differentiate between horizontal, diagonal, and vertical swipes.

I spoke to Chief Marketing Officer Pierre-Hughes Davoine to find out more at IFA 2017. He explained that the company was currently in conversation with several automotive companies and OEMs to discuss the future integration of their technology into their products. The company intends to release the API of Bixi App to developers who can make new use-cases to be integrated into the main Bixi App via ‘In-App’ Purchases.

It;s not the first time this technology has been proposed. Car insurers, Ingenie released research this year predicting the functionality of the cars of the future. They forecast that keys will be eschewed for a fingerprint sensor, iris scanner or other biometric systems to identify you as you walk up and open the door. The windows will have AR capabilities and embedded touchscreen. Some driving functions will be carried out through gesture controls and voice activation instead of buttons and a steering wheel.

Kinemic brings writing to the air

Founded in March 2016, German startup Kinemic takes Bixi’s ideas several steps further with not only gesture control but the ability to write in the air (as if signing your name perhaps) and click on an ‘air mouse.’  I’ve seen a demonstration of the writing capability in person and it’s something quite wonderful. Kinemic enables the gesture control of digital devices – such as PCs, smartphones, wearables or AR glasses. Their focus is industrial customers can use the technology to improve their processes to become safer, more ergonomic and faster.  They’ve piloted with the pharmaceutical and automotive sectors and won a place in the DeutschBahn (Germany’s national railway) MindBox Accelerator in July this year, providing them with hands-on access to the railway sector.

MYO Armbands

A slightly earlier application is MYO armbands by Canadian based Thalmic Labs that uses, as the name implies, electromyography, a sensor technology that is typically used in the medical world, to pick up electrical impulses from muscles. These allow users to control computers, toys, and other devices. It uses Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy to communicate with the device it’s paired with.

The company offers SDKs for Windows, Mac, iOS, and Andriod. Some keen developers have already developed a plethora of use cases ranging from surgical applications to controlling drones. There’s even a marketplace for apps developed. Amazon’s Alexa fund invested in Thalmic Labs‘ US series B last fall although it’s unclear what the company will focus on next.

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Upon visiting Berlin’s IFA2107  — Germany’s answer to CES — recently,  there was one word I kept hearing: Alexa. In the consumer hardware space, it’s a great time to be Amazon, if the sheer number of hardware companies jumping on the Alexa bandwagon are anything to go by.

Only today it was revealed that Amazon is working on a pair of smart glasses integrating Alexa, intended to look similar to regular glasses with bone conduction technology to allow the user to engage with Alexa without having to wear headphones. Amazon is also working on an Echo connected camera system that cannot only keep a look out for intruders but also Amazon-delivered packages.

See also: Amazon may acquire startup to make Alexa smarter

During the IFA conference, a number of companies made their own Alexa announcements. Let’s take a look:

Bragi makes The Dash series Amazon Alexa-compatible

Smart headphone  company Bragi is responsible for one of the largest Kickstarter funding rounds in European history (over $3.39 million) with The Dash series (The Dash, The Dash Pro), headphones that not only enable the user to listen to music without leads  but also measure movements like pace, steps, cadence and distance along with heart rate, oxygen saturation and energy spent, without an attached smartphone.

At IFA2017 they company announced that their headphones are now  Alexa-compatible. This marks a first for Alexa in the “truly wireless” headphone space. It’s also one of the first truly mobile hardware integrations for Amazon’s cloud-based voice service.

“Now customers with The Dash headphones can easily take Alexa with them on the go,” said Jon Kirk, Director Amazon Alexa.

“Bragi’s intelligent headphones with Alexa will make it easy for customers to control their smart home, ask for news, and access more than 20,000 skills in the Alexa skills store.”

Bragi products are currently compatible with voice assistants like Apple’s Siri and Google Assistant, but Amazon Alexa brings a new world of possibilities through smart home, shopping, and home entertainment use cases. Users of Amazon Alexa on The Dash will also be able to access several streaming audio options including their Amazon Music Library, Amazon Prime Music, Audible and TuneIn Radio.

Amazon Alexa increases robot helper tasks

UBTECH Robotics‘ Alpha 2 and younger sibling Lynx, are two humanoid robots are intent on taking over your household tasks. They can take pictures and videos, make calls, check voicemails, read and send texts and emails, and control WiFi-enabled office equipment. They can also post to your social media using voice commands and dance enthusiastically due to over 20 joints on each robot. Alpha 2 features an open API and SDK for Android and the comes welcomes input from developer enthusiasts.

Significantly, Lynx is the first video-enabled humanoid robot with Amazon Alexa functionality. This means that the robot can not only shop directly from Amazon but also ’s talk to home devices such as security cameras, door locks, security systems, and thermostats.

Fellow robotics company Qiban debuted Sanbot Nano, the company’s first home robot. It’s something like a security camera crossed with Echo Dot  — it’s Alexa capabilities succeeded that of Lynx robot — that patrols your house and talks to you, thanks to 50 sensors that help it avoid obstacles, hear voices, and facial recognition tech that helps it recognize when someone enters the room.

The downside is its price, you can expect to part with $2,800, more than double the price of Alpha 2 and Lynx.

Other products that announced partnerships with Amazon included SmarterFridge Cam, Bosch 360° Indoor Camera and Eyes Outdoor Cameras and a new range of televisions for Toshiba.

Alexa and Cortana connect

Along with lending it’s functionality to more and more hardware, Amazon and Microsoft announced on Sunday that Alexa will be able to talk to Cortana, and Cortana will be able to talk to Alexa.

Alexa customers will be able to access Cortana’s unique features like booking a meeting or accessing work calendars, reminding you to pick up flowers on your way home, or reading your work email – all using just your voice. Similarly, Cortana customers can ask Alexa to control their smart home devices, shop on Amazon.com, interact with many of the more than 20,000 skills built by third-party developers, and much more.

According to Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO, Amazon:

“The world is big and so multifaceted. There are going to be multiple successful intelligent agents, each with access to different sets of data and with different specialized skill areas. Together, their strengths will complement each other and provide customers with a richer and even more helpful experience. It’s great for Echo owners to get easy access to Cortana.”

The combining of the home automation and shopping functionalities of Alexa and business communication skills of Cortana will provide some useful collaborative clout against Google and Siri assistants, as well as showing the benefits of collaboration to the innovation of the voice assistant ecosystem. There is, however, no word yet from the latter companies as to whether they want to join the gang. As Amazon endeavors to seep into every part of your life, you can bet the rest are taking notice.

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Anyone above a certain age will remember when household microwaves first came out. Cooking would often involve burn-inducing steaming or painting whole chickens with brown liquid so it would resemble a roasted version of itself at the dinner table. Rest assured, those days are long behind us, thanks to a “revolutionary” new cooking appliance, the Dialog oven by German company Miele.

See also: What renters who want a smart home should consider

Launched at IFA 2017 this week, it’s the product of 6 years of research, including research into industrial and medical heating and cooling. Its precision cooking ability means that it can cook fish embedded in the center of a block of ice – without the ice melting. Or a tray of disparate ingredients for an entire meal, such as a leg of lamb, green asparagus, and potato wedges can enter the oven and finish cooking, done to perfection, at precisely the same time.

The Dialog oven features a modular unit which generates electromagnetic waves in a specific frequency range and distributes these in the oven via two high-performance sensors.

Better tasting food?

As the molecules in food are arranged in different ways and even rearrange during the course of cooking, continuous adjustment of the frequency supports the cooking process. The result is better tasting food that cooks faster. The same sensors also provide the Dialog oven with feedback on the amount of energy which has been absorbed by food.

The company believes that the new cooking functionalities may require some training for home cooks. Predictably, the oven comes with an accompanying app that includes food preparation videos and shopping lists and the transference of recipe times from the app to the oven. Yet it’s a notable departure from most smart kitchen tech of late that aims to make devices connected rather than improve their actual cooking ability.

Let’s face it, we’ve seen some ridiculous creations over the last year including tortilla makers, juicers and stovetop. Maybe now we can get back to the science of cooking? The market launch of the Dialog oven is planned for April 2018 in Germany and Austria. It retails for about $9,500. Sure it’s a price point beyond the vast majority, but if it the technology is good, we can expect a gradual trickle down effect.

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When you consider the trajectory of connected home innovation, it’s easy to see that the big wins have been more infrastructural elements like connected lighting, utilities, and alarms rather than homewares. Particularly when investors seem compelled to invest in products as ridiculous as Juicero.

In short, Juicero sold a $700 juicer with $5 pouches of fruit with a corresponding app. It sounds like the kind of product I like to laugh about on Kickstarter  — and often do —  yet a plethora of big-player investors put money into it, including GV (formerly Google Ventures), Nest co-founder Matt Rogers, First Beverage Group and Campbell’s Soup, to the tune of $118 million.

I really started laughing when it was revealed that the juice could be squeezed from pouch without even needing a machine, just a pair of hands. Unsurprisingly, the company announced its closure of sales last week.

Really, VCs? Why Juicero?

It’s worth pulling the issues apart here. Firstly, VCs see consumer hardware as a compelling. David Krane, a partner at GV told the New York Times that Juicero was “the most complicated business that I’ve ever funded. It’s software. It’s consumer electronics. It’s produce and packaging.” Was he simply seduced by a shiny prototype that promised much but failed to deliver?

I think it’s more likely to be the push of the repeat customer subscription-as-a-service model of Juicero. Products like Keurig and Nespresso set a precedence, particular where machines could only use certain brands. Campbells even tried a soup range with Keurig in 2013 but discontinued it in 2016 due to poor sales. Yet the idea must have persisted, a least in investors minds. Perhaps they were hoping to claw onto some of the pre-packaged market space as Amazon/Wholefoods are trying to turn people loyal to fresh door delivered produce?

Innovation — not just newcomers but also the old guard

The bigger part of the whole issue is that a lot of innovation in hardware is coming from big, traditional companies and there’s the temptation to find hardware created by smaller companies like iRobot — the maker of Roomba — and Dyson — famous for their vacuum cleaner tech. It’s clear that while white goods, for example, can be accused of being dinosaurs of the tech space, the innovation is there.

At last week’s IFA 2017 in Berlin, Samsung unveiled the WW8800M washing machine embedded with technology that cuts washing time by 50% and energy use by 20% without compromising the cleaning performance.

They describe it as “IoT-ready” and it’s embedded with an AI-powered laundry assistant that enables consumers to manage a laundry finishing time, automatic recommendations for optimal wash cycles based on the information such as color, fabric type, and degree of soiling and remote monitoring to proactively alert users about potential problems and providing quick troubleshooting support.

And then, there’s Bosch’s X-Spect, a handheld scanning device with the ability to identify the fabric composition of clothing and other materials as well as up to four different kinds of stains. According to Bosch’s Dr. Arndt von Bieren, the Head of Advanced Sensor and Food Technologies, the device can also measure the nutritional content of a piece of food:

“The core technology is based on two optical scanners. The scanner itself transmits its readings to the cloud, where an algorithm then determines what the scanner is looking at. The data then travels back to the scanner, and from there you can send it to a connected Bosch appliance.”

Perhaps the oddest home tech I can across was Pansonic’s robotic fridge. For those who might find a full faced robot too scary, the Panasonic fridge is on wheels. It can map and navigate your home autonomously and responds to voice commands such as “Come to the living room,” or “Go to the kitchen table.” It also retains data about every item in the fridge and makes appropriate beverage suggestions. It’s only a prototype right now, but like the washing machine and stain scanning device, it shows that innovation is alive and well in the hardware offerings of traditional companies, not just new players.

Bringing consumer and company closer

Any white good or big home appliance is part of a company to consumer relationship that might last ten years or more. It’s not just about a warranty, as connected appliances will be updated, security patched and repaired remotely. Then, of course, there are potential peripheral relationships with food and laundry retailers and cooking equipment companies, as the sheer volume of data that the devices can produce will have a big influence on their development decisions.

Big players are leading the way here (for example last year’s launches of smart fridges by LG and Samsung.) Sure, the prices were and are prohibitively high for the majority of us, but innovation has a way of trickling down — Think of how many vacuum robots are on the market now.

VCs want to be ready for the next big thing in home hardware and while the Juicero was possibly the worst example, the underpinning motivations were sound in regard to how we buy products, and their subscription supplements, and the changing nature of consumer relationships with both our connected home products and the companies that fill them.

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It feels like barely a week goes by without another breaking news account of a terrorist attack involving vehicle ramming, a form of attack in which a perpetrator deliberately aims a motor vehicle at a target with the intent to inflict fatal injuries or significant property damage by striking with concussive force.

From 2014 through 2017, terrorists carried out 21 known vehicle ramming attacks worldwide, resulting in over 220 fatalities and 800 injuries, including cities such as London, Stockholm, Berlin, Jerusalem, and Barcelona.

See also: Can ISIS hack the Internet of Things?

It’s fair to say that people connected to the ideas of terrorism will use any form of weapon possible to maim and kill at their disposal and a car or truck is just one tool in their potential arsenal. It’s also true that preventing terrorism is a multifaceted problem that encompasses law enforcement, intelligence, politics, and surveillance as well as of course, attempts to prevent people becoming attracted to terrorist acts in the first instance. We currently see the installation of bollards and other barriers being erected in public spaces, which may prevent or ameliorate some attacks.

I have lived in two cities where people who died due to car ramming  — Melbourne and Berlin — and technology writers are familiar with the trolley car problem when it comes to the ethics of self-driving cars. Along with deliberate acts of terrorism, we also have the reality of vehicles hitting people or places in the event of an ill or unconscious passenger or a driver poorly following GPS instructions too literally.

So what does this mean for technology, can it solve the problem or will it contribute to the ease of future attacks?

How technology could (and does) help

In Berlin last year a truck was driven by terrorists through a local Christmas market attack in Berlin, resulting in significant casualties, but they could have been worse: the assailant’s truck reportedly stopped early on during the attack. The truck had been fitted with an automatic emergency braking system, something that is covered under a regulation that is now mandated for heavier trucks in the EU.

EU Regulation No. 347/2012 specifies the technical requirements and test procedures for advanced emergency braking systems (AEBS) that detect the possibility of a collision with a preceding vehicle, warn the driver by a combination of optical, acoustic or haptic signals and, if the driver takes no action, automatically apply the vehicle’s brakes. In this instance the application meant that the trajectory of the truck was stopped earlier than intended, thus potentially saving many lives. Similar regulations have been proposed in the U.S.

It’s also worth considering instances where stolen vehicles are being used as attack vehicles as in Stockholm.  Delivery trucks are increasingly embedded with sensor technology and one option would be a kill switch that would shut down the truck and transmit its location as soon as it was reported lost. However, according to security researchers at Cisco, the reality is not quite so simple. I spoke to Barry Einsig, Global Automotive and Transportation Executive, and Franc Artes, Architect, Security Business Group last week who explained that the technology to shut a vehicle down exists today, “and has for probably almost a decade.” According to Artes, this a particularly relevant when we talk about connected vehicles:

“Because they’re connected it creates the opportunity to host the system and update or revoke certificates and ultimately you could geofence these devices and then you could shut those vehicles down. It’s not a technology problem it’s more of a security problem and also a process problem.

There was a lot of studies right after 9/11 regarding being able to shut vehicles down and part of the reason they didn’t advocate it was cyber security related and also because it could cause a bigger safety issue to shut down a big heavy vehicle when it’s going at highway speeds.”

How technology could make attacks easier

We already have ample examples of the ease of car hacking thanks to the efforts of white hat enthusiasts and researchers. It’s thus entirely possible that a car (self-automated or not) could be utilized in a terrorist attack. According to Einsig and Artes, the transportation industry’s technology infrastructure was traditionally built on closed, proprietary systems. The industry is on a journey to switch to modern connected networks, but security leaders fear the exposure to attackers during this transition period.

As we see the move into connected transport systems such as v2v communication and intelligent transportation enterprises. According to security analyst Sam Bocetta, one of the challenges is that with each branch in that chain of community you open yourself up to MITM attacks (Man in the Middle Attacks).

“An example of this is an IMSI catcher which works to basically intercept the communication between a node and a hub. This is done without either party knowing about the breach, allowing the MITM attacker to send a command or message to the node (in this situation the car).”

Criminals are also heavily invested in new technology. Cisco’s Ensig says:

“Cyber criminals think further outside the box than the engineer who’s developing the technology who is focused is solving the problem. Whether it is car technology that notices that you’re starting to swerve into a lane so your vehicle automatically shunts the steering wheel in the other direction to swerve back, hackers have already found a way to activate that to force you into oncoming traffic. Then there are acts like remotely engaging the brakes and crash sensors in the vehicle.”

He also notes that colloquially people connect terrorism with Luddites living in mud huts when they are as likely to be highly educated and intelligent with tech skills:

“Criminals will alway adapt technology faster than anyone…The cyber criminal is always looking far outside the box compared to the engineer developing the technology.”

Although as Bocetta notes:

“Hacking into an autonomous car using the latest technology is a LOT harder than learning how to drive a truck.”

At any rate, it is clear that car makers are working with federal agencies to address many of these issues. We just have to hope that terrorists and other offenders, don’t stay ahead of them.

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Valeo and Cisco recently announced a cooperation agreement for strategic innovation in smart mobility services at the Viva Technology conference in Paris. Their proposed product is Valeo Park4U, a connected platform and app that enables cars to park by themselves in connected car parks.

See also: How do you make parking smarter?

Here’s how it works — the driver gets out of his or her vehicle at the parking lot entrance and activates the automatic parking system using a smartphone. The vehicle then continues its journey in automatic mode until it has finished parking. With just a few clicks, it can be set in motion again to meet the driver at the designated pick-up point in the parking lot.

The vehicle drives itself inside the parking lot by combining the power of automatic parking technologies — Valeo onboard telematics and secure key systems (Valeo InBlue) and Cisco Parking Controller technologies, which equip car parks with Wi-Fi, video sensors, and artificial intelligence-based solutions.

Knowing its environment

The vehicle’s sensors, along with the information provided by the equipment installed in the car park, allow the vehicle to perceive its environment with an extremely high level of accuracy and anticipate and calculate its journey at any time up to the completion of the parking maneuver. The vehicle is able to navigate complex parking facilities in total safety, even multi-story garages, by processing all of the necessary information with the help of an integrated GPS service and the vehicle’s own sensors.

The ability of more recent cars to self-park is not new per se. More significant is the ability of the cars to drop off and pick up the owner at the entrance to the parking garage, with the car effectively acting as a driverless valet. The service is currently being introduced at a connected car park in Issy-les-Moulineaux, France, owned by urban mobility company Indigo. With their parking network of over 750 cities and 16 countries, any future roll-out could be substantial.

Robert Vassoyan, Chief Executive Officer of Cisco France, said:

“With the innovative Cyber Valet Services project, we can currently connect millions of parking spaces in total safety. We are pleased and proud to combine our expertise, technological solutions, and resources with those of Valeo to together provide cities and their residents with new digital services. Partnering with a major French company further illustrates our desire to work in collaboration with the entire ecosystem and our ability to co-innovate as we pursue our commitment to accelerating the digital transformation.”

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It was reported earlier this month that Intel will eliminate nearly 140 jobs after dropping three of its IoT-focused product lines. It followed news in June that last month’s news that Intel was discontinuing development of the company’s Galileo, Joule and Edison lines, originally developed to power a range of IoT-based devices and applications including wearables, smart speakers, and robotics.

This news was preceded by a study in June by Intel into the yet-to-be-realized economic potential when today’s drivers become idle passengers. Coined the “Passenger Economy” by Intel and prepared by analyst firm Strategy Analytics, the study predicts an explosive economic trajectory growing from $800 billion in 2035 to $7 trillion by 2050. I participated in a webinar held by Intel to find out more.

What will we do in vehicles when we are not driving?

By the time we hit Level 5 vehicle autonomy and people are no longer driving themselves or others, Intel suggests we will shift to a model of Mobility-as-a-Service in effect a peripheral economy,  where the car can contain and facilitate a range of functions. Mobility service providers will offer both on-demand and contract or subscription models that offer transportation as an amenity to their core retailing products or services. Over time service, application and content revenue generated by Mobility-as-a-Service will supplant the value of vehicle sales as core sources of shareholder value creation.

See also: Intel creates self-driving car consortium with Ericsson and Toyota

Sociologists like Ray Oldenburg have been promoting the theory of  “‘a third place” since the 1980’s, places outside work where people can enjoy a good atmosphere and the company of others and Intel’s research suggests that this will be one of the uses of self-driving cars during the journey, with in-vehicle services in industries like hotel and hospitality, restaurant and dining, tourism and entertainment, healthcare, and service delivery of all kinds.

If we assume a conservative 300 million workers — less than 10 percent of all workers globally — drive to work an average of 30 minutes per day, this equates to over 60 billion hours per year of time spent driving that could be freed due to pilotless vehicles. This leaves their commuting time ripe for engagement by new services and new delivery models of current services.  In-car services may include onboard beauty salons, touch-screen tablets for remote collaboration, fast-casual dining, remote vending, mobile health care clinics and treatment pods, and even platooning pod hotels. Media and content producers will develop custom content formats to match short and long travel times.

The report offers a range of future scenarios that suggest a future where life is easier and time in a vehicle is as purposeful as at home or work. Imagine if this was your day before a flight:

 Mr. Schmidt has three meetings during the day and a 7:00 p.m. business flight. His Mobility-as-a-Service provider has scheduled a vehicle for him for the day. His ride arrives promptly at 6:55 a.m. to allow time for luggage storage. Leaving him at his first meeting, the AutoCab retrieves a preordered salad for lunch, picks up his suit at the cleaners, and picks up some toiletries for the trip at the pharmacy, and then returns to pick him up after his meeting. Mr. Schmidt completes his meetings using the travel time between meetings to pay bills, manage bank accounts and schedule a review of gift options for his wife’s birthday.

By 1:00 p.m., he has eaten the salad, watched a summary update of news personalized for his interests, and taken a 15-minute nap with the side glass digitally darkened. At 5:00 p.m., Mr. Schmidt arrives at the airport. As he leaves, he asks the vehicle to return some documents to his home before returning to the storage facility where AutoCab vehicles are in holding patterns for their next pickup or delivery.

It’s an interesting scenario as when you make note of all the different interactions that are carried out over the day. Each suggests supplementary and complementary roles carried out by others (let’s face it some like putting purchases in the car may by carried out by robots) and the car is not only a means to transport Mr. Schmidt but also a conduit to a range of other tasks.

B2B Mobility as a service

Mobility as a service will also gradually replace car ownership. This is significant when you consider that the average car currently sits idle 92% of the time. Doug Davis, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Automated Driving Group  at Intel commented that ” large automakers are rapidly evolving into software companies and will become service providers for a fleet of networked vehicles.” Vehicles will be available for hire on-demand (potentially as part of a suite of subscription services) and can be substituted from a fleet, depending on the needs of the passenger.

Roger Lanctot, associate director of Strategy Analytics at Intel mentioned the significant shortage of commercial vehicle drivers in vehicles such as long-haul trucks, alluding to a future where rather than technology taking people’s jobs it would fill the gaps.  The report further suggests that transportation companies, regardless of the size of their travel distances, should plan for the re-training of their workforces. They may, for example, become customer service professionals who can sell and market services and related goods and offerings or supply chain experts.

Lanctot also commented, “It’s possible that we’ll see a whole new class of vehicles, like autonomous bicycles, RV’s and autonomous houses, concepts that a just a twinkle in people eyes.”

A gradual progression is essential

Intel notes that  the transition to passengers being comfortable enough to take their eyes off the road will take some time, stating:

“For this vision of the Passenger Economy to truly arrive, consumers’ perceptions of autonomous vehicles will need to evolve to where they believe and embrace as fact that these vehicles are 100%t safe. To enable this, technology vendors will need to complete billions of miles of testing and deliver a string of commercial solutions that prove vehicle safety and reliability.” They also note that there will be some people unwilling to give up driving altogether.

Intel is just one of many companies that are leveraging a future heavily invested in autonomous transport. It’s becoming an increasingly crowded space as technologists compete to be first to the line with road-ready vehicles once level 3-5 cars become more mainstream. It may be a while yet until we see can sit in our virtual office, but there’s no shortage of technologists waiting with bated breath.

Photographs of future vehicles by Ideo

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You’re probably used to waking up to coffee, thanks to a pre-programmed machine. But what about an oven that offers breakfast options based on your health and recipes designed around your level of activity for the day? Or a thermostat that adjusts for the day’s weather and knows when you’re headed out? Or plumbing that alerts you to the exact location of a leak, or plugs that deliver electricity only when you need an item to work?

Today Neura is introducing an AI solution that makes all of this a reality – turning IoT environments into truly connected universes that allow companies to connect to their customers during the most meaningful moments. Neura enables consumers to take control of their smart home devices – from Amazon Echo, Nest thermostat, Hue Lights, Ring smart doorbell, refrigerators and more – and make their smart homes more intelligent with the integration of true AI. Their AI engine integrates with multiple data channels to provide situational awareness for individual customers, ensuring personalized, highly relevant engagement.

See also: Neura brings machine learning and security ethics to IoT

I spoke to Ori Shaashua, co-founder and VP of product at Neura to find out more. Neura’s originally started their focus on health data when co-founder and CTO Triinu Magi fell sick for five months with a difficult to diagnose illness and decided to record her own biometrics ( heart rate, blood pressure, glucose etc) and keep a food diary. It provided data that lead to a diagnosis of a rare form of diabetes. As Shaashua explained, “We ended up realizing there’s no single device that unites all of our data. It’s scattered in our smart phones, and in Bluetoothoth and wifi devices around us and today is serving no one.”

An advanced system in machine learning

In response, Neura created an advanced system of machine learning for the Internet of Things that can gather data on individuals from a range of connected devices, including phones, tablets, apps, and more. Neura’s AI engine integrates with more than 80 connected devices to ensure sophisticated situational awareness for each individual consumer and offers a library of API calls designed to provide customized, highly relevant engagement. Their AI recognizes and analyzes human behavior and develops what it calls a “digital identity” for individuals, creating insight that can be used to personalize applications, services, and devices.

“It’s an AI service that does not belong to any brand, device or product but means that products can adapt to who you are and what you do in order to serve you better. We challenge the data economy as it works on the web and we make all the devices aware of you, ” explained Shaashua.

AI in the smart home learns how each individual family member interacts with their connected, smart home devices. It transforms raw sensor data from the consumers’ phones and connected devices into a pattern of behavior that is meaningful to every individual in the household.

For example, AI-enabled IoT devices detect the moment when an individual is driving to the gym, waking up after six hours of sleep or working at the office, in home or offsite, and then builds a profile of how each individual in the household lives their life.

AI-enhanced products learn each individual consumer’s persona and habits, and then start to predict the experience that matches their specific needs at that given moment. For example, switching from a programmed or app-activated thermostat to an AI-enhanced thermostat will enable the thermostat to ‘know’ specific family members are on their way home, and to turn on the heat or air conditioning or when to adjust for the family heading to bed. AI-enhanced lighting knows not to turn on the lights if everyone has left the house, while an AI-enhanced lock knows all the household’s occupants are out of the house and have driven off to work, and then locks the doors in that specific moment.

According to Shaashua, “This is the first technology in the home is able to adapt to each and every human and this opens up a whole a whole new experience in the interface between persons and products. We have enabled products to become aware of each family member in the home environment. ”

Democratizing AI

In 2016, Neura’s development framework was released the open source to enable other developers to personalize and contextualize their products. To Shaashua this is part of democratizing AI:

“There has been a challenge for most companies to create meaningful AI because if you look at today’s market, AI belongs to Google and Facebook, they keep their AI very close to their hearts, they don’t open their API to enable other products even to try to utilize the knowledge they generate. We have democratized AI and made it more accessible so that the resources that are needed for one of our customers to introduce AI into their product is 2 hours of integration. We have even tiny, single developer companies working with our Neura AI engine, doing great work like tackling fertility and changing lives.”
Connected products will be forced to improve.

What Neura will provide is a competitive advantage in highly competitive smart home markets such as home security and heating, where vendors with products that are truly responsive to the needs of customers will succeed. Shaashua recalled:

“I knew nest when they were 10 engineers, 10 geeks in a garage. and they took to home automation and they created a smart thermostat. It made Honeywell create better. Nest meant Honeywell had to care about home automation.”
Connected devices are becoming omnipresent in every nook of the home – home intelligence, energy efficiency, entertainment, wellness, access control, home safety, home comfort, daily tasks, and connectivity. We’ve waited a long time for our connected devices to become smart and able to communicate with each other, and it looks like, with Neura, the time has come.

The post Neura AI aims to make the connected home truly smart appeared first on ReadWrite.

As anyone who’s traveled widely before the days of connected smart phones and GPS knows the pain when travel plans go awry and you end up at your place of accommodation only to find yourself locked out in the middle of the night.

It’s the stuff nightmares are made of and a thing of the past until this week when hundreds of Internet-connected locks became inoperable last week, a problem lock makers Lockstate attributes to a faulty software update that resulted in a fatal system error. Lockstate’s RemoteLock 6i is a worldwide partner of Airbnb, meaning that many hosts were unable to remotely control their locks.

The problem occurred when RemoteLock6i’s were sent a firmware update intended for RemoteLock7i’s and subsequently the former was unable to be locked or receive over-the-air updates.

See also: Can smart locks really help you feel safer at home?

A letter was sent to all affected  — over 500 customers — instructing that they can either return parts to be fixed by Lockstate, with a turnaround time of five to seven days, or they could request a replacement lock, taking 14 to 18 days. In the meantime, homeowners are instructed to use a physical key, but what if you were out without your key when the crash happened or lived some distance away from the rental property?

I spoke to Yann Leretaille, CTO at Berlin company 1aim who build develop and produce access control systems, which enable users to open doors with mobile phones. All of their hardware, software, and IT-Infrastructure is created in house and I’ve had the pleasure of using their product upon visiting their office. According to Leretaille the use of WiFi in such scenarios is ill advised:

“At its core, the debacle at Lockstate reflects one of our major issues with IoT products today – simply placing a WiFi chip inside of an existing product (in this case, a code lock) and referring to it as ‘smart’ doesn’t mean that it actually is. Generally, we feel that it is dangerous to expose a device like a lock over WiFi, as an attacker could brick all the locks in the system, or reset the codes to be the same. This is why our access management system does not use WiFi.”

Leretaille further questions the absence of backups in anticipation of product failure:

“We also see that there was no backup strategy or fail-safes in place for such an issue, which a hacker might also replicate successfully. We allow our users to store two versions of our firmware on the same device, so if one does not operate correctly, they can revert to the other. If companies in this segment continue to treat security as an afterthought, it is inevitable that a script-kiddie will one day unlock thousands of doors at once from afar for fun.
Too many companies do not care about long-term support, reliability, or security, and this creates distrust in society. It casts a long shadow on the market. Almost every ‘smart lock’ we have seen has had big security flaws, and is easily compromised.”

Not the first connected home products failure

The scenario reminds me of the woe’s for numerous pet owners last year when connected company PetNet experienced difficulties with their automated pet feeder. The Petnet is a smart pet feeder with features including “intelligent sensor technology, learning algorithms, and processing power that assesses the dietary requirements of a pet” and a custom feeding schedule via a corresponding app with alerts to pet owners when their pet has been fed and reminders when food supplies are running low.

Unfortunately last August, Petnet’s third-party server service that the company rented from Google, was down for around 10 hours and did not have redundancy backups. This situation resulted in outraged pet owners, especially those who were away from home at the time.

Inherent with connected hardware design are possible failure scenarios like problems with internet connectivity, WiFi, a residential blackout, remote updates or the system needing a reboot/restart. Surely the possibility of product failure should have been anticipated in the design phase? Or does it negate the point of the connected product in the first place?

Let’s face it, a lock box with a pin code that houses a physical key would be a lot less stressful for everyone concerned. Technology will never be infallible and these kinds of scenarios do little to compel products to the mainstream.

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Few people would argue that cybersecurity is in a parlous state. In the last few weeks, we’ve seen a connected car wash and fish tank hacked respectively and a smart gun unlocked and fired thanks to a magnet at the latest DefCon.

In response to the problem, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators has put forward new legislation to address the security problems of the Internet of Things. The new bill, introduced on Tuesday, would require vendors that provide connected equipment to the U.S. government ensure products are patchable and meet industry security standards, according to Reuters.

The Internet of Things (IoT) Cybersecurity Improvement Act of 2017 is backed by the co-chairs of the Senate Cybersecurity Caucus — Democrat Mark R. Warner and Republican Cory Gardner, as well as Democrat Senator Ron Wyden and Republican Senator Steve Daine.

“My hope is that this legislation will remedy the obvious market failure that has occurred and encourage device manufacturers to compete on the security of their products,” Warner said.

See also: New study shows just a few driverless cars will ease traffic

The new bill would require a contractor providing an Internet-connected device to certify that it does not contain “any hardware, software, or firmware component with any known security vulnerabilities or defects” listed by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology’s National Vulnerability Data. Devices would have to be certified to be capable of “accepting properly authenticated and trusted updates from the vendor” and use “only non-depreciated industry-standard protocols and technologies” for functions such as network communications and encryption. Further, a contractor must certify that the device  “does not include any fixed or hard-coded credentials used for remote administration, the delivery of updates or, communication.”

Devices would have to be certified to be capable of “accepting properly authenticated and trusted updates from the vendor” and use “only non-depreciated industry-standard protocols and technologies” for functions such as network communications and encryption. Further, a contractor must certify that the device  “does not include any fixed or hard-coded credentials used for remote administration, the delivery of updates or, communication.”

The Insecurity of Things: A brief history

Security and Privacy in Your Car (SPY Car) Act

Current efforts are not the first attempt at legislation to address the security problems of IoT. In 2015 and again in March this year,  Senator Ed Markey introduced the Security and Privacy in Your Car (SPY Car) Act, legislation that would direct NHTSA and the Federal Trade Commission to establish federal standards to secure our cars and protect drivers’ privacy. The SPY Car Act also establishes a rating system — or “cyber dashboard”— that informs consumers about how well the vehicle protects drivers’ security and privacy beyond those minimum standards. It further requires that every vehicle give “clear and conspicuous notice” to the driver about what driving data is being collected, if it’s being transmitted or saved, and how it’s being used.

FTC case against TrendNET

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released a report into IoT privacy and security in early 2015  which detailed the issues and issues a series of recommendations for companies developing IoT devices. These included the recommendation “that vendors monitor connected devices throughout their expected life cycle, and where feasible, provide security patches to cover known risks.”

Several of these principles alluded in the FTC report are illustrated by the Commission’s first case involving an Internet-connected device. The FTC filed a complaint against security camera maker TrendNet for allegedly misrepresenting its software as “secure.” In its complaint, the Commission alleged, among other things, that the company transmitted user login credentials in clear text over the Internet, stored login credentials in clear text on users’ mobile devices, and failed to test consumers’ privacy settings to ensure that video feeds marked as “private” would, in fact, e private.

As a result of these alleged failures, hackers were able to access live feeds from consumers’ security cameras and conduct “unauthorized surveillance of infants sleeping in their cribs, young children playing, and adults engaging in typical daily activities.The complaint came after hackers breached TrendNet’s web site and accessed videos from 700 users’ live-camera feeds — many of these videos were published on the Internet.

The case was settled with stipulations including requiring the company to obtain third-party assessments of its security programs every two years for the next 20 years. TrendNet were also required to notify customers about the security issues with the cameras and the availability of the software update to correct them, and to provide customers with free technical support for the next two years to assist them in updating or uninstalling their cameras.

Is legislation, education or self-regulation the answer?

Since then there has of course been a change of government and administration. Earlier this year the current head of FTC told The Guardian that the agency is “not primarily a regulator” and called for a wait-and-see approach to enforcement during a discussion at a conference of cyber security professionals Nasdaq.

For the last couple of years, a working group convened by the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has been developing guidance about ways for IoT device manufacturers to better inform consumers about security updates related to the devices. This is a key part of any IoT security protocols, particularly in regard to insecure devices already on the market.  Further, what may be secure at present may further degrade without vigilance from customers.

How attentive are consumers willing to be? What about products purchases internationally? We’re currently in an era where a household may contain over 200 connected devices, each with their own specific security requirements. It’s not any better in enterprise, according to research earlier this year, almost half of all companies in the US using an IoT network have been the victims of recent security breaches,

We’re currently in an era where a household may contain over 200 connected devices, each with their own specific security requirements and varied life cycle. Even just cataloging all the connected devices in a single workplace could be a mammoth undertaking. Personally, I’m unconvinced a security minimum standards or rating system would work either, due to the sheer volume of connected devices emerging each year and the volatility of cyber security to new vulnerabilities. Will the current efforts of the Senate Cybersecurity Caucus lead to a trickle down effect to consumer law? How long would it take and how would it be enforced? Technology moves fast and it’s questionable the law can keep up.

The post Why legislation alone won’t solve the insecurity of the Internet of Things appeared first on ReadWrite.

For those involved in the IoT space, it feels as if not a day goes past without the launch of yet another IoT platform, promising a seamless conduit between connected devices and user applications.

Talk to any platform vendor and they’ll all earnest declare that their platform is the best, providing features and capabilities that exceed those of other platforms.

See also: IoT and dev platforms — connecting the world together

German research company IoT Analytics recently released its current Global IoT Platform Companies List. The database now includes 450 IoT Platform companies worldwide, which marks a 25% increase compared to the previous year.  Of the 13 industries analyzed, most of the vendors now focus on supporting IoT Solutions in Industrial/Manufacturing (32%), Smart City (21%) and Smart Home verticals (21%).In previous lists, Smart Home had been the leading vertical.

How to choose a platform

For any prospective customer traversing the platform landscape, differentiating between the current 450 plus platforms on the market is a bewildering. To help, IoT Network recently launched IoT Pilot, a free, completely independent, analyst-driven tool designed to help enterprises navigate and evaluate the IoT platform landscape. It was created in conjunction with IoT research firm Beecham Research and I spoke to Saverio Romeo, their chief research officer to find out more. 

He explained that Beecham Research had identified 25 key indicators against which to independently evaluate the performance of different IoT platforms. These include market experience, partnerships network, ease of use by system integrators, and advanced application development capabilities.

The consumer enters some information about their needs such as the purpose of the IoT device (for example, monitoring, predictive analytics and/or autonomous operability); the storage site of data (premises, cloud or hybrid location);  and whether the vendor wants to integrate with existing workplace enterprise systems. A list of suggested platforms is generated with their key advantages detailed. Romeo explained that the purpose was to “provide a starting point for vendors to find a suitable IoT platform.”

A saturated market without a dominant player

Romeo noted that the challenge of finding an IoT platform was complex in a saturated market where there are currently no specific platforms dominating the market (as with iOS and Android in mobile). “Currently there’s no market leader creating one industry standard”. Rather there are small industry specific platforms, those that are specific to particular regions and those that focus on particular devices and functions.  “Their difference might include security levels, their experience in the market or their level of support offered to clients.”

It’s a highly competitive space, Romeo noted:

“There are a good number of companies, specialized in a particular subsection of IoT or with specialized platform services such as prescriptive analytics. There will be some acquisition of smaller platforms by bigger ones but at the same time, I think  the key issue here is being able to create the right ecosystem which is flexible enough to move you from being a player into system leader into several sectors.  I think the management of ecosystems is really a challenging one but a key competitive asset in IoT.

Some people believe that the numbers will decrease we will end up with a small number of platforms able to do everything. But I’m not entirely convinced about that because of the context nature of IoT.”

Other focus areas for IoT analysis

The platform finder is really Beecham Research’s first foray into customer research with their target market typically vendors. Romeo sees many areas that need research and analysis:

“We need to understand more about the behavior of the network. If we have too many devices on the network we will start to feel the heaviness of all the devices on the network, so we will need to do network planning, we will probably need to prioritize traffic.”

Romeo also commented on two key complexities in the platform ecosystem: “Firstly, security. From a developer’s point of view, they say, ‘Somebody told me that I need to start using guidelines, but which ones?  Who should I trust? The other one is the evolution of analytics and primarily the analytics at the edge. So how clever the edge device should be- and when?”

Romeo believes that data privacy and data ownership need to be discussed industry-wide, noting that the incoming General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) in Europe do not fully touch IoT but offer some indicators. He also believes that device security needs to be viewed not only from the consumer perspective but also the greater ethical issues:

“The experience of explaining design innovation to engineers has been quite extraordinary over the last 10 years. I think the next step is to make them aware of how the stuff they do has a social impact. We see some of this emerging in the Horizon 2020 research program.  There are a number of initiatives in which your organization can go basically and test the device from an ethical point of view, and so I think there is a move towards that.”

Anything that helps bring order, logic, and clarity of points of difference to the jumbled platform market can only be a good thing as the number of connected devices increases daily. It would be great to see other researchers provide their own similar pilots to enable the sector to have more independent analysis rather than self-regulation.

What platforms will survive in the next decade and which will fail? More than 30 of the companies included in the Global IoT Platform Companies List 2016 edition have ceased to exist-having either gone out of business or being acquired. Which kinds will become market leaders for specific use cases? These questions alone suggest that the IoT platform ecosphere may look very different in the future.

The post With hundreds of choices, how can you pick an IoT platform? appeared first on ReadWrite.

Last month, public reports from ESET and Dragos outlined a new, highly capable Industrial Controls Systems (ICS) attack platform — the one reportedly used in 2016 against critical utilities infrastructure in Ukraine.

CRASHOVERRIDE (alternately named Industroyer), the malware framework used on a cyberattack on the Ukraine electric grid in 2016, hit an electric transmission station near Kiev, blacking out a sizable portion of the city. Attackers overwrote firmware on critical devices at 16 substations, leaving them unresponsive to any remote commands from operators.

As a result of the attacks, 80,000 customers went without electricity for six hours in winter, and workers had to control the substations and breakers manually. The attack itself only lasted an hour, but cybersecurity experts are concerned that the attack was used as proof of concept, rather than a full demonstration of the malware’s capability, which suggests that a more complex, serious attack may be in the works. The Kiev attack is only the second-known case of malicious code used to disrupt physical systems — the United States and Israel employed the first, Stuxnet, to destroy centrifuges in an Iranian nuclear enrichment facility in 2009.

See also: How is the new age of digital transformation affecting utilities?

A company in the United States called Full Spectrum Inc. has come up with a way to mitigate the risks of such attacks through the provision of private broadband cellular data networks to utility companies. 

Full Spectrum’s network radios enable wide-area intelligence networks for smart grids, smart pipes, smart fields, and any other mission-critical networks that need internet protocol connectivity. In the United States, there are roughly 3,300 electric utility companies and each of them has to manage its assets securely and reliably. The physical communications network is a “critical component of the connectivity,” according to Full Spectrum CEO Stewart Kantor. 

“[We developed] our technology … so utility companies could, with very little infrastructure, cover huge portions of their service territories,” Kantor said. “4G and 5G technology offered by the commercial wireless industry is short-range … and very expensive. We designed our broadband digital wireless technology … to use very tall tower sites with high power radios at both the base stations and remote radio sites using licensed VHF and UHF frequencies. One of our base stations provides coverage up to 8,000 square kilometers, versus 80 square kilometers with 4G and 8 square kilometers with 5G.”

The company uses several different licensed VHF and UHF frequencies in adaptable channel sizes — a capability that is unique to its radio technology. The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), one of the world’s leading utility research institutions, has even proposed using Full Spectrum’s technology as a new worldwide wireless standard for industrial networks.

Kantor said that the deployment of utility smart meters in the 2000s provided visibility into real-time customer usage but did not provide the utilities with the ability to “adjust” supply and demand in the grid in real time. Full Spectrum’s new private wireless technology bridges that gap by providing a secure and reliable network for higher-level grid functions like substation automation and distribution automation (DA), including circuit breakers, switches, capacitor bank controllers, and even solar inverters.

In a private network, the utility companies own, operate, and control the system, and can keep it either completely off the public internet or with only very short periods of secure internet connectivity.

What happens with a utility cyberattack?

An attack like CHRASHOVERRIDE is capable of directly controlling electricity substation switches and circuit breakers. It manipulates globally-common industrial communication protocols in power supply infrastructure, transportation control systems, and other critical infrastructure. The potential impact may range from simply turning off power distribution, triggering a cascade of failures, to more serious damage to equipment.

“There are a variety of vehicles for malware to infiltrate a network,” Kantor said. “A co-worker could introduce a thumb drive that has the virus that then gets distributed to the network controlling the RTUs. It can be hidden in the controller software from the vendor, and so on. The bottom line is that the combination of physical and digital isolation creates a higher level of security and protection and can also reduce recovery time.”

Let’s take an attack of multiple major fiber cuts to the commercial providers, like what happened in the Bay Area in 2009 or during the Coyote Point Substation attack.  The fiber cuts revealed that much commercial internet traffic was carried over the same fiber points of presence for all providers. Such attacks would have a huge, disastrous impact on a utility company if they were relying on a commercial network.

Securing areas through private networks

Full Spectrum recently announced that it will begin deploying its own private network service for companies that require secure and reliable networks but are not capable of running the network themselves.  The first private network service will launch in the Metropolitan New York Area, followed by one in the San Francisco Bay Area.

“Our network in the New York Metro Area will initially cover up to 52,000 square kilometers with the ability to originate and terminate IP traffic without ever touching the public Internet,” Kantor said.

Private data networks will overlay an area with secure technology in case of an attack on a public network. 

“So imagine someone begins to jam frequencies used by automated vehicles,” Kantor said. “Our network can serve as a backup safety network allowing things to come to a reasonable stopping place.”

Kantor envisions a private nationwide network with a variety of secure and reliable applications — conducting autonomous vehicle traffic, sensor traffic for perimeter security, radiation sensors with high-end sensing, and data networks for specific applications. 

Mass adoption of Full Spectrum’s technology will be revolutionary in improving reliability and efficiency, and in replacing aging infrastructure.

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Anyone who works in the smart city space knows the power of data: it’s held up as the rich oil that can be revealed through smart sensor technology embedded throughout the public landscape including train stations, parks and recreation areas and various neighborhoods or districts. It intersects across various components of a city including traffic management, public safety, infrastructure and city planning.

Because so many government activities are inherently location-centric, accessing and understanding location-related data is critical. Citizens and stakeholders demand it, and agencies are being held accountable to the data they manage with many cities having a model of open governance which includes their data open to their citizens. Earlier in the year, I attended a conference hosted by CARTO.

See also: How to socialize great smart cities ideas across more urban centers

CARTO is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that creates geographic mapping tools to help businesses and designers create location-centric visualizations on the web. The company was initially developed as an open-source product from a Spanish company called Vizzuality. Their clients are extensive and include Bloomberg, Caixa Bank, Accenture, Twitter, and Google.

Their location intelligence platform means anyone can build self-service location based apps that help optimize operational performance, strategic investments, and everyday decisions. This is key to smart cities, where governments are working with businesses, universities, and citizens to create more of the predictive analysis that shapes the life of a city.

Here are just a few use cases of CARTO:

Mapping construction and maintenance

In these instances, publicly available data maps provide real-time information for citizens. For example in SanDiego mapping and provides a means for citizens to monitor and track road repairs. It provides real proof of progress and gives locals a means to find out when their street will be repaired, so they can, for example, park their car in the garage or ensure an elderly neighbor’s disabled parking is arranged. Similarly, in New York, data maps are used by the Mayor’s Office of Recovery and Resiliency to document Hurrican Katrina restoration and recovery efforts, just one of their extensive open source data available to citizens. In big cities, it’s easy to feel forgotten when you see other repairs progressing but not yours and such documentation provides residents with a clear plan of action and dated progress.

Environmental and local conservation

While reindeer may not be a problem for you or your neighbors, if you lived in Finland it might be a different story with thousands of reindeer killed each year by getting onto the road and being hit by cars, according to Leon van de Pas, Senior Vice President at  IoT business group at here. Signage had previously proven ineffective as tourists would steal them as souvenirs. Officials created an app where a simple, one-button interface allows drivers to tap their smartphone screens to register any reindeer spotted near roads. Using GPS technology, it creates a 1.5-kilometer (1-mile) warning zone that lasts for an hour and warns other app users approaching the area if there are reindeer.

Arborist Jill Hubley has created the NYC urban forest. The map makes clear the most prevalent trees in each borough, while simultaneously revealing clusters of diverse species. Tree selection varies per site based on site condition, overhead clearance, and tree bed width. The Parks Department then uses these criteria to define the habitat for each planting area, which in turn determines the range of species that can be planted.

Citizen-led organizations working in cities to better understand the intricacies of housing markets, housing policy, tenant rights, as well as the socioeconomic and demographic evolution of neighborhoods are assisted by CARTO’s Grants For Good Program which connects academics and organizations to the technology they need to create impactful projects. The use of geospatial technology and location intelligence provide fundamental tools for analysis, communication, storytelling, monitoring, and evaluation.

Economic opportunity

Mapping can also provide predictive analytics to aid smart city planning. For example, location intelligence can predict the economic impact of closing traffic in a street and how it affects locals and tourists. It can also determine how it will change commute times, and the number of cars that typically frequent a particular route. Not only providing predictions into road maintenance, it can also help determine routes where more public transport may be beneficial in efforts to reduce traffic pollution and provide insight for a business that may want to locate themselves in that area.

Finance institutions such as banks can utilize transactional data record to share with a business owner to decide where are the best places to open, consolidate, or close locations for their business, based on revenue and profitability. They also can gain crucial insight into their competition such as the demographic and socioeconomic factors that have the biggest impact on the success of their and their competitors’ locations. Imagine if you ran a business in a tourist area and you were able to discover how many transactions done by day, by locals or tourists vs another day? What countries tourists are coming from- not only to your city but your suburb, based on anonymized data of credit card transactions?

It’s easy to get excited by the bling of IoT-the hardware and the sensors and the big city projects that are popping up everywhere. But smart cities are not just places but homes to many who as citizens need to be first and foremost in mind in any smart city planning. Citizens should not have cities created around them but should be part of the decision-making. CARTO’s location intelligence is a means to achieve this.

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