Internet of Things (IoT) Use Cases for Sustainability

Written by Brooks Canavesi on June 12, 2019. Posted in Blog, IoT

The Internet of Things, commonly referred to simply as the IoT, is growing faster than most people expected just a few years ago. IHS estimates that there will be 75.4 billion connected devices by 2025, up from 15.4 billion in 2015. In addition to automating homes and offices, connected devices are also powering the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) and fundamentally altering the way organizations are moving toward achieving their sustainability goals.

Growing Need for Sustainability

Since the dawn of civilization, humankind has been inventing new technologies to overcome difficult obstacles and prosper. Unfortunately, the very same technologies that have allowed many people on this planet to live lives of luxury have created problems so serious that the only way to solve them is with immediate action.

Recently, scientists have recorded the highest level of CO2 emissions on earth since records began, detecting 415.26 parts per million. “The number keeps rising, and it’s getting higher year after year,” said Wolfgang Lucht, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

According to the Paris Agreement, a landmark agreement within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change signed by 186 parties, CO2 emissions would need to decline by 50 percent by 2030 and reach net zero by around 2050 to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

“Despite the Paris climate agreement, despite all the speeches and the protests—we are not seeing that we are bending the curve yet,” added Lucht. To change this, public and private organizations alike need to set clear sustainability goals and take all the steps necessary to meet them.

In 2018, the World Economic Forum (WEF), a not-for-profit organization for public-private cooperation, investigated 643 applications of IoT technology before publishing its Internet of Things Guidelines for Sustainability. The research revealed that 84% of IoT use cases were addressed, or could potentially address, the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

The goals include not just climate action but also no poverty, zero hunger, good health and well-being, quality education, gender equality, clean water and sanitation, affordable and clean energy, decent work and economic growth, industry, innovation, and infrastructure, reduced inequalities, sustainable cities and communities, responsible production and consumption, life below water, life on land, peace and justice and strong institutions, and global partnerships for sustainable development.

Even though the IoT is not immediately associated with CleanTech, the possibilities various IoT solutions offer industry when it comes to driving improvements to organizations’ sustainability across all kinds of processes and developments are huge. To better understand how connected devices could help create a better world, let’s take a closer look at some of the most promising IoT use cases for sustainability.

Smart Agriculture

Water scarcity is listed by the World Economic Forum as one of the largest global risks in terms of potential impact over the next decade. Today, approximately 70% of the world’s fresh water goes toward agriculture, twice as much as is used for municipal purposes and in industry. IoT devices can help farmers detect water leakages, which are estimated to result in a 26% loss of stock drinking water.

The IoT also helps farmers collect a wealth of useful information, such as soil quality, weather conditions, and equipment efficiency. This information can then be analyzed to achieve greater crop yields, lower production risk, and higher production efficiency. Devices like Arable and Semios make it very easy for farmers around the world to extract real-time, actionable insights from their fields and access their data from anywhere and in real-time.

By 2025, the smart agriculture market is expected to triple in size and reach $15.3 billion. This figure clearly illustrates that farmers are already aware that small, technology-driven tweaks to their farming methods can have a big knock-on effect, which is exactly what the humankind needs to feed the 9 billion people the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) expects to live on Earth by 2050.

Smart Waste

Waste management is a critical component of sustainability, and there are many opportunities to improve it with smart technology. Garbage collectors today waste a lot of time and spend a lot of fuel traveling to trash cans that are only half full because they have no way of knowing which trash cans need to be emptied before they physically inspect them.

Sensoneo estimates that smart waste collection can reduce collection costs by nearly 30% and lowers carbon emissions up to 60% by decreasing the number of collection instances by up to 80%. Connected trash cans would additionally make it considerably easier for consumers to locate the nearest trash opportunities, and they could even intelligently identify recyclable materials.

Beyond waste collection, the IoT has the potential to play an integral role in reducing food wastage and preventing food recalls. In industrialized countries, food losses and waste amount to roughly $680 billion in industrialized countries and $310 billion in developing countries, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, and all the food that gets buried in landfills is a major contributor to methane emissions.

By implementing smart temperature monitoring and alert systems to protect food during transport and storage, much of our waste can be avoided, and food producers would further benefit from access to rich data that could be used, for example, to automatically optimize delivery times in order to avoid extreme temperatures.

Smart Grids

According to EnergySavvy, a software company that enables utilities to transform their utility customer experience through modern personalization, automation, and engagement, a typical house wastes 30% more energy than an efficient one does.

The problem is that consumers often have no idea what their current and average energy consumption are, which makes it difficult for them to make well-informed decisions about their energy, water, and gas consumption. Smart meters make it possible to monitor usage remotely and make the gathered data available in real-time directly to consumers.

Utilities benefit because they no longer have to send someone to collect meter readings, and consumers benefit because they get access to the information they need to modify their habits and reduce their carbon footprint. In one of its reports, British Gas estimates that residential customers using smart meters save nearly $42 a year on their energy bill, which may not seem like much until you multiply the number by the number of households and office buildings.

Smart meters enable utility providers to effortlessly incorporate renewable power sources, which is why the Environmental Defense Fund estimates smart grids to cut air pollution from the energy industry by up to 30% and prevent around 34,000 deaths a year.

SmartLighting

Romanian company Flashnet calculated that 40% of the public budget’s energy bill is spent on street lights. The company has developed a smart street lighting control system that’s designed to automatically provide the right amount of light where and when needed. Called, inteliLIGHT, the system can use any open protocol communication technology and has been demonstrated to lead to significant cost savings.

Navigant Research, a market research and advisory firm, believes that smart LEDs that automatically adjust to natural conditions can generate 10-20% savings, while smart lighting company enModus is even more optimistic: estimating that smart LEDs can achieve up to 99% energy cost savings compared with traditional incandescent light bulbs.

Already, consumers can choose from a broad range of smart lighting products compatible with standard lighting fixtures and available at increasingly more affordable prices. Apart from automatically adjusting to natural conditions, smart lighting products also take advantage of motion detectors, optical cameras, door contact sensors, micro radars, and other components.

Smart Water Monitoring

It takes just one day for a single showerhead or faucet that drips at the rate of 60 drips per minute to waste 21 liters of water. According to the World Bank, the total global cost of non-revenue water, which is water produced and lost by utilities, nears $14 billion, and the number is expected to keep increasing sharply in the future as more and more countries become industrialized. In the United States, the average city loses around 30% of its total water supply through leaks or unbilled usage, and some places, such as Delhi in India, lose over 50%, which is especially alarming considering that India is fighting a massive water crisis.

To reduce water leakage, Huawei has developed a smart water monitoring solution that adopts a grid-based water meter system, monitors the pipeline network in real time, and rapidly locates pipeline failures to enable leakage analysis. The solution was first deployed in Shenzhen, where it significantly improved the experience for Shenzhen Water Group customers and made water usage and water flow analysis now much easier to undertake.

“The commercial NB-IoT-based Smart Water project jointly conducted by Shenzhen Water, China Telecom, and Huawei will play an exemplary role in the development of the IoT industry and Smart City worldwide. I hope that the three parties can duplicate the cooperative achievements seen in Shenzhen and apply these principles across China, and eventually extend them to overseas markets,” said Edward Deng, President of Huawei Wireless Solution.

Smart Air Quality Tracking

Especially in large cities, air pollution is a serious problem that poses a major threat to health and climate alike. Using IoT sensors, cities and private organizations can gather extensive information to localize the biggest polluters and warn residents when pollution exceeds permittable levels.

Wanting to better understand roadside air quality, the Royal Borough of Greenwich, London, teamed up with the Global Systems for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA) to mount sensors on an electric vehicle and use them to measure air quality as part of the Smart London initiative, whose goal is to transform London into the smartest city in the world.

In South Korea, KT Corporation, the country’s largest telephone company, launched an air quality monitoring app called Air Map Korea. The app collects and analyzes air quality data from 1,500 spots nationwide in a bid to help the government draw up a better policy for reducing fine dust levels.

“We have begun the Air Map Korea project, based on our innovative technologies such as IoT and big data analytics, to help the government resolve fine dust issues. KT will actively cooperate with central and regional governments as well as research centers to reduce the public health risk of fine dust,” said Kim Hyoung-wook, head of KT’s platform business planning office.

Smart Buildings

Siemens’ Crystal building is a perfect example of how various IoT technologies can be combined to meet challenging sustainability goals. Thanks to its connected systems for lighting, air-conditioning, heating, and more, the offices in the building produce about 70% less CO2 compared with typical office buildings, which is why the building has become the first to achieve the highest sustainable building awards from LEED and BREEAM, the world’s two leading accreditation bodies.

Since commercial buildings account for nearly 20% of US energy consumption and 12% of the greenhouse gas emissions, according to the US Energy Information Administration, more efficient building designs and technologies are essential for minimizing the impact humans have on the environment.

In the future, smart buildings could even be an important part of the global ecosystem, filtering the air and water, producing clean energy, and providing shelter not just to humans but also plants and animals. It’s difficult to estimate how long it will take to get there, but it’s certain that it won’t be possible without the IoT.

Conclusion

There are many ways how the IoT can help organizations achieve their sustainability goals, and we’ve identified and described several of them in this article. With the demand for connected devices from private and public sectors alike increasing, it’s guaranteed that their manufacturers will find ways how to make them even more useful, secure, and accessible than they are now. Indeed, the future is a promising one, and it’s nice to see modern technology being used to solve many of the problems it has created.

Ikea’s Plan to Became a Smart Home Company

Written by Brooks Canavesi on May 12, 2019. Posted in IoT

Even though we’ve been hearing about smart home devices for many years, most homes don’t even remotely resemble the connected vision of the future that all manufacturers of smart home devices would like to transform into mainstream reality.

Filled with interoperability landmines, plagued by security issues, and full of empty promises, the smart home market is a confusing mess of half-baked gadgets that cost too much and do too little—and Ikea would like to change that.

The Swedish furniture retailer has arguably more experience with manufacturing and selling well-designed products at affordable prices, and there are many reasons why Ikea may just be the perfect company to make our home smart.

Affordable and Easy to Use

Ikea is known for making good design affordable and accessible, and the company seems to be committed to this approach even when it comes to its smart home lineup, which for a very long time consisted only of Trådfri LEDs. Later this year, Ikea will begin selling its Fyrtur blinds in the United States at around $135. Smart blinds may seem like an odd choice for Ikea’s next smart product, but they actually make perfect sense from the business perspective.

“The smart home has been possible for some time, but there have been two major dilemmas,” says Björn Block, the head of Ikea’s Home Smart division. “It’s too complicated and too expensive. Let’s make it super easy to install and super easy to understand, at a price tag you haven’t seen before.”

All smart home products released by Ikea so far, including the Fyrtur blinds, are both affordable and easy to use, and everything indicates that the company wants to continue on this trajectory even in the future. That’s good news for Ikea’s customers because it allows them to experience what smart home technology is about without having to make a huge upfront investment.

The Trådfri LEDs, for example, work right out of the box simply by screwing into any existing lightbulb socket. Ikea even gives you a battery for the handy remote they come with. Unlike many other smart LEDs that are currently available on the market, the Trådfri LEDs give you only a few colors to choose from, and they can’t do anything else apart from illuminating your home, and that’s exactly what makes them so attractive.

Genuinely Useful

Not everyone understands what makes wireless blinds so useful, but Ikea does. The company has made blinds without strings or cords for many years now because blinds that do have strings or cords can be a risk to babies and small children.

In Europe, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents requires that new blinds must be “safe by design” or be supplied with the appropriate child safety devices installed. “This means that where there is a loop that is present, or could be created, a safety device must be installed at the point of the manufacturer. These safety devices either break under pressure, tension the cord or chain or provide the facility to store cord(s) out of reach. Professional installers must fit these devices,” states the British charity.

Wireless blinds elegantly solve the issue of child safety while being suitable even for applications where you can’t reach the blinds because they are too far up to grab. The genuine usefulness of Ikea’s smart blinds as well as the rest of its smart home lineup contrasts with countless other smart home products that are smart just for the sake of being smart.

Large Distribution Network

“Most players, including IKEA, don’t seem to have reached critical mass in smart home products because it is such a diffuse and complicated market,” says Frank Gillette, principal analyst at Forrester Research. “But their specific product approach and gigantic distribution network give them a big platform.”

The fact is that most consumers simply don’t understand the value proposition of smart home products. Even something so simple as the Trådfri LEDs may seem too involved on a website because it’s hard to convey the comforting nature of warm light or the eye-strain relieving potential of dimmable LED bulbs with words alone. But when customers can press a single button in one of Ikea’s many stores and instantly see the color temperature change and experience how it feels to relax in a room filled with warm light, they become much more likely to embrace smart home technology.

As of 2019, Ikea has over 420 stores in 52 markets, and nearly 1 billion customers pass through its doors every year. There are not many companies with similarly large distribution networks, giving Ikea a massive competitive advantage.

Conclusion

While most manufacturers of smart home devices are flooding the market with products whose value is not clearly defined, Ikea is keeping things simple, gradually expanding its lineup of affordable smart home products that address real problems and don’t require their users to rethink how they live their lives. In a world filled with smart kettles, smart trash cans, and smart hair brushes, Ikea provides a refreshing approach that might just prove to be what it takes to make the vision of connected future happen.

The State of Smart Home Technology in 2019

Written by Brooks Canavesi on May 10, 2019. Posted in Blog, IoT

With the number of smart home devices available to consumers increasing at a rapid pace, now is a good time to take a closer look at the state of smart home technology to see whether it delivers the convenience, cost savings, and comfort we’ve been promised.

1. The Global Smart Home Market Continues to Grow

According to a recent report published by Research and Markets, the overall smart home market is expected to grow from $76.6 billion in 2018 to $151.4 billion by 2024, at a CAGR of 12.02 percent. At seven billion devices in 2018, the connected home is the largest IoT segment, followed by industrial and connected health. The factors driving the growth of the smart home market include the need for energy-saving and low carbon emission solutions, the increasing awareness of the benefits of smart home technology, or the demand for home monitoring from remote locations, just give a few examples. While North America currently accounts for the largest share of the global smart home market, the demand for smart home devices is expected to grow at the highest rate in the Asia-Pacific region during the forecast period, thanks to its booming middle class. The State of the Connected Home report by techUK, which surveyed 1,000 UK customers, states that smart TVs are the most popular smart home products, followed by smart lighting and thermostats, smart health devices, smart security systems, and smart domestic appliances. Even though 74 percent of consumers are already familiar with smart home technology, only 37 percent find it appealing, which confirms that there’s still a lot of room for the smart home market to grow. Smart appliances are the least appealing category of smart home products, likely due to their high prices and limited usefulness.

2. Robots Are Not Just for Industrial Application

We’ve become used to seeing industrial robots assemble cars, weld unwieldy chunks of metal, and solder circuit boards with the precision and dexterity of a master craftsman and the speed of Dash from The Incredibles. In 2019, we’re starting to see robots leave the cold, metal walls of warehouses and factories and venture into our homes. Not many families are ready to spend $3,000 on the Sony Aibo, a robotic pet dog with lifelike expressions and a dynamic array of movements, or $5,500 on the Groove X companion robot pet, but the demand for sociable robots that could give comfort to the elderly is much greater. “With more and more people forced to look after loved ones, the internet of things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) can help alleviate the social care issues raised by an aging population,” argues Emanuele Angelidis, chief executive of IoT investor Breed Reply. “IoT also enables real-time remote monitoring so caregivers can keep a close and careful eye on their loved ones, while they complete other tasks like shopping, or simply go about their day-to-day lives.” Mobile robot solutions like Temi, a self-navigating personal robot with a large built-in touchscreen, makes it possible for caregivers and family members to give comfort and assistance in a way that’s not possible with a fixed camera. It’s only a matter of time before similar robots become so affordable that social care providers will be able to buy them in bulk and use them to enhance the quality of their service.

3. Emotional AI Is Getting Better

Gartner believes that by 2020 personal devices will know more about an individual’s emotional state than his or her own family. Emotion AI systems and affective computing are allowing everyday objects to detect, analyze, process and respond to people’s emotional states and moods to provide better context and a more personalized experience,” says Roberta Cozza, research director at Gartner. The aim of emotional AI is to automate objective measurement of opinions, feelings, and behaviors, and it relies on natural language processing (NLP), natural language understanding (NLU) and the detection of facial expressions of emotion to achieve its goal. Smart home devices equipped with emotional AI could prove indispensable in patient care, interacting with patients on an emotional level just like humans do and providing companionship and times of stress. At the same time, emotional AI has the potential to make smart home devices more approachable, easier to use, and, above all, more personal. Smart home assistants, such as the Amazon Echo devices and Google Home, have become very popular in recent years, and the ability to recognize the mood of the person the speaker is interacting with and respond accordingly would create many new possible use cases.

4. 802.11ax Is Coming

Labeled Wi-Fi 6 by Wi-Fi Alliance, 802.11ax is the next-generation Wi-Fi standard, and it’s expected to be the next big thing in the connected home. In 2019, there are already several 802.11ax-compatible routers to choose from, and many more will be released by the end of the year. What makes 802.11ax such a game changer is the fact that it solves the problem of Wi-Fi congestion, which plagues most households with multiple internet-connected devices trying to send and receive data at the same time, by introducing something called orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA). OFDMA is a technique for transmitting large amounts of digital data over a noisy channel, and it works by splitting the signal into multiple smaller sub-signals which are then transmitted at a lower data rate simultaneously at different frequencies. 802.11ax additionally adds uplink direction for MIMO and MU-MIMO to increase throughput, and it increases how many MU-MIMO transmissions can happen at the same time to eight, from four with 802.11ac. Although mass adoption of 802.11ax probably won’t happen until 2020, what’s important is that all major Wi-Fi chip vendors have already either announced or released 802.11ax chips. Because 802.11ax is backward compatible with previous Wi-Fi specifications, its adoption can happen gradually over time and with no negative impact on consumers.

5. True Wireless Charging Is Almost Ready for Prime Time

At the end of 2018, the Federal Communications Commission certified Energous’s WattUp technology, which can convert electricity into radio frequencies and then send the resulting energy to devices up to three feet away. “Older wireless charging technologies have received limited adoption over the past 15 years and are confined to contact-based charging only. The FCC certification of Energous’ power-at-a-distance wireless charging transmitter is a major market milestone,” says Stephen R. Rizzone, Energous president and CEO. True wireless charging is exactly what consumers have been waiting for, and it’s exactly what can make smart home devices more usable. Currently, consumers who decide to fit their homes with smart sensors, such as door and window sensors, motion sensors, water leak detectors, or smart locks, are forced to deal with the fact that such sensor can rarely last more than a year or two without a new battery. That may not be such a big deal when dealing with just a few sensors, but it’s likely that the homes of the future will be fitted with hundreds of wireless sensors and actuators, monitoring and controlling everything from temperature, proximity, water and air quality, and so much more. True wireless charging technology like Energous’s WattUp has the potential to make manual battery replacements a thing of the past, and it will likely be one of the big smart home technology stories in 2019.

Electric Scooters Are Everywhere—but Why?

Written by Brooks Canavesi on October 31, 2018. Posted in Blog, IoT

On March 29, 2018, San Francisco was invaded. Not by a foreign militia or creatures from outer space, but electric scooters. It wasn’t the first invasion of this kind. Electric scooters have already conquered just about every sidewalk in China, and it won’t take long before there isn’t any major city left where pedestrians still rule the sidewalk. While many people welcome this new method of transportation, not everyone shares the same enthusiasm about it, claiming that electric scooters shouldn’t be allowed to roam the streets at all. To understand who’s right and who’s wrong, it’s important to know what electric scooters are, where they’ve come from, and what they’re trying to accomplish.

What Are Electric Scooters?

The electric scooters in question aren’t the Razor kick scooters most millennials fondly remember from their childhood, but they are not too different either. Just imagine a rugged Razor kick scooter with an electric motor and battery. Most electric scooters weigh around 25 pounds (11 kg), and they’re typically marketed towards commuters, as opposed to children. If this sounds familiar, that’s probably because you remember the Segway, a two-wheeled, self-balancing personal transporter launched in 2002. Before it turned into one of the biggest tech failures of the last decade, Segway wanted to revolutionize personal transportation. The reasons why Segway failed are numerous, but its initial price of $4,950, awkward nature, and terrible public image all had something to do with it. But electric scooters are different. Very different. Their retail price ranges between $100 and $500, and there’s hardly anything awkward or embarrassing about riding them. Most electric scooters you see on the streets are various rebranded versions of the Xiaomi M365, a wildly popular electric scooter with minimal design, integrated kickstand, built-in LED headlight, and a top speed of 15.5 mph (25 km/h). The most important difference between the stock version of the Xiaomi M365 everyone can order online, and the rebranded versions used by electric scooter companies is the software that controls everything and allows you to pay for a ride using your smartphone. “Battery-powered scooters have been available for years, but only recently have they been outfitted with GPS trackers and wireless connectivity and arranged into on-demand fleets. These scooters are limited to 15 miles per hour, but that is still zippy enough to put a satisfying whoosh in your hair,” said Kevin Roose, a columnist for Business Day and a writer-at-large for The New York Times Magazine. “And when you’re done riding, just park it anywhere, choose ‘end ride’ on your app, take a photo to help the next rider find it and walk away.” The users don’t have to worry about charging—that’s the job of “juicers,” people who pick up electric scooters that need charging, plug them in at home, and return them back for use when they’re charged. “For many people, it’s a fun way to make extra money,” said Colin McMahon, who leads the charging program of a major electric scooter company. Depending on how low the battery is, charging one nets a juicer between $9 and $12, making it a profitable side income. Though this article is focused on electric scooters, eBikes are another mode of transportation hitting cities across the nation from many of the same companies offering electric scooters, just in a larger traditional bicycle form. eBikes typically have larger battery capacity (increasing range) and increased top speeds of 20+ miles per hour. The eBike revolution is in full effect and I plan to write another article dedicated to this topic alone. If you are interested in learning more and falling down the rabbit hole of eBikes visit Electric Bike Review for more information.

First/Last Mile Problem

Electric scooters are often touted as the best solution to the first/last mile problem, the symbolic distance between a commuter’s transit stop and their home or work. According to public transit consultant Jarrett Walker, most people in the United States claim to be comfortable walking less than ¼ mile. But because public transit is designed with the average person in mind, many people have to walk much longer distance to get from their home to the nearest transit stop and from the transit stop to their home or work. In many cases, commuters simply rule out public transit altogether and commute by car instead. The environmental impact of commuting by car is massive since the average midsize car produces around 2.6 tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually. “Even though a single transit vehicle can use more fuel than a private vehicle does, the average amount of energy used per passenger is far less than a single-occupancy vehicle, and using public transportation can help individuals lower their personal carbon footprint and reduce their transportation-related emissions,” said National Express Transit (NEXT), a worldwide leader in fixed route and paratransit solutions. “By taking up less space and reducing gridlock, buses and other public transit options can also enable more efficient traffic flows for all vehicles, which in turn helps to reduce fuel waste and emissions that come from sitting in traffic jams.” Electric scooters solve the first/last mile problem by providing a convenient way how commuters can reach the nearest transit stop and get to work without breaking a sweat. Since electric scooters encourage the use of public transit, they are beneficial for the environment even though they require regular charging. “Today, 40 percent of car trips are less than two miles long,” said Travis VanderZanden, the founder and current CEO of Bird, a scooter sharing service. “Our goal is to replace as many of those trips as possible so we can get cars off the road and curb traffic and greenhouse gas emissions.”

Major Players

There are several electric scooter companies competing for a spot on your smartphone’s home screen. The current leaders are Lime and Bird, and they’re also the only two U.S.-based scooter companies that have gone international.

Lime

Funded in January 2017, Lime crossed the $1.1 billion valuation mark just 18 months after it launched. Its service starts at 15 cents per a minute of ride on its electric scooters, which offer excellent riding comfort but are known for their sluggish braking. Lime has recently launched hundreds of its Lime-S electric scooters in Madrid, adding Spain to the growing list of European countries served by the company. “This is a big day not only for Madrid, but for the entire country,” said Alvaro Salvat, Lime’s GM of Spain. “By adding Lime-S electric scooters to residents’ mobility options, the city is reaffirming its commitment to cleaner air, safer streets and more equitable transportation solutions.”

Bird

Valued at over $2 billion, Bird is one of the fastest growing companies in the world, and many investors believe that it will eventually outvalue even Uber, which is currently estimated to be worth around $120 billion. “When you ride a Bird, it reminds you of being free,” said Bird’s CEO. “It gives you freedom. Like you have wings.” Just like Lime, Bird charges 15 cents per a minute of ride on its electric scooters, which are based on the aforementioned Xiaomi M315, a reliable scooter with a zippy feeling and grippy wheels. Bird has become infamous for its user acquisition strategy, which involves the company dumping hundreds of Bird scooters on city streets before obtaining a permit. San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who co-wrote the bill to require scooter permits, even called the company executives “a bunch of spoiled brats” for its questionable practices.

Spin

The San Francisco-based bike-sharing company Spin uses the same Xiaomi M315 scooters for its fleet as Bird. In June 2018, Spin raised around $125 million via a blockchain-based security token offering, and the company used the money to expand its bike-sharing platform to cover the electric scooter market segment as well. Spin has recently announced that its electric scooters will be hitting Denver’s sidewalks, and the company emphasized that it wants to take a more cautious approach than Bird took in San Francisco. “Our approach is something we think a lot about,” said Spin Vice President of Business Ben Bear. “We have a lot of people from city and university backgrounds, and they think like planners.”

Goat

Goat is an up-and-coming electric scooter company based in Austin. The company’s name stands for “greatest of all time,” and it succinctly describes its long-term goal, which could be summarized as “quality over quantity.” “We’ve proven the technology and removed the biggest barrier to entry, which is the development and technology side of the business,” said GOAT CEO Michael Schramm. “We understand how to make the model profitable with few scooters and a small personal investment, so we decided to package the process and allow others the opportunity to succeed in this billion-dollar industry.”

Skip

Valued at $100 million, Skip is an electric scooter-sharing service from the creators of the Boosted board, a premium electric skateboard with a lithium battery, powerful motors and brakes, and simple wireless control. Skip started in Washington, DC, and its scooters lasts about 30 miles on a charge and can create 18 miles per hour. Skip charges a dollar per ride, and 15 cents per minute. “We’re the first permitted [dockless electric scooter] system operating anywhere” believes Sanjay Dastoor, a co-founder of Skip. “A lot of the story around dockless scooters has come from SF, and from companies that have launched without informing anyone or working with anyone. What we saw in DC was the opposite. We’re working with the cities to deploy, share data with them, and engage with the community, and we’ve seen none of the backlash that we’ve seen in SF.”

Others

Uber and Lyft want their slice of the electric scooter pie as well. Both companies have applied for permits for electric scooters in San Francisco, and Lyft has already launched 250 scooters in Denver. Even though they are late to the game, they have one massive advantage that could help them win: people already use their apps. Since all electric scooters are basically the same, and since all electric scooter companies charge more or less the same rates, it’s likely that a bulk of electric scooter users will stick to the first app they’ll use. During the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said that the company wants to become “the Amazon of transportation,” and it, just like Lyft, certainly has the infrastructure and money to do it.

Conclusion

Electric scooter companies still have many regulatory hurdles to overcome, but they are continuing to make their way to markets all over the world, successfully solving the first/last mile problem and encouraging commuters to use public transit. With so many young companies, along with from ride-hailing giants Lyft and Uber, competing with one another, it’s impossible to say who will be the next tech success story and who will fade into irrelevance. But one thing is clear even at this point: electric scooters are here to stay.

Heart Rate Monitoring in the Age of Wearables

Written by Brooks Canavesi on October 4, 2018. Posted in Blog, IoT, Mobile App Development, Technology trends, Uncategorized

You don’t have to be a fitness fanatic to monitor your heart rate. This useful piece of data is an important marker of cardiovascular health and monitoring how it changes over time can help you maintain a healthy lifestyle and stay within the recommended resting heart rate (RHR) range for adults, which ranges from 60 to 100 beats per minute. “A high RHR could be a sign of an increased risk of cardiac risk in some situations, as the more beats your heart has to take eventually takes a toll on its overall function,” says Dr. Jason Wasfy, director of quality and analytics at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital Heart Center. According to a 2013 study published in the journal Heart tracked the cardiovascular health of about 3,000 men, even a slightly higher RHR can double the risk of premature death. Fortunately, we live in the age of wearables, and it has never been easier to monitor heart rate in all real-life situations. Modern wearables make heart rate monitoring convenient, affordable, and sometimes even fun. But can relatively inexpensive gadgets from young tech companies produce reliable heart rate data? Let’s find out the answer.

Multiple Options

There are two main types of modern wearables that can be used for heart rate monitoring: chest straps and wrist devices. Each of these two types uses a completely different technology to measure heart rate, and each is suitable for different applications.

Chest Straps

Heart rate monitoring chest straps, such as the Polar H10, have been around for a while, but they’ve never looked as sleek and haven’t been as feature-packed as they are today. Chest straps measure heart rate using a processed called electrocardiography (ECG or EKG). The same processed is used by heart rate monitors in hospitals, and it records the electrical activity of the heart over a period of time using electrodes placed over the skin. While ECG machines in hospitals use multiple electrodes placed on different spots on the chest, chest straps typically have only one or two electrodes placed either underneath the breastbone or on the inner portion of the rib cage. Even with only one or two electrodes, chest straps produce highly accurate data, which has made them the favorite heart rate monitoring wearable of serious athletes. The biggest downside of chest straps is how uncomfortable they can be after a while. Chest straps are designed to stay in place during strenuous physical activity, which means they are as tight as necessary to ensure they won’t move out of place.

Wrist Devices

On the other hand, wrist devices with heart rate monitoring capabilities are just as comfortable as traditional watches, so it’s easy to wear them all day long, even during sleep, without any discomfort. Unlike chest straps, wrist devices measure heart rate using a processed called photoplethysmography (PPG). “PPG is a simple and low-cost optical technique that can be used to detect blood volume changes in the microvascular bed of tissue. It is often used non-invasively to make measurements at the skin surface,” explains Dr. John Allen, lead clinical scientist and honorary reader in microcirculation and vascular optics at Freeman Hospital in the UK. In other words, wrist devices, such as the Fitbit Charge 3, use optical sensors to see the blood pulsing through veins. Some manufacturers of heart rate monitoring wrist devices claim that their products offer the same accuracy as leading chest straps, but many experts find this hard to believe. The good news is that there’s now a growing body of scientific research that can help us decide whether wrist devices are useful health and fitness tools or just gimmicks that produce inaccurate data and mislead their users.

Trusting the Numbers

A group of scientists from the University of Louisville conducted a study to compare the average heart rate readings of two different heart rate technologies (PPG vs. ECG) after an interval style cardio-based workout. After conducting a total of 30 trials, the scientists found no significant difference between the two technologies. A difference of plus or minus 5 beats per minutes appeared only around 155–160 beats per minute, with ECG being more accurate. This means that the only users of wearable heart rate monitoring devices who might benefit from ECG technology are committed athletes who frequently push their heart rate to over 160 beats per minute. “One potential cause for the inaccuracies could exist within how PPG technology works. LED lights are pulsed into the skin and are reflected to the sensor by the capillaries. Therefore, the LED rate could be an issue. If light is not being sent fast enough, and the refracted light gets absorbed or delayed in any way, then PPG would indicate a lower HR, which is what was observed around the 155 – 160 bpm thresholds,” the researchers commented. “A second potential cause for inaccuracies lies within the workout itself. The workout involved running, which has been noted to potentially lead to HR inaccuracies within PPG algorithms.” As accurate as modern wrist devices are, they are not intended to match medical devices or scientific measurement devices. Most manufacturers of fitness-oriented heart rate monitors even explicitly state that their products are not medical devices and are intended for recreational purposes only. When used with this in mind, wrist devices provide a very convenient way how to monitor heart rate throughout the day.

Conclusion

Medical professionals and even health and fitness experts are preaching the benefits of heart rate monitoring, and the wearables industry has a whole range of heart rate monitors that allow anyone to stay on top of this critical marker of cardiovascular health. In recent years, researchers have been able to confirm that wrist devices are just as accurate as chest bands for regular applications, but serious athletes should still stick with ECG technology.