Category: Emerging Technology

The intelligent car from Mercedes-Benz

Mercedes-Benz has recently announced that all of its 2016 and 2017 vehicles in the US would now be able to connect with both Amazon and Google’s digital voice assistants.

With the help of this integration Mercedes owners can now instruct their Amazon Echo or Google Home to remotely start or lock their vehicles, as well as send addresses to their in-car navigation system. The video below however shows Mercedes-Benz creating an intelligent ecosystem around its cars with the help of cutting-edge technology.

Mercedes isn’t the first automaker to recognise the potential of artificially intelligent
third party digital voice assistants. At CES earlier this year, Ford unveiled its plan to roll out Alexa-equipped vehicles. Around the same time, Hyundai announced a new partnership with Google to add voice control through the Google Home.

The world’s first emotionally powered store

To help tackle the stress of Christmas present-buying, eBay with the help of American technology firm Lightwave, opened a pop-up store in central London that aimed to inspire shoppers to reconnect with the emotional spirit of giving. By using intelligent bio-analytic technology and facial coding, eBay recorded which products provoked the strongest feelings of giving. Then through personalised emotion reports they suggested the gift that stirred the most feeling.

Gatebox: The Virtual Home Robot

Move over Alexa, Siri and Cortana. Gatebox is set to be the worlds first virtual home robot. Gatebox’s first character, “Azuma Hikari” is a fully interactive holographic girl, who at her most basic can control your smart home equipment. Additionally, she can recognize your face and your voice, and is designed to be a companion who can wake you up in the morning, fill you in on your day’s activities, remind you of things to remember, and even welcome you back when you return home from work.

Gatebox is currently availble for pre-order to customers who speak Japanese in Japan and USA for around $2,600 per unit. For more details visit gatebox.ai.

Microsoft HoloLens redefines elevator maintenance

The future of elevator maintenance is here. ThyssenKrupp recently announced the implementation of Microsoft’s Hololens out in the field where its technicians and engineers will benefit from minimized delays and matchless workflow. Fusing cloud computing and digital IoT solutions with an augmented reality interface, ThyssenKrupp will facilitate real-time prediction of repairs and component replacements while priming their experts on potential issues before they arise.

100% Real Virtual Reality

To launch Old Irish, a new craft beer with a unique Irish recipe in Georgia, ad agency Leavingstone came up with the idea to give the people in the streets of Tbilisi a virtual tour of Ireland. While the people were busy exploring the Irish nature, streets of Dublin and a typical Irish bar virtually, they quietly brought the whole virtual reality Irish bar experience out into the real world. The results…

Cornetto Commitment Rings

Netflix has taken the world by storm, transforming itself from a mail order DVD company into a streaming behemoth that uses immense amount of internet bandwidth worldwide. This in turn has led to a cultural phenomenon called Binge-watching, where you tend to watch 2-6 episodes of the same TV show in one sitting.

The insight ice-cream maker Cornetto had to this cultural phenomenon was that over 28 million Netflix users have binge-watch cheated on their loved ones. 21% of them did it while the other person was asleep, while 12% of them re-watched the show with their loved ones. So Cornetto to fix this “Netflix infidelity” created a pair of smart wearable rings that blocked access to the shows unless the two were watching them together.

The rings had to connect to the smartphone over NFC, and then through an app users would have to register the shows they wanted to watch together. After that, both parties would have to be present, and have their Commitment Rings nearby, to be able to play a new episode from any of the saved shows.

At the moment there aren’t any pricing details or release dates for this particular wearable, so you’ll have to keep checking the Series Commitment website for more details about it, or register with the site to receive more information about the product.

The future of TV viewing

The TV viewing experience has not changed so drastically over the years. But with the development of sophisticated headsets like Microsoft HoloLens that is all set to change.

In a recently released video, Microsoft and NFL have successfully re-imagined how a Super Bowl game could be watched with multiple friends and family members…

While the video shows how immersive TV watching could get, Microsoft is not fast-tracking HoloLens for consumer consumption. For now, only developers can order HoloLens, which will ship this year. No one knows when consumers will get access to HoloLens or when scenarios like this will become a reality.

Volvo HoloLens Showroom

Car companies today are relying more and more on augmented and virtual reality to help visualize their work. And for about six months now, Microsoft and Volvo have been working on a way to incorporate a “mixed reality” into the process of choosing a car. Now with the help of Microsoft’s HoloLens technology they have successfully put together a car showroom straight out of science fiction.

The below video shows how car buyers will be able to check out useful features that are often overlooked because they no longer read car manuals. This detailed mixed reality visualization will also help buyers understand how the respective features work in various scenarios.

Lexus Hoverboard

The Lexus Hoverboard has been the talk of the town for the last couple of weeks as it represents true innovation and imagination, while pushing the boundaries of technology even further.

The below official reveal of the Lexus Hoverboard in action, marks the culmination of 18 months of design and technology planning and weeks of testing at a specially constructed “hoverpark” near Barcelona.

The task of putting the hoverboard through its paces fell to international pro-skateboard star Ross McGouran who helped demonstrate tricks that no skateboard could ever perform i.e. including travelling across water. 😎

Oakley Pro Vision

When you picture a virtual reality (VR) headset, you probably think of something really high-tech and far too expensive to be practical. Apparently, the guys at Google thought the same thing. So last year they launched Google Cardboard, a cardboard cutout that turned Android phones into a neat virtual reality headset.

Since people tend to throw away the cardboard packging of their sunglasses. Oakley decided to integrate Google Cardboard into their packaging and give customers a unique 360 degree view of various extreme sports – surfing, skiing, mountain biking, skateboarding and sky diving.