Covering World

Emospark is an emotionally-aware AI console for the home

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Emospark is a cube-shaped "artificial intelligence console" that
uses face-tracking and language analysis to assess human emotion and deliver
relevant content accordingly. 
Created by inventor Patrick Rosenthal, the Emospark console measures 90 x 90
x 90 and is designed to sit in the home and interact with people. At its core
lies a chip called the "Emotional Processing Unit" that allows the
system to build up an Emotional Profile Graph of the people in the house. 
To communicate with the Android-powered Emospark, users can simply talk to
it through speaking or typing into their tablet, mobile phone (which means it
can gauge your emotions on the move), computer or TV. It combines this with
face-tracking technology to gauge the user's likes and dislikes by categorising
their emotional responses to music, videos and other content (using an
emotional spectrum based on seven emotions: joy, sadness, trust, disgust, fear,
anger, surprise and anticipation). Users can also connect with Facebook and
YouTube to help the cube build up a history of interests. 
Emospark initially tries to recommend particular pieces of content -- be it
a song or a YouTube video -- that might help to improve the user's mood. So,
for example, the cube might tell you that your friend Michael has posted a new
video onto Facebook and it has 12 likes, would you like to watch it. If you say
yes, the cube will play it on the TV or other device. If you start to laugh, it
will show you similar content. 
Levy Rosenthal explained to Wired.co.uk that sharing content is about
sharing emotions. "Hundreds of millions of people post pictures, music and
videos because they want to share the emotions that are inside. You want to see
if other people like it, if they share the same emotions." Emospark also
acts as a virtual assistant, connecting to Wikipedia and collaborative
knowledge community Freebase. This means you can ask your cube questions, much
in the same way you might speak to Siri. Emospark will reply in a
conversational way, searching through records of previous conversations and
selecting an appropriate response to your comments. Over time, the cube will
develop its own personality based on the interactions it has with people, said
Levy Rosenthal. 
Rostenthal told Wired.co.uk that Emospark is designed to achieve "a
positive singularity". He explained that there are two versions of the
future: one which goes in the way of the Terminator, with robots based on pure
logic and another full of emotions, "like Wall-E, a cute robot full of
emotions who saves humans from logical robots". 
"Humans see that robots are coming, but a lot of money for research is
coming from the army -- for flying drones and weaponised robots -- and people
are getting scared," he explains. "Today all machines are pure logic.
But we are emotional. It's important for machines to understand humans on an
emotional level." 
Since it's an Android device, the cube can be customised using apps from the
Google Play store. Developers are invited to come up with new apps or gaming
systems that take advantage of Emospark.

Emospark is an emotionally-aware AI console for the home

Emospark is a cube-shaped "artificial intelligence console" that uses face-tracking and language analysis to assess human em...

19:29

Life-saving designs: a little smart thinking is leading to products that are changing millions of lives

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Let's take a minute to praise drip tape. You can find it at your local gardening
centre -- thin, perforated plastic strips that deliver water directly to a
plant's roots. Drip tape is one of the biggest advancements in farming of
the past 80 years, radically reducing the water industrial farmers
need and enabling our food supply to skyrocket. We take it for granted because,
like many great designs, it is so simple and commonplace. But it depends on a
pressurised water supply. Millions of farmers in the developing world, where
drip irrigation is impossible, must carry water cans on their backs - it's
painful, scarring labour. 
But in 2009 a small design startup, Proximity, launched a gravity-fed
drip system. It's much more than a huge PVC-canvas bag raised barely a metre
off the ground. The design hinges on an innovative water filter that cleans out
dirt and grit without sapping water pressure. Proximity's system cuts
water usage in half, increases yields by a third and costs just £21. The
device enables one woman to tend a larger plot by herself. Her children can thus
go to school instead of attending to their farming. Thousands of farmers in
Myanmar have bought them. 
Contrast the success of the Proximity system with the disastrous PlayPump, a
merry-go-round that pumped water while children played on it. By 2008,
Roundabout Outdoor, a company with backing from the US government, had
installed more than 1,000 of these £8,700 devices across Africa, often at the
expense of existing wells. Unfortunately, the maths suggested that kids would
have to play 27 hours a day for the PlayPump to provide enough water
for those it served. Today most of them lie fallow, rusting monuments to good
intentions married with half-baked design. 
Over the past few years, design has become a crucial tool in helping the
developing world. And that makes sense. After all, designers aren't just
obsessed with fashion and form -- they are trained to articulate people's needs
and desires and to build devices we will actually use. In the developed world,
that can mean creating a variety of products that solve even the tiniest daily
inconvenience, rely on our abundant infrastructure and appeal to our relative
wealth. But those conditions don't apply to the world's poorest. So if you're
going to help the developing world, you can't just airlift in supplies we use
in the rich world. You need to understand deeply how the people there live,
then design things that make sense for their specific conditions. 
This trend has its roots in the early 2000s, when business writer CK
Prahalad challenged the then-dominant view of the world's poorest people as
charity cases who would gratefully use anything they were given. Instead,
Prahalad saw the developing world as an unaddressed consumer market filled
with individuals making tough choices to satisfy their needs. A mother in India
facing a trade-off between medicine and mobile-phone minutes is every bit a
consumer -- but her dilemmas are profound, and thus the products aimed at
her need to prove their worth unambiguously. 
We can still be naïve about the many challenges involved in making a product
succeed in the developing world. But designers in recent years have become more
exacting about the delivery and sustainability of devices and
services. What follows are some of the most inspiring projects in
development, including a light for treating infant jaundice that offers
treatment at just ten per cent of western costs, a flask that can
deliver vaccines to the most remote places in the world and a cholera ward that
stops infection from spreading simply by treating its own water. These are
the kinds of innovations that can help people today -- and will lead
to even better-designed solutions tomorrow. Tim Brown 
Vaccine storage device 
Unrefrigerated vaccines spoil a problem in remote regions where electricity
is spotty. Global Good'sanswer: Use a super-efficient cooler that requires just
two bags' worth of ice to stay cold for up to 50 days. Liz Stinson 
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9TUetwsZ9mCnEusGGTHASSu93TsP9V1QaDYavF6opjR8IdeAsbnhpUiKPupLG4tKWpsen4HQgOMD0FuIX5PhwjCF0dhk2h6L0LN7VN8comrxWF1C6jTqifng37y0VDaxcmGER02i6ue8/s1600/27_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9TUetwsZ9mCnEusGGTHASSu93TsP9V1QaDYavF6opjR8IdeAsbnhpUiKPupLG4tKWpsen4HQgOMD0FuIX5PhwjCF0dhk2h6L0LN7VN8comrxWF1C6jTqifng37y0VDaxcmGER02i6ue8/s1600/27_2.jpg" width="212" /></a>A Constant Log 
Spoiled vaccines don't necessarily look spoiled, which is why vaccine
refrigerators in the west often log their temperature history. This one keeps
track of how often the lid is opened, and records temperature and GPS data,
which can be downloaded via USB or relayed via SMS. 
Insulating Layers 
Eight plastic ice-filled containers stack inside the cooler's body. These sit
inside an aluminium bottle wrapped in sheets of the same foil-like insulation
that shields satellites from extreme temperatures by reflecting heat. A
vacuum seal helps keep the inner chamber cold. 
Efficient Retrieval 
Inside are vials for 300 inoculations loaded on to trays that come in
interchangeable sizes to suit different vaccine configurations. They're
reachable through a 12cm opening: 95 per cent of hands can fit through it, but
it's still small enough to limit warm air from flowing in quickly. 
Farmer's helper 
Liz Stinson 
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEZIJMYI1P4D1svV2kWN2vgkOc1B0nksK8KQLCJA1ft7-4uSG_1b4XrgSSwCAhyUWnzl0mXkY_mRoHst97WCH2Z45xU5D8DSyFNiMn63KJfWyYHY-VdoR89QBj-LUA3BtXS_RooocbRNQ/s1600/28_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEZIJMYI1P4D1svV2kWN2vgkOc1B0nksK8KQLCJA1ft7-4uSG_1b4XrgSSwCAhyUWnzl0mXkY_mRoHst97WCH2Z45xU5D8DSyFNiMn63KJfWyYHY-VdoR89QBj-LUA3BtXS_RooocbRNQ/s1600/28_2.jpg" width="213" /></a>In the west, dairy farmers are the first link in a hyper-efficient processing
chain. In Kenya, they do everything themselves, from milking to carrying their
wares to market. As a result, up to five per cent of the milk produced
each year is lost to either spillage or spoilage -- a major economic drain. The
biggest culprit is the jerry can most farmers use to carry milk. So Global Good
created the Mazzi, a container designed to be just big enough to carry a day's
output from the typical three-cow farm, about 9.5 litres. It will hit the
market next year in eight African countries. 
How it works 
A detachable funnel allows farmers to milk directly into the jug so there
are no transfers. The ends of the Mazzi handle (on the back side) are pinched
off, eliminating hollows that can shelter bacteria. The 18cm-wide mouth lets
users reach inside to scrub thoroughly. 
 
 
 
 
Lightsaver 
Jaundice kills hundreds of thousands of babies in India and the developing
world heartbreaking, since it can be cured in a couple of days with a simple
blue light. But photo-therapy devices don't last in settings where replacement
bulbs and parts are in short supply. Working phototherapy units are rare as a
result, so nonprofit product outfit D-Rev developed Brilliance, a unit that's
cheap and robust. Kyle Vanhemert 
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxZm15lLVpvyEg3AJs91pERp_sShwwqlw_EKxX2IKx0X-uEnkz9VLUtAUWtFCAI61tOsHvCflTTTNX6hyNUNB2sG9ZTlcIHSBNxsdZGTs20T1zLD6pHr9SDmoeeAsT614ozr-TwA8CDrc/s1600/29_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxZm15lLVpvyEg3AJs91pERp_sShwwqlw_EKxX2IKx0X-uEnkz9VLUtAUWtFCAI61tOsHvCflTTTNX6hyNUNB2sG9ZTlcIHSBNxsdZGTs20T1zLD6pHr9SDmoeeAsT614ozr-TwA8CDrc/s1600/29_2.jpg" width="426" /></a></div>
Dependable bulbs 
Hospitals in Nigeria and India often have photo-therapy units - but they're
broken. Among the biggest culprits are compact fluorescent bulbs, which burn
out after treating just 50 babies. Brilliance uses long-life LEDs, which
can treat more than 1,000. 
Fewer LEDs 
LED models cost upwards of £1,800, thanks in part to their hundreds of diodes.
For the Brilliance, D-Rev used computer modelling to optimise light coverage
with just 12 LEDs. It sells for £250, yet it outperforms many state-of-the-art
units. 
Passive cooling 
Most compact fluorescent phototherapy units include fans to cool the bulbs.
Brilliance uses passive cooling - exposure to air - to regulate temperature,
which in turn maximises LED performance. It's cheaper, and has one less
breakable part. 
A familiar look 
D-Rev designed Brilliance with urban hospitals in mind, but it found that some
doctors weren't likely to trust equipment that was too newfangled-looking. So
the device is carefully crafted to look familiar and western. 
Pleasurable protector 
Mark Yarm 
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuz-vPnJoEKK49beDuvULfj6EG3fxeniVaBhuY_Tpn3FAfQ4gxt7ZN4ZtUaXnjhsLuP7KzIQxf1mzVey6qeRq-OlXnXs30hkf75qyLWVf8LdlYA6DsDAbq7_nnQFVMNM4MCjCfbDhyphenhyphenAcY/s1600/female+condom.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuz-vPnJoEKK49beDuvULfj6EG3fxeniVaBhuY_Tpn3FAfQ4gxt7ZN4ZtUaXnjhsLuP7KzIQxf1mzVey6qeRq-OlXnXs30hkf75qyLWVf8LdlYA6DsDAbq7_nnQFVMNM4MCjCfbDhyphenhyphenAcY/s1600/female+condom.jpg" width="320" /></a>In the developing world, it's still often taboo for a woman to ask her partner
to wear a condom, so their use remains rare, and female condoms are
uncomfortable, impractical and noisy. So Mache Seibel and a team at Condax are
developing a female condom with an irresistible selling point: pleasure. The
Femex has a thumb pump attached to inflatable tubules that grasp the male
tightly while stimulating the G-spot and clitoris. 
How it works 
The thumb pump and air infusion, partly inspired by Nike Air patents, are
strikingly effective. In tests, women overwhelmingly prefer it to normal
condoms. The Femex can be inserted up to six 
hours in advance - a big draw in regions where women are less empowered and unlikely
to press for protection. 
 
 
Waste zapper 
Mark
Yarm 
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPmesVqMNQjJYYHYnPH0Y7iMzRK4p5S2Tp3ADN73eCfhUFUfuA2LEurOchT1vaBWvbpQdsPY6ZMjpgGvP2ms8BDNjGsZnGwghZ0dirDQgBPhXn4QFSeAdeaoijdkr9erEHievdwIMy3Uw/s1600/30_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPmesVqMNQjJYYHYnPH0Y7iMzRK4p5S2Tp3ADN73eCfhUFUfuA2LEurOchT1vaBWvbpQdsPY6ZMjpgGvP2ms8BDNjGsZnGwghZ0dirDQgBPhXn4QFSeAdeaoijdkr9erEHievdwIMy3Uw/s1600/30_2.jpg" width="426" /></a>Some 2.5 billion people more than a third of the world's population lack
clean toilet facilities. Such poor sanitation causes diarrhoea, which kills
800,000 children each year. A Caltech team led by Michael Hoffmann, a professor
of environmental science, is creating a new toilet to solve the problem. This
design, which recently won a grant from the Gates Foundation, costs less than
one penny per person per day to run, while requiring minimal maintenance. 
Nesting 
To minimise transport costs, the toilets are housed in shipping containers. Two
units will be shipped to India for field-testing this month. 
Power 
The toilet has to work in areas without electricity. But to be sustainable, it
also needs a water-recycling pump. The requisite juice comes from solar panels,
which also power the sterilisation process. To prevent theft, the assembly is
cemented securely in place. 
Water spray 
In Southeast Asia, it's customary to throw used toilet paper in a bin to
prevent pipes from clogging. The bin thus becomes a disease vector. These rooms
reject toilet paper in favour of a purified-warm-water spray and blow-dryers. 
Electrochemical treatment 
Any remaining water is sterilised electrochemically and is ready for another
flush within four hours. By that time, it's also clean enough to be used for
irrigation - creating additional revenue for the toilet's manager on top
of per-use fees. 
Cholera killer 
Haiti's massive earthquake in 2010 led to the deadliest cholera epidemic in
recent history. Next year Gheskio, a healthcare provider, and MASS Design
Group will complete Port-au-Prince's first permanent base for treating the
disease. Temporary clinics can be disease vectors: truckers hauling away
contaminated sewage often dump their loads along the road, re-fouling the
groundwater. Kyle VanHemert 
How it works 
To avoid dumping, all sewage is treated on-site: underground chambers filled
with anaerobic bacteria digest 99 per cent of pathogens. Water is then
chlorinated before it flows to an adjacent garden.

Life-saving designs: a little smart thinking is leading to products that are changing millions of lives

Let's take a minute to praise drip tape. You can find it at your local gardening centre -- thin, perforated plastic strips that ...

19:27

Hundreds of academics protest against mass surveillance

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Hundreds of academics from around the world have signed a declaration that
highlights that the world is under "an unprecedented level of
surveillance" and that "this has to stop" in order to protect people's
privacy. 
<a href="http://www.academicsagainstsurveillance.net/">Academics Against
Mass Surveillance</a> was conceived of by four colleagues -- Nico van Eijk,
Beate Roessler, Frederik Zuiderveen Borgesius and Manon Oostveen -- at the
Institute for Information Law at the University of Amsterdam after all of <a href="http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-06/10/edward-snowden">Edward
Snowden's</a> revelations about large-scale surveillance by governments. 
"We were discussing that academics had been a tad quiet in the
media," explains the Institute's Frederik Zuiderveen Borgesius. 
The law professors drafted a declaration and then asked friends (mainly
human rights professors) for feedback before they agreed on a text. The text
was then shared internationally with colleagues, and almost 300 other academics
-- from countries including the US, UK, Turkey, Spain, Italy, Japan, Germany
and Austria -- have put their name against the declaration. "It was a
snowball effect," he adds. 
The declaration points out that intelligence agencies "monitor people's
internet use, obtain their phone calls, email messages, Facebook entries,
financial details, and much more". 
It adds: "Agencies have also gathered personal information by accessing
the internal data flows of firms such as Google and Yahoo. Skype calls are
'readily available' for interception...This has to stop." 
The declaration points out that the right to privacy is a fundamental one,
protected by a range of international treaties including the <a href="http://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/ccpr.aspx">International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights</a> and the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Convention_on_Human_Rights">European
Convention on Human Rights</a>. 
"Without privacy people cannot freely express their opinions or seek
and receive information. Moreover, mass surveillance turns the presumption of
innocence into a presumption of guilt. Nobody denies the importance of
protecting national security, public safety, or the detection of crime. But
current secret and unfettered surveillance practices violate fundamental rights
and the rule of law, and undermine democracy." 
Those who have signed the declaration call for action and urge these spy
agencies to be more transparent and accountable. "States must effectively
protect everyone's fundamental rights and freedoms, and particularly everyone's
privacy," it says. 
When asked which organisation represented the <a href="http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-11/22/web-index-2013">biggest
threat</a> to digital rights, Zuiderveen Borgesius told Wired.co.uk:
"Phew, hard question. It seems to be a draw between the NSA and GCHQ, as
far as the Western countries are concerned. But it wouldn't surprise me if more
scandals will be disclosed about other European intelligence agencies
soon." 
He added that the declaration wasn't so much a political message, but
"a scientific consensus that this unfettered and secretive surveillance
has to stop".

Hundreds of academics protest against mass surveillance

Hundreds of academics from around the world have signed a declaration that highlights that the world is under "an unprecedented l...

19:20

Withings Aura: the bio-alarm clock that monitors your sleep from under a mattress

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Withings wants to help you sleep better, and it wants you to do so by
joining you in bed. 
More specifically, it wants its new <a href="http://www.withings.com/en/aura">Aura
sensor</a> to get under your mattress. This small, soft device will spend the
night subtly reading your body's movements, breathing patterns and heart rate.
A companion device -- essentially a lamp with an embedded speaker -- rests on
your bedside, monitoring the noise and light in your bedroom. Paired to an
iPhone, the Aura system knows how well (or poorly) you sleep, and can begin to
help you understand why. 
It will also aim to determine the optimum time in the morning to wake you,
and does so using light (from the lamp) and sound (from the lamp's speaker).
The same works in reverse to help you fall asleep peacefully. 
After gathering data over a series of nights, the iPhone app presents data
to show how irregular your sleeping is. Do you always wake up after a couple of
hours? Are you tossing and turning all night? Is your heart rate too quick
while you're sleeping? 
It's a system that will seem familiar to anyone who has used the popular
Sleep Cycle app. This app -- with so many downloads it scored ninth place in
Apple's list of the most popular iPhone apps of 2013 -- rests under a pillow
and uses the phone's sensors to monitor sleep, then wake you at the right
moment. 
But Withings is confident its interpretation of the so-called
"bio-alarm clock" is better thanks to its unique sensor and its
pairing with a dedicated lamp and alarm system. It's difficult to test on-site
at a trade show (there are very few "test beds" available on the CES
show floor, and even fewer you'd want to fall asleep in) so we'll hold our
breath for our full review later in the year.

Withings Aura: the bio-alarm clock that monitors your sleep from under a mattress

Withings wants to help you sleep better, and it wants you to do so by joining you in bed. More specifically, it wants its new Aura se...

19:18

Next for health tech? A smart toothbrush that connects to your phone

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Every year at least one company at CES showcases something "smart"
that you insert into your mouth. This year it's the <a href="http://www.kolibree.com.myinstapage.com/">Kolibree smart electric
toothbrush</a>, which connects to your phone via Bluetooth, tracks your
brushing with an app and helps you improve oral hygiene by highlighting areas
of your mouth you're neglecting. 
Speaking to Wired.co.uk at <a href="http://www.wired.co.uk/ces">CES in Las
Vegas</a>, inventor Thomas Serval -- ex-Googler and also a former Microsoft
developer -- explained that he began creating the device just over a year ago
after realising his daughter wasn't cleaning her teeth properly, which resulted
in gum disease. 
"I talked to my dentist and he explained that people need to use an
electric toothbrush but don't know how to -- kids and adults," Serval
said, before demonstrating (on a set of plastic false teeth, thankfully not in
a mouth at the time) the ways in which people wrongly use an electric brush.
"I wanted to gamify the experience of brushing your teeth." 
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The Kolibree brush includes several sensors, such as an accelerometer,
gyroscope and digital compass (magnetometer). This helps the app develop an understanding
of each user's mouth and which areas are getting too much or too little
attention, or if the brush is simply being used incorrectly. 
Serval said he has worked with dentists to make sure the type of data the
brush acquires is not only useful to users immediately while brushing, but to
healthcare professionals who can use the information to advise patients on
better brushing techniques. The brush's software has an API available for
third-party developers to build apps and tools for the hardware as well. 
It's an interesting concept, although not wholly new as companies such as
Oral B have been developing electric brushes that connect to dedicated
monitoring devices for a few years. But by using a strong visual app, this is
an implementation of the idea that could well gel with health-conscious users,
particularly those now familiar with devices like the Nike Fuelband or Fitbit
for exercise tracking. 
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">A working model of the Kolibree smart brush was
demonstrated at CES and is hoped to launch in the second half of 2014 in the UK
as part of a Kickstarter campaign. A number of models will be developed,
ranging in price from €99-200 (around £83-165).

Next for health tech? A smart toothbrush that connects to your phone

Every year at least one company at CES showcases something "smart" that you insert into your mouth. This year it's the K...

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