Author Archives: Norbert Kruk

Uber&Jump, better solution how to get from the place A to B

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Crowed streets, you are in the rush, Uber won’t help you in such situation. Anyone of you had such happening? If yes the information which was announced today by Uber will make you happy. San Franciso has now the solution, which at the same time is a very sustainable solution. Thankfully to Uber’s and Jump cooperation which is running a Beta test in San Francisco. That is not a new idea, In San Franciso FordGo was offering its bikes to rent but there was an ordinary bike with no special features. Those from Jump are way more better with their electric engines, and they are dockless. You can borrow them through Uber or Jumps app. It works like Uber, looking for the closest free bike and if you reach them, unlock it. Very good and healthy solution and as everything in San Fransico not the ordinary bike but with the addition of technology. “We’re always kind of searching for options to make transportation affordable and more accessible for people,” Uber Head of Transportation Policy and Research Andrew Salzberg said. In my opinion perfect solution, I’ll be really glad if they will appear in EU.

Sources:

 

https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/31/16954842/uber-bikeshare-dockless-ebike-jump-san-francisco

http://www.businessinsider.com/uber-rent-electric-bikes-san-francisco-jump-pilot-2018-1

Supermarket from the future ! Pikachu confirmed!

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How many of you hate to waste your time standing in the big lines in the supermarkets? I bet that everyone, even if shops have self-serve in many cases you stand or what makes me also angry there are some issues with them and then we need to wait for an employee to camo and fix it. So why not to invent such store without those issues?

Try to imagine walking to the shop taking what you want and just leaving? It seems like a magic, but there are some companies that are trying to make such ideas come true? Guess who’s that…. Of course, it’s Amazon

22 January 2018, Seattle and a lot of people steering and thinking if it is real or if it is a joke. The first store without checkout required, the world’s most advanced shopping technology, welcome to AMAZON GO.

Amazon Go Smart Shop

What can we buy there, literally everything as in a normal supermarket, meat, cheese, milk, bread or chef-designed Amazon Meal Kits (if we are too lazy, or just in rush)? Shopping here is very easy and what is more important very smart. All you need is to have Amazon account and free Amazon Go app. When you stand in front of the shop turn the app on and simply walk inside take whatever you need and walk away. Your Amazon account will be charged for the products you took. Isn’t it genius? For me sure it is.

Different products inside Amazon Go

How does it Work?

It is possible thankfully very advanced computer vision, sensor fusion, and deep learning technology. The cameras detect when you take the product and recognize your phone (that’s how the system knows how much to charge you, and if you decide that you don’t need the product you took you can easily put the product on the shelf and the system again without you touching even your phone will know that you put the product away. To check if the system of smart monitoring is solid and works properly with no mistakes Amazon did Pikachu test. One day (during the testing phase of the shop, From November 2017 only Amazon employees were allowed to use the shop a)  3 employees of Amazon dressed in the same yellow Pikachu costumes and just cruised around the store taking the products they needed and than checked their phones if the system did some mistake or not. The system didn’t do any mistake. What a solid test.

Is it the future of the supermarket or no? In my opinion, we will have to wait a couple of years but definitely, it is something very special and maybe one day all of the shops will look like that.

Samsung’s TV’s AI Technology

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Nowadays a lot of Tech companies are getting crazy in AI Technology, and that is the normal thing the AI is the future. Bad or good here the opinions are divided. The truth is that we are going to see more and more AI Technologies ( or the devices that are using the basics of AI, or similar technologies) in our homes. One and a half week ago Samsung introduced its new 85-inch 8K QLED TV which will be using the AI technology based on machine learning, which will analyze the content and automatically upscale the images into 8k quality.

During the CES another two companies LG and Sony also presented their idea of new smarter TV but their “new abilities” are much different than Samsung present. Their TV is going to have Google Assistant installed. What does it mean for the potential customer? Basically, it means that those TV will be fully remoted by the voice. What is more, we will have the ability to connect the TV to google disc, or to control another “smart devices” which are inside our home by giving the comments to the TV. The customer will also have the ability to ask the TV about the program which he/she will watch or ask the TV about the weather or game scores.

Score Game checking

The google assistant will all the time (even if it will be turned off) listen what we are saying. Is it ok to you? During the time of possible invigilation from all the sides it won’t help us to be more secure or to have the more private zone, moreover, such private zone might become a really rare thing. From the other side, such progress is needed to develop more and more advanced technologies.
Because such solution that Sony and LG did is very brave ( there will be a lot of bad opinions about such invigilation, in my opinion)

Samsung put a different smart solution which was mentioned above. How is it working? The graph below explains the whole process:

AI Technology converts the quality of pictures

Basically, this AI technology supports three features:

The TV-based on AI Technologies equipped with a database which explores and analyze millions of images to improve the quality of the pictures we are observing. So it converts the lower quality by optimizing with a lot of filters and converting the sources into a high-quality image.

It increases image processing 64 times which ables the TV to project very natural images with the highest quality

It categorizes elements of picture quality such as black/blooming/brightness in input sources to obtain pictures with richer and very detailed contrast.

As we can see the leaders of TV industry LG with Sony and Samsung made a different decision about how to use the AI technologies within their TV’s. I would rather choose the solution of Samsung due to the fact that I don’t really want also my TV to collect so many info about myself and I won’t feel so comfortable with the knowledge that even my TV is all the time carefully listening to me.

 

Sources:

https://news.samsung.com/global/samsungs-ai-technology-transforms-any-video-content-into-8k

https://businessinsider.com.pl/technologie/nowe-technologie/telewizor-ze-sztuczna-inteligencja-w-czym-pomoze/tj3wymg

https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/07/google-assistant-is-ready-to-help-on-your-sony-tv/

http://www.lg.com/us/tvs/lg-OLED65W8PUA-oled-4k-tv

Smart City in Arizona, big plan of Bill Gates.

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All of us have seen the smart cities of the future, unfortunately only in big US movie productions. A few months ago the richest man on the Earth decided to introduce his plan of building Smart City to real life. One of the Bill Gates investment firms Cascade Investment LLC announced the plan of building Smart City located in Arizona. The company paid about $80 million for 24,800-acre land on which they are planning to build public schools; and office, commercial, and retail space. But that investment won’t look like a typical city. This place will be more smart, autonomous, sustainable and self-efficient than other. What do we understand the name of a smart city? According to encyclopedia “The smart city concept integrates information and communication technology (ICT), and various physical devices connected to the network (the Internet of things or IoT) to optimize the efficiency of city operations and services and connect to citizens”.  The video below is presenting some smart solutions that exist or are planned to be introduced into some cities.

Why did Mr. Gates decide to create the smart city there? Firstly Belmont (the name of the location area) is located 40 miles from Phoenix, so the place is not located on wastelands. Despite the fact of close localization to the big city, the ground price was relatively small, and the area is pretty big, it is very similar to the Paris when it comes to the size. But the price wasn’t the main argument of the Smart City localization. The state of Arizona is also very friendly when it comes to the “smart cities” solution regulations. For example, it has very relaxed Autonomous vehicles policies. Belmont investors hope to use it as a big advantage and they think that should help different tech companies to pilot their technologies and later implement them within the Belmont. Another very positive aspect of Arizona state is the fact of big solar energy production capacity, which will be used to power charging stations for some of these cars — as well as traffic lights, homes, and office spaces. In such case, the city could be self-efficient when it comes to the energy.

Investors are planning to make Belmont really smart and sustainable. The benefits which will be available for future Belmont inhabitants and the companies which will run there are for example The high-speed networks, Autonomous vehicles, high-speed digital networks, Big data centers. New manufactural Technologies and Autonomous Logistic Hubs. Those are only examples of benefits but for sure with the progress of the city building plans investors will announce much more astonishing details about smart technologies and innovative solutions which will be common within it.

Until this moment everything seems to be fine and perfect but there is one regulation that needs to be fulfilled to create a new city. This regulation is connected with the low water level in Arizona. To set the new city investors needs to prove that the city will have a supply of water for 100 years. This issue might be not easy to fix and for sure very expensive. The only option will be transporting the water by pipelines, and then sustainable use of it.

The problem with water in Arizona

The smart City concepts isn’t a new idea but from a few years, we can see that some of the richest cities are trying to implement new solutions to make their cities smarter. Governments are building Tech Hubs within some city districts to speed up the innovation. Private investors are trying to build their own smart cities. Those are the things which we can observe now. In the next 10/20 years a lot might have changed and due to that, it is important to have such investments. Technology will become more and more connected to the way of how we exist every day, so due to that, we need to develop it and observe how will cities of the future look like. How “smart” will be Belmont? In terms of technology, for sure it will be, but we need to remember that smart cities are something more than just autonomous cars, sustainability and a lot of other technologies. Smart Cities are also about Smart Society, Smart Healthcare, E-government etc. Due to that, there will be still more to develop for places like Belmont but such investments are necessary to develop and test those “smart solutions”.

Sources:
http://fortune.com/2017/11/13/bill-gates-arizona-smart-city-cascade-belmont/

http://nordic.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-smart-city-pros-cons-arizona-urban-planners-2017-11

http://money.cnn.com/2017/11/13/technology/future/bill-gates-smart-city-arizona/index.html

http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-smart-city-pros-cons-arizona-urban-planners-2017-11

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_city

Smart Home Technology for delivery? Sure, no more problem, Amazon gives you the tools.

Reading Time: 2 minutes

 

Almost all of the people use Amazon in the USA, a lot of them are Amazon Prime clients. Even if the prime clients in most cases are getting the delivery pretty fast, sometimes do to the fact that we are busy we can’t stay home and wait for the delivery for the whole day. Not all of us don’t have a neighbor, sometimes even we have them we just simply don’t like them or what is more popular they are same busy as we. How to fix the problem of receiving the package from our favorite Amazon always when we are back home? Nothing simpler than letting the courier get inside. Amazon prepared smart technology to do that. How does the whole system work? We need 3 things to make it possible and safe, this packet is called “Amazon key”:
1. Smart Lock for door
2. Alexa Cloud Cam
3. Your private smartphone
Smart Lock and Alexa Cloud cam cost 250$, but how it all works? The system is very simple. Amazon is sending the notification that courier is in front of your house. Than as normally courier will knock firstly and if you are not at home the application which he will use will let him inside your home to leave the parcel. Here there is the role of the Alexa cloud camera, you will have the ability to watch the person who is leaving your parcel. In case anything will happen Amazon store the video stream from the delivery for free for 24 hours.

Screenshot from the app

So that’s how the whole system works, I hope all of Amazon lovers will be very happy with such solution. Now to be honest, in my personal opinion it’s not the best idea to let any stranger get inside our own home. Probably Amazon won’t be so responsible for what happened when someone walks inside. Secondly, there is a question do you want to trust and let the Amazon literally inside your private home, by giving them access to the cameras and to your doors lock? At the end, there is a cost 250$ (and the system is not possible in all areas of Amazon delivery) I don’t think it is worth to pay 250$ for this small extra convenience, according to the facts which I mentioned above.

Sources:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/news/a28778/amazon-key-smart-lock-let-people-into-your-home/

 

https://9to5mac.com/2017/10/25/amazon-launches-smart-lock-and-security-cam-system-to-take-in-home-deliveries-for-prime-members-with-iphone-app-alerts/