Taiwan’s TTA Takes Record 82 Startups To CES 2020

For the third year in a row, Taiwan had a significant presence at one of the biggest electronics trade fairs in the world, CES 2020. Leading a delegation of 82 startups presenting in Las Vegas, Taiwan Tech Arena (TTA) said it was their largest delegation ever, winning over US$226 million in business opportunities.

Speaking to EE Times Europe at CES, Dr. Yu-Chin Hsu, Deputy Minister, Ministry of Science and Technology, commented, “Taiwan has played an important role in the global high-tech ecosystem in the past 30 years. We have 82 startup teams covering three areas: artificial intelligence (AI), smart technologies, and also in healthcare.” Dr. Hsu emphasized the need for Taiwan and its startups to be connected to the global tech ecosystem in all key markets and applications, which is why presence at a major trade fair like CES is important. “We see that in the future in the AI age, there will be a lot of our startups that become important.”

In addition to promoting its leading startups overseas and connecting them to the global tech ecosystem, Taiwan’s government also works hard to ensure strong collaboration between academia and industry, especially since a lot of leading-edge research is carried out at Taiwan’s research institutes. At CES, we spoke to Dr. Chiou Chyou-Huey, Director General, Department of Academia-Industry Collaboration and Science Park Affairs, Ministry of Science and Technology, who commented, “The Ministry of Science and Technology of government highly encourages industry and academia collaboration. We do so by providing incentives, mentors, mature business models and business plans support.”

He added, “We also provide [academics with] some budget for them to take their scientific research to more mature products or services. Taiwan Tech Arena is a good hub to connect to the international market or international resources. Taiwan is very competitive in terms of talent and technology. That’s the reason why we bring a large delegation to attend CES.

A key focus of the TTA delegation was AI, smart technologies and healthcare. TTA supports startups by providing funding and a platform to grow their businesses. This year it gave the opportunity for startups in the healthcare industry to highlight how AI will improve the quality of lives. The startups which presented at CES 2020 are trying to disrupt current markets and push the boundaries of innovation.

Here we highlight some of the companies that we spoke to on the TTA booth at CES 2020, both in healthcare as well as AI and smart technologies in general.

Hipposcreen Neurotech: objective depression diagnosis

Hipposcreen Neurotech has developed a depression diagnosis system to provide an objective indicator of mental health of a patient, using a system it has developed for brain health assessment. The system combines an electroencephalogram (EEG) recording system and artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm to provide doctors with a way of rapidly measuring key indicators to identify the mental health of a patient. Using eight EEG electrodes to capture brain waves as input signals to an EEG amplifier, it uses an AI algorithm in the cloud to perform feature extraction and data analysis. Doctors can then view the data and assessment via a web portal within around two minutes.

At CES, the company told us, “We built this system to help doctors to carry out depression diagnosis, to save time and the doctor can also use this report to explain to the patient more easily and provide more accurate assessment results.” Its stress EEG assessment (SEA) system addresses a growing prevalence of major depressive disorder (MDD) and is expected to be used as an indicator of the level of MDD. The SEA system can achieve accuracy of higher than 80% on the EEG datasets collected as a result of collaboration between the department of psychiatry at National Taiwan University Hospital and Harvard Medical School (McLean Hospital).

Enosim Bio-Tech: an electronic “nose” detects disease

Enosim Bio-Tech has developed a real-time monitoring, breath detection and analysis system to identify ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP). The core technology is a low power consumption nose-on-a-chip with software, integrated sensors, interface circuits, processors and memory. The breath analysis system uses data from a patient’s breath using the electronic nose to determine known diseases within its dataset. It overcomes environmental interference using a neuromorphic recognition algorithm.

Compared with traditional gas sensing, the e-nose does not use a single sensor, but instead uses multiple sensors to classify a gas. These sensors are combined into an array for odor recognition, and each of the different combinations represents a different odor. Compared with traditional gas analysis instruments, such as gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, the e-nose system is easier to operate and to miniaturize.

The company said, “We are developing new technology to provide fast screening of diseases, by using your breath. If you have cancer or cancer cells, you have bacteria and these have multiple metabolisms, and there will be components existing in your breath. We are trying to detect these molecules.” The development of e-nose still poses many challenges in commercialization, including size and cost. Enosim’s electronic nose technology has been in development for over ten years and is looking to break through the technology bottlenecks.

Ventilator-associated pneumonia refers to a bacterial lung infection in intensive care units (ICU), where patients have been treated with a respirator for more than 48 hours. VAP is the most common nosocomial infection in ICU, and the rate of infection is about 7 to 14%. The mortality rate can reach from 35 to 90%. In ICU, there is an unmet medical need for rapid VAP identification.

RelaJet Tech: allowing people to hear in noisy environments

RelaJet Tech has developed the R1898 DSP, a complete solution for over-the-counter (OTC) hearing aids. The company said it has an AI acoustic fingerprinting engine which carries out edge processing on hearing aids. It said it can extract human voice characteristics within 10 milliseconds and amplify them so that people with hearing difficulties are still able to hear individual people talk in noisy environments. “Our focus of the company is to provide hearing aid solutions. Our key technology is what we call speech separation. We can separate the human voice from environmental noise within a millisecond using our DSP,” said a company spokesperson.

Through just 3-5 seconds of a recording, Relajet said it can label a specific voice, divide it and enhance it in real-time. It can also cancel certain sounds or noises and remove them in real-time. Finally, it can covert 2D sound into 3D – it does so by analyzing sound and environment, and then simulating 3D surround with its engine so that the user can ‘hear the space.’

Taiwan User-Friendly Sensor & Technology: food allergy detection

Existing point of care devices for food allergy detection can only detect gluten over 20 ppm, and hence lack the ability to quantify smaller concentrations. Taiwan User-Friendly Sensor & Technology has developed a point-of-care device based on connected electrochemical sensors, which can quantify targets below 10ppm for multiple proteins simultaneously. With its rapid extraction techniques, the device can readout data in less than two minutes, and costs just a few dollars per test, compared to the thousands of dollars and a few hours to carry out the gold standard ELISA (enzyme linked immunosorbent assay) tests for food allergy detection.

The company’s co-founder and CTO, Dr. Hsing-Yi Lin said, “Our company is providing a food allergy detection device, which provides very quick detection of allergy. Currently in the lab, detection time takes four hours, but using our technology we can quickly detect allergies within two minutes.”

The company’s device consists of a handheld product which can extract allergens from food, and an electronic keychain reader for sensing allergens, connecting wirelessly to a smartphone to communicate the results.

SWR Technology: wireless power for 5G devices

SWR Technology delivers 65W of wireless power through windows, enabling faster deployment of 5G connected smart devices within homes and buildings in the AIoT world.

In one application, its system solution with RF IC provider MaxLinear can deliver more than 1Gbps symmetrical data rate and up to 35W wireless power through triple-silver-coated low-emissivity (low-e) glass windows up to 35mm thick. The design allows 5G fixed wireless broadband (FWB) service providers to deploy gigabit broadband speeds using mmWave spectrum. With the solution, consumers can self-install small indoor/outdoor devices in the corner of a window, without drilling holes, without running new cables, and without needing a professional installation. The small, low-profile form factor enables aesthetically pleasing designs that will not obstruct views through the window. SWR Technology’s wireless power module uses a proprietary high tolerance resonance transfer technology to transmit 20 Watts of power through standard or triple-silver-coated low-e glass up to 35mm thick.

Shengming Shan, CEO of SWR Technology CEO, told us, “SWR Technology is a mid-distance wireless power technology company. At CES, we are looking to find a lot of great partners that could enlarge and change people’s expectations and user experience with wireless power.”

Mindtronic AI: embedded systems for automotive cockpit DMS

Mindtronic AI is an AI startup with a focus on human machine interaction, designing ultra-light embedded computer vision algorithms serving a wide range of applications. At CES, the company demonstrated its expertise in automotive AI solutions with its cockpit driver monitoring system (DMS) and interaction platform, the DMX. This utilizes high quality biometric technology for a luxury user interface, plus a DMS to assess a driver’s cognition and connect this to the vehicle’s ADAS systems.

The company offers a standalone DMS module board for direct integration with a vehicle’s dashboard system, as well as a software SDK for integrating into any embedded hardware system. Mindtronic AI’s solution is already validated in a vehicle use case. Its’ adaptive algorithm guarantees high-quality image acquisition in adverse lighting conditions, and the algorithms work in concert with the adaptive NIR array and allow the DMS to deliver constant, noise resistant, quality output to the car system. The acquisition speed and quality are enabled by a high performance ultra-lightweight deep learning framework design for low power embedded systems.

Lixel: 3D images without special headsets

Addressing the opportunities for presenting 3D visual images without the need for any special glasses or headsets, Lixel has developed a technology called 3D floating image with interaction. This is based on a light field and Lixel’s patent-designed flat display which can be viewed with the naked eye and features oblique viewing and interaction.

It is based on the founders’ collective expertise in light field technology, and aims to make images more natural, intelligent and responsive than before. Its technology and product can be integrated into products to provide more natural vision and intuitive interaction experiences.

Potential uses include virtual assistants and communication, infotainment applications within cars (floating buttons to enhance safety and navigation), gaming and entertainment, online advertisement, online shopping. Lixel’s technology can be used in everything from general displays to consumer electronics and professional displays, such as in laptops, smartphones, and games consoles.

A spokesperson for Lixel told EE Times, “We develop new technologies beyond 2D: vision and touch technology. We bring the 3D floating image into action. The main purpose to come to CES is to introduce our 3D technology to the world. Because CES is a very important show in entire world. This year we will push ourselves to develop and release our product. We are still developing this market, and of course we will work very closely with our partners to develop new applications.”

Nestech: smart access control systems

Nestech combines edge computing and AI to develop smart access control systems. At CES, the company was showing its smart building control system and ACM smart hazard detection system to enable both management and safety for the hospitality and property management industries. Nestech provides complete turnkey solutions for various industries, ranging from intelligent city, hotel automation, smart home, intelligent office and other potential uses of smart connected devices. It specializes in system integration for internet of things (IoT) device and system development, as well as artificial intelligence IoT (AIoT) systems.

Startling Views from CES

By David Benjamin

LAS VEGAS — Negotiating the CES show floor, bumping along among throngs of convention-goers, and weaving between display booths large and small is no walk in the park. But it rewards the visitor with sights, sounds, and the occasional human encounter that can be mystifying, gratifying, amusing. For a photographer more interested in startling images than in the minutiae of technology, this hectic stroll can be fun. Here’s a collection of shots derived from an hour or so among several exhibition halls at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Quantum computing comes to CES

IBM chose CES to unveil IBM Q System One. IBM calls its Q System One “the world’s first integrated universal approximate quantum computing system.”

But here’s the thing: How do you explain quantum computing to the CES crowd? After all, the system is designed for scientific and commercial use.

The Big Blue did its best to describe quantum computing in the context of future applications. The potential use cases listed by IBM include: “finding new ways to model financial data and isolating key global risk factors to make better investments, or finding the optimal path across global systems for ultra-efficient logistics and optimizing fleet operations for deliveries.”

Next page: Le Mans comes to CES

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Bluetooth 5.2 SoC Extends Coin-Cell Battery Life Beyond Five Years

By Maurizio Di Paolo Emilio

Silicon Labs presented at CES a new system-on-chip (SoC) EFR32BG22 (BG22) that offers hardware and software stack combinations to meet market demand for battery-powered high-volume IoT products.

IoT is a reality present and used in the “consumer” world, with the adoption by consumers of many products/services already widespread from wearable items to “smart” appliances and upcoming transports, connected vehicles, and autonomous/assisted driving.

The advent of the IoT is steering the future of electronics toward a world where physical objects will all be connected and wireless communication will offer higher levels of freedom and flexibility. There is a growing demand for ultra-low-power wireless connectivity from consumers seeking to extend their wireless experience to compact electronic devices with small batteries. Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology brings low-cost wireless connectivity to small, long-lasting devices. It was designed from the ground up to meet the need for energy efficiency and design simplicity.

Market analysts at the Bluetooth SIG predict that shipments of Bluetooth devices will grow by 26% by 2023 and that 90% of all Bluetooth devices will include Bluetooth Low Energy by 2023. The key requirements of the market are secure connectivity, i.e., that the devices work with only genuine and reliable firmware and extremely low power consumption.

Recommended
Silicon Labs Looks to Apply AI to IoT

Energy consumption in BLE SoCs is generally due to the processor and radio module. The processor can absorb several milliamps during operation. Some BLE radios may peak at 20 mA during transmission. Which part consumes more depends primarily on the application and duty cycle. Most BLE products are designed to sleep as much as possible to save energy, wake up to process, and send data.

With a high-performance, low-power Arm Cortex-M33 core (27 µA/MHz active, 1.2 µA sleep), the new SoC supports the new Bluetooth 5.2 standard, Bluetooth mesh, and direction finding with sub-meter accuracy. The SoC EFR32BG22C112 addresses high-volume and cost-sensitive applications. It has an operating temperature of up to 125°C and extends flash memory up to 512 kB. Target applications include low-power Bluetooth mesh network nodes, smart port locks, and personal health and fitness devices (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Silicon Labs BG22 Secure Bluetooth 5.2 SoC block diagram — *Silicon Labs BG22 Secure Bluetooth 5.2 SoC block diagram*

“From fitness trackers and health and wellness sensors to smartphone accessories and PC peripherals, low-power data transfer represents one of the biggest and fastest-growing application opportunities for Bluetooth Low Energy connectivity,” said Mikko Savolainen, senior marketing manager at Silicon Labs. “Silicon Labs’s EFR32BG22 Bluetooth 5.2 SoCs, announced this week at CES 2020, are ideal for these Bluetooth LE applications, as they require extremely low power consumption to maximize battery life, as well as compact size and the right price points for mass-market IoT products. The new BG22 SoCs provide an optimal combination of energy efficiency, wireless performance, security and software tools, and stacks to meet the market demand for high-volume, battery-powered IoT products.

“In addition to supporting Bluetooth LE data transfer, the SoCs are a great option for Bluetooth mesh low-power nodes and for direction-finding and asset-tracking applications requiring sub-1-meter accuracy. Bluetooth remains the protocol of choice for creating proximity solutions used for point-of-interest information, item finding, and real-time asset-tracking (RTLS) solutions and indoor positioning systems (IPS). BG22 SoCs support Bluetooth 5.1/5.2 direction-finding features, including Angle of Arrival [AoA] and Angle of Departure [AoD], and can be used to build some of the smallest, lowest-power asset tags and beacons as well as RTLS locators.”

Although IoT devices extend the functionality of various machines and components, at the same time, they increase the vulnerabilities of all devices connected to the network. New companies will need to pay attention and move on two fronts, the technological one to capture the potential and the security one to avoid compromising situations.

BG22 SoCs respond to an essential issue of IoT devices: security. The Secure Boot functionality of Silicon Labs with Root of Trust and Secure Loader offers a simple and efficient solution. SoCs support comprehensive fault analysis, allowing developers to investigate problems without erasing the flash. Developers achieve this through the secure debugging of Silicon Labs with lock/unlock encryption capabilities.

Panel: Global Leadership in AI Depends on Gaining Public Trust

By Sally Ward-Foxton

The support of the public is paramount to any country or region’s successful global leadership in transforming businesses, markets and economies using the technology, a panel discussion at CES concluded.

To start, the panelists, which included representatives from industry, trade associations, politics and government, were in agreement that leadership in AI is not a simple win-lose conundrum.

“I would not agree with the idea that it’s a zero-sum game, that one nation is leading and that it’s a race and someday you declare a victory, and then everybody else is a loser… I think everyone can benefit from the advantages of artificial intelligence,” said Lynne Parker, deputy CTO for the United States, from the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Parker’s definition for a nation that leads in the field of AI is one with a lot of companies leading in terms of innovation, one with many leading universities in that field with cutting-edge ideas, and one with a strong innovation ecosystem which works closely with academia and the industry to foster innovation. The US is leading, according to those metrics, she argued.

“There will be winners, but maybe it’ll be first place, second place, third place, fourth place, and not winner take all,” said Michael Beckerman, president and CEO of the Internet Association. “From the companies standpoint, certainly [leadership] will come from innovation and the ability to put in place transparency and safeguards to ensure there’s not bias or discrimination through artificial intelligence, and ensuring that ethics are set up in a way that meets our common goals and standards… and from the government standpoint, making sure that policies are in place that both encourage and allow for innovation.”

These policies must ensure there are safeguards for both government and private sector use of AI, Beckerman said, pointing out that some of the riskier potential applications in terms of public trust are for government applications of the technology.

The panelists also agreed that consumer trust was of paramount importance, in a way that hasn’t been seen with other technology trends in the past.

“For both private sector and public sector use, you can’t truly win or succeed with AI deployments, with scaling AI, unless you have consumer and citizen trust,” said Adelina Cooke, North American AI policy lead at Accenture. “Any [leadership] race is going to need to engender trust among the population. When we are thinking about scaling [up AI applications], it’s not just feasibility and innovation, it’s making sure that you have the proper governance and responsible oversight within an organization [that’s important].”

Government Role
Panelists took different views on the role governments should play in increasing AI leadership in their countries.

The White House’s Lynne Parker described the US government’s hands-off approach to regulation of the use of AI technology.

“Certainly, I think at the beginning, the role of the federal government is not to get in the way,” she said. “We want to foster innovation and make sure it’s being used in ways we can all benefit from, but… there are many areas in which we need to have more oversight.”

AI presents a unique challenge, she said, in that there are many existing laws that protect Americans from things like discrimination, and the country has a robust legal system to help enforce these laws. If these laws are enforced at the state and local government level, companies have to deal with a patchwork of laws and regulations, which hampers innovation in every locale.

“At some point, the federal government needs to step up and say, okay, we’re actually hampering innovation by not having regulatory oversight or a process for it, or having any consistency,” she said.

The White House released a draft memo earlier this week which will establish consistent guidelines for regulatory agencies, which should help protect the public and also help the innovation ecosystem by providing companies with some predictability in terms of regulatory approach, she said.

Italian member of parliament Mattia Fantinati detailed both the European Commission’s approach and the approach in Italy.

The European Commission’s strategy for AI leadership is based several key ideas. These include boosting technological and industrial capacity, uptake of AI across the economy with private-public partnerships, being prepared for the socioeconomic changes which will happen quickly, and ensuring a legal and ethical framework for innovation to flourish within.

Italian initiatives for adoption of AI are focused on small and medium enterprises (SMEs), reflecting the country’s economy, he said.

“Most developed countries have adopted an AI strategy that reflects their social and political system,” he said, noting that Italy is home to many SMEs in manufacturing and handicrafts. “My role is to… create a collaboration between the masters of handicraft and artificial intelligence. It’s not easy, but we have to do it, because the European strategy is focused on the SME.”

The European Commission’s strategy includes using public funding to stimulate private investment, particularly with early-stage startups.

USA vs. China
Asked by an audience member about Kai Fu Lee’s 2018 book “AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley and the New World Order” in which he details China’s strengths in this arena, Parker again referenced the importance of public trust.

She mentioned Lee’s postulation that China is very good at taking existing ideas and implementing them.

“At the same time, I think we, as the free world, also care about exactly how these technologies are used,” she said. “We want to make sure that we don’t use the technologies in ways that are inconsistent with the values of our nations.”

Silicon Labs’s CEO on AI and UWB

By Junko Yoshida

LAS VEGAS — “We are still in the early days of market adoption of IoT,” Tyson Tuttle, CEO of Silicon Labs, told EE Times at the company’s booth during CES.

But wait, hasn’t the electronics industry been talking about the internet of things (IoT) for more than two decades? Trace back to the time when RFID tags began to be touted as a must-have in supply chains. (Kevin Ashton, the then-director of the Auto-ID Center, is widely known for having coined the phrase “IoT” back then.)

Besides, the industry supposedly has all the necessary building blocks for IoT: a low-energy microcontroller, wireless connectivity, sensors, and maybe antennas in an IoT module. At this point, isn’t IoT essentially a “bing-bang-boom”?

Not necessarily. Tuttle maintains that IoT is a market that takes decades to unfold. Consider the IoT attach rate for commercial lighting systems, he said. “We are probably at 10% to 15% … It’s still low.”

Selling into the future
In Tuttle’s mind, transitions this big are never done and never enough. Furthermore, the technologies applied to IoT are constantly advancing.

As IoT continues to look for design wins in the industrial market, Tuttle said that the chip supplier’s job is never done at the time of sales. He said, “We are selling our chips into the future.”

In other words, “Our products must be able to support new software, protocol updates, and applications — all that — over the next 10 to 15 years.” That’s a long-haul business.

IoT users in the industrial market are also looking for IoT devices that are contextually aware. Location is one important element.

*Silicon Labs’s new Bluetooth SoC, EFR32BG22*

Silicon Labs just announced this week the company’s new Bluetooth SoCs, capable of asset tracking. The new low-energy device takes advantage of Bluetooth Angle of Arrival and Angle of Departure capabilities, thus offering sub-1-m location accuracy, according to the company.

Location, however, is just one element that can make IoT aware of its context. Others, such as light, sound, voice, and vision, can make IoT devices “a lot more aware of the environment they are operating in,” Tuttle explained.

The next logical step is to add AI to the IoT module. Tuttle promised that Silicon Labs will deliver in 2020 an IoT solution integrated with AI acceleration. By making IoT devices “trainable, actionable, and capable of extracting information and learning from the environment,” they become a lot more contextually aware, he explained.

Of course, Silicon Labs isn’t alone as it looks to add machine learning on end nodes. But rather than forcing inference jobs to run on current devices, Silicon Labs plans to add an AI acceleration feature to the company’s Wireless Gecko Series 2 platform.

Unlike competing AI edge devices plugged into the wall, Tuttle said, “Our goal is to get this [IoT devices with multiple sensors and AI features] hooked up with wireless network or connected smartphones. The name of the game is to enable machine learning on a very low-power, always-on device with a limited memory budget.”

Armed with its Gecko MCUs known for its low-energy sensor interface and interconnect features such as Peripheral Reflex System, Silicon Labs believes it has an edge in the race to add machine-learning features to IoT solutions.

The low-energy sensor interface, for example, can connect to duty-cycling inductive, capacitive, and resistive sensors while autonomously operating in Deep Sleep mode. With Gecko MCUs, the peripherals also connect directly to one another, allowing them to communicate without waking up a CPU or seeking its intervention.

“These are all great features unique to our Gecko MCUs, and some people even say that this is enough,” said Tuttle. But the company is taking more steps to optimize AI functions on IoT devices.

Tuttle wouldn’t disclose details and timelines for the new AI products. However, he implied that they will be ready when Silicon Labs holds its own “Works With Smart Home Conference” in September. “We will bring Google, Amazon, and others onto the stage,” said Tuttle.

How about UWB?
With the introduction of the Bluetooth 5.1 spec, Bluetooth can now do fine-grained positioning. Accuracy of positioning is accomplished by an Angle of Arrival mechanism. Undoubtedly, this will become essential to context-/location-based IoT applications.

But if positioning is so critical, how about using ultra-wideband (UWB)?

Tuttle said, “Absolutely. We are interested. Things are getting more interesting as UWB becomes a part of iPhones and Samsung’s phones.” But he added, “Just to be clear, that is not to say that Silicon Labs is going to do UWB.”

In the past, when UWB was gunning for wireless streaming, positioning itself to compete with Wi-Fi, Tuttle said, “We — at Silicon Labs — never chased that market then.”

While UWB has its limitations, especially at distance, it offers more accurate location than other technologies. UWB will be great for a set of applications, said Tuttle, such as payments at point of sale. “But we will wait and see.”

For its IoT business, Silicon Labs sees itself focusing on local rather than wide-area networks such as LTE and LoRa. The same could apply to UWB. “In our business, what we decide not to do is just as important,” said Tuttle.

Why CES 2020 Cares About the Supply Chain

By Barbara Jorgensen

The supply chain is one of those things that nobody cares about until something goes wrong. Then it’s everybody’s problem.

Remember the iPhone 8? Production was delayed because of problems with OLED screens, which weren’t even manufactured by Apple. Consumers were incensed, Apple was red-faced, and the supply chain took center stage.

Unfortunately, disaster is the main driver of supply-chain innovation. Resilience — the ability to shift all or part of a supply chain as needed— is mitigating disruption. Many of the technologies showcased at CES 2020 are key enablers of resilience, an expert panel told the audience.

For example, the American Logistics Aid Network (ALAN), which provides supply-chain assistance to disaster relief organizations, uses simulation to prepare for catastrophes, said executive director Kathy Fulton. High-risk areas such as Puerto Rico are plotted on networks as digital twins. Simulated hurricanes or earthquakes then strike the region. If a virtual aid station is destroyed by the event, alternative locations are immediately identified.

“There’s no such thing as shipping something from Point A to Point B,” said Fulton. “The supply chain is now a network.” Organizations should anticipate the loss of a supplier or a physical facility and have alternative plans in the works.

The supply chain’s sphere of influence ranges from individual package delivery to materials flow into factories. But customer-facing organizations are on the front line when something goes wrong.

“We face mini-disasters every day,” said Robin Hensley, vice president for operations technology at UPS. “We call it weather.”

UPS has developed automated sorting centers that can be moved in the event of fires, floods, or other disruption. These centers can be programmed to sort for a specific zip code regardless of location. The process is largely transparent to customers, Hensley said.

Data analytics is the underpinning of many resilience efforts, panelists said. “We have lots of data that is meaningless unless it is used for insight,” Fulton said. “So we use it to improve efficiency, plan routes, or move people and equipment. We can make decisions before a disaster strikes.”

Then there are the gadgets. UPS is already using delivery drones, said Hensley — some of which are FAA-certified. “We are mostly using them on massive campuses, where it could take a half-hour to drive to your destination,” she explained. Drones deliver medical samples that need to be turned around quickly. UPS is also partnering with CVS to deliver medication to individuals.

Tracking technology has become so precise that ALAN uses RFID, electronic barcodes, and other types of tags to ensure that medicine, water, and other aid reaches intended destinations. These supplies are often “hijacked” after they arrive at a distribution hub, Fulton explained. ALAN can pinpoint whether or not medication reaches the right individual. The frequency of lost shipments has been reduced and problematic distribution centers identified.

Even wayward deliveries are improving UPS’s supply chain, Hensley said. UPS uses digital package twins to follow a delivery’s movement. Sometimes, packages head in the wrong direction or even backtrack on their delivery routes.

“We want to know what the heck is happening with those packages,” Hensley said. “So we collect data, analyze it, and plot the best route for delivery. It cuts a lot of time and waste out of the process.”

Consumer items themselves are part of supply-chain resilience efforts. During power outages, Fulton said, phone services are unavailable, but texting services are available. “We use that to get the word out — warning people of impending danger or letting them know where aid services are available,” she said, adding that cities are increasingly moving to 911 text alerts.

UPS has created “pop up” sorting centers that are used during holidays and disasters. Workers use small scanners in these temporary hubs while an earpiece feeds them sorting instructions.

Resilient supply chains anticipate disruption no matter the cause, according to panelists. “Ultimately, the destination is human,” said Hensley.

Shapiro Quizzes Activist FTC Chief

By David Benjamin

LAS VEGAS — Consumer Technology Association chief Gary Shapiro, an avid opponent of government regulation, didn’t quite know what to expect Tuesday in a cordial onstage interview with Federal Trade Commission (FTC) chairman Joseph Simons, who is one of the Trump administration’s least-noticed administrators.

What Shapiro got was a mixed bag of free-market support and pro-consumer activism, with a tendency toward consumer protection.

Perhaps the most emphatic sign of Simons’s preference for using government power to help ordinary people came toward the end of the interview, when Shapiro asked about one law that Simons would like to see passed while he serves in the FTC. Simons said he would encourage Congress to clarify Section 13(b) of the Federal Trade Commission Act, a 1973 measure that empowers the FTC to punish companies for deceptive practices that harm consumers.

Simons noted that in a federal Seventh Circuit appeals court decision, the FTC was stripped of its power to impose financial penalties on violators of the FTC Act. He said that this decision, which reversed a previous Seventh Circuit judgment, “does huge damage to our fraud program,” denying vital redress to consumers who’ve been tricked, often with significant financial loss, by credit companies, drug firms, and others. Without being able to levy financial pain on these offenders, said Simons, the FTC cannot do the sort of vigorous enforcement that is his agency’s mission.

Simons urged Congress to address this issue, restoring his agency’s power to fine violators.

Earlier in the interview with Shapiro, Simons offered an example of the power of taking money from offenders, citing FTC settlements last year — for privacy violations by Facebook and Google’s YouTube division — of, respectively, $5 billion and $170 million.

The YouTube violation was especially sensitive because it involved the collection of personal information from children without obtaining consent from their parents.

Noting that the FTC settlements against these two internet juggernauts were greater than the law requires, Simons warned, “Facebook and Google know that we’re paying attention. If they continue to do what they’ve done in the past and continue to violate privacy laws, they can expect the repercussions to be more severe.”

FTC chairman Joseph Simons was both charming and combative in his CES “fireside chat” with CTA president Gary Shapiro, arguing forcefully for consumer protections that do not punish powerful internet companies like Google “just because they’re big.”

Simons made it clear, however, that his FTC feels no urgency to preemptively impose anti-trust sanctions on dominant platforms like Google and Facebook, as has been done in Europe through the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) passed by the European Commission to regulate data transfer among EU nations.

“Data is the bloodstream for AI [artificial intelligence],” said Simons. “We want to do it right. we don’t want to mess it up.”

Urged by Shapiro to denounce the “chilling” effect of the GDPR, Simons spoke carefully about domestic regulation policy: “We don’t go after big companies just because they’re big and successful … We shouldn’t turn on them and penalize them for success. You have to commit an anti-competitive act. You have to harm consumers. We can’t just break up companies just because they’re big.”

Shapiro tried to lead Simons into a direct critique of Europe’s regulatory regime, suggesting that passage of the GDPR is “not a good innovation strategy.” Simons responded with a finely tuned note of diplomacy.

“People characterize it that way,” he said with a smile.

Texture Sensations on the First Haptic Smartphone Display

Bringing textures to life by changing the sensation of a surface as your finger slides over plastics, wood, and glass is the ambition of Hap2U, a France-based haptic technology startup.

At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Hap2U is demonstrating what it claims is the world’s first haptic smartphone display, which allows users to feel and sense objects on touchscreens. Its Hap2phone technology was named Honoree of the 2020 CES Innovation Award.

Interactive and tangible
With the Hap2phone, Hap2U is targeting a global haptic component market that will be worth $4.8 billion by 2030, according to a recent report by IDTechEx. Haptic technologies have been used in products such as game console controllers for more than 30 years and can be found in the vast majority of smartphones, smartwatches, and electronic devices. Over the past five years, however, the research firm said it has observed a shift in the core haptic technology and “an even more significant shift in the direction of innovation efforts to develop the haptic technologies of the future.”

Founded in 2015, Hap2U has developed the so-called ultrasonic lubrication principle. As explained in a company blog post, the vibration occurs at ultrasonic frequencies (above 20 kHz) and generates a thin film of pressurized air between the finger and the screen, thus modifying the friction. The vibration can be controlled.

With a smartphone, users can sense vibrations when he or she receives a notification, receives a text message, or clicks on the glass surface. This is the vibrotactile technology. Hap2U’s technology aims to enhance the overall emotional experience by enabling texture sensations. In a statement, Chappaz explained: “Think about users on their smartphone in noisy or harsh-lighting conditions — outdoors, for example — how touch then becomes a major feature to improve their experience. HD texture sensation is a crucial interface between the user and the outside world, introducing an added level of interaction compared to traditional screens.”

Hap2U uses piezoelectric actuators to generate ultrasonic vibrations on a glass screen and modify the friction of the user’s finger. The vibration is synchronized with the position of the finger, enabling the user to feel what appears on the screen. This thin-film piezoelectric solution (2 microns) has a minimal impact on weight (<1g) and on the display power consumption (1%).

By applying a friction coefficient, Hap2U claims it can make distinct variations in touch sensations — intense or soft nicks, springs, buttons, elasticity, and all kinds of high-to-low elevation points and textures. This allows the nerve endings in the fingertips to detect different sensations and informs the brain to interpret them.

Basically, Chappaz stated, “Hap2Phone offers the physical touch experience of what users see: If there is a fish on the screen, the user feels its scales; same for a pushbutton, a slider, [or] the wheel of a car in a video game.” For manufacturers integrating screens in their products, this solves the problems related to the digitization of objects by making them both interactive and tangible.

Glass, but not only
Initially focused on glass surfaces such as smartphone and tablet screens, Hap2U said it has been working on a multi-material haptic technology and is now deploying haptics on wood, plastic, and metal.

Hap2U’s technology is not solely intended for smartphones and could find applications in the IoT, industrial, automotive, and smart building markets.

After initial seed funding in 2016, Hap2U completed in late 2018 a €4 million Series A funding round with Daimler AG to accelerate the development of its haptic technology. Headquartered in Grenoble, Hap2U now employs 30 people and expects to double to 60 by the end of 2020.

AI Can Map the World for Disaster Preparedness

By Sally Ward-Foxton

LAS VEGAS — Intel has developed AI models to identify geographical features from satellite imagery for the creation of accurate, up-to-date maps. The company has been working closely with the Red Cross on its Missing Maps project, which aims to create maps for areas of the developing world to improve disaster preparedness. Many areas of the developing world do not have up-to-date maps, which means that aid organizations can struggle to work efficiently in the event of natural disasters or epidemics.

“As someone who’s been on the ground with the Red Cross, having access to accurate maps is extremely important in disaster planning and emergency response,” said Dale Kunce, co-founder of Missing Maps and CEO of American Red Cross Cascades Region. “But there are entire parts of the world that are unmapped, which makes planning and responding to disasters much more difficult. This is why we’re collaborating with Intel to use AI to map vulnerable areas and identify roads, bridges, buildings, and cities.”

“If you don’t know where all the roads are before a hurricane hits, after it hits, you have no idea where flooding has occurred or which roads are washed out and which aren’t,” said Alexei Bastidas, deep-learning data scientist at Intel AI Lab, in an Intel podcast on the subject. “If you don’t have an accurate enough map of what was there beforehand, it really prevents you from responding to the disaster as it’s ongoing. The other thing to consider is that a lot of these disasters … are weather events — cyclones, typhoons, hurricanes, even volcanic eruptions. These weather events can occlude the satellite sensor; they create clouds … It makes it extremely challenging for somebody like the Red Cross to respond to an event.”

At present, Missing Maps uses a team of volunteers to go though satellite images and identify roads, towns, bridges, and other infrastructure. The volunteers manually update an open-source map called Open Street Map, which is laborious and time-consuming.

Intel’s AI Lab, in collaboration with Mila and CrowdAI, developed an image-segmentation model and used it to identify unmapped bridges in Uganda from satellite pictures. Object-detection approaches were discounted due to performance in favor of segmentation. Bridges were selected as a trial feature because they are critical infrastructure and are particularly vulnerable to natural disasters such as floods. Seventy previously unmapped bridges were discovered by the system; the Ugandan National Society can use this data to better plan evacuation and aid-delivery routes.

Uganda Map — *The system identified 70 bridges across Uganda that were previously unmapped by either Open Street Map or the Ugandan Bureau of Statistics. (Image: Intel)*

Satellite imagery can be particularly challenging to work with. The lack of an obvious frame of reference for up and down is challenging, said Bastidas. Also, images are not always taken from directly above, meaning the same feature may be seen from different angles. Differences in the local terrain as well as styles of infrastructure and architecture make it hard to train models on labelled data from other parts of the world. Even in images from the same country, terrain may look very different in summer and winter, and features such as bridges show huge variation in size and style.

Intel’s training dataset therefore had to come exclusively from Uganda. In fact, a section of Northern Uganda was used, which includes multiple views of the same bridges to enable models to learn about seasonal and nadir-angle changes.

The models started by looking for waterways and highway features, and any areas where a highway crossed a waterway was marked as a candidate point for a bridge. Known bridge locations within 30 m of any candidate points were discarded. Bounding boxes were added around these intersections, and then satellite images from areas in the bounding boxes were pulled. The models could then interpret the images to see whether they contained a bridge.

The models ran on second-generation Intel Xeon scalable processors (Cascade Lake) with DL Boost and nGraph. Bastidas said that these processors were chosen for their giant size; satellite images are often 1,024 square pixels, and it was desirable for the chip to process an entire image at once.

According to Bastidas, the next steps for the project may include the generation of models that can aid human mapping volunteers, perhaps predicting bridge locations but leaving the final decision to human eyes.

“We are also interested in trying to come up with ways to leverage existing open-source data to make models that are more robust, more generalizable, and can [work] with more tolerance for this geographically distinct area,” he said.

FCC’s Pai Favors Sharing Spectrum Pie

By David Benjamin

LAS VEGAS — With a bitter controversy over his successful efforts to undercut the Obama administration’s net-neutrality policy well in the past, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman made his first appearance at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) as a kinder, gentler Ajit Pai.

Pai joked with CTA president Gary Shapiro about the Doomsday scenarios forecast by net-neutrality advocates — “I get messages that I destroyed the internet over the internet” — and focused on less prickly issues, including the implementation of 5G mobile networks and the still-unrealized FCC mission of “broadband for all.”

Indeed, with 5G on the horizon and many rural communities suffering from slow broadband, or none at all, Pai touched upon the various elements, including the availability of spectrum to giant wireless providers like Verizon and smaller fixed wireless broadband providers, the latter of whom are starving for spectrum.

“Our goal is to remove spectrum as a constraint on innovation,” said Pai. He added that there now exists “a wide variety of use cases to share spectrum assets in ways that benefit consumers … to make sure that this resource is deployed to the benefit of the American people.”

Indeed, there are proposals in the works, favored by the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s Office of Spectrum Management, in collaboration with the private Institute for Telecommunications Sciences, that would allow sharing, among smaller network providers, of mid-range C-Band (3.5 GHz) and Citizens Band Radio Service (3.7–4.2 GHz).

While interviewing FCC chairman Ajit Pai, CTA chief Gary Shapiro made an inadvertent political prediction, saying about Pai’s boss, “It could be President Trump again.”

Pai was emphatic about the need to deliver more spectrum to rural communities who are still missing out on the earlier generations of connectivity — LTE and 4G. “We’ve got to think about more sharing models,” he said. Citing something called “massive MIMO” (multiple input/multiple output), Pai added that the days of “zero-sum spectrum, if you’re using it, I can’t use it” must end.

However, the historical precedent is that the big networks are first to the trough. The question unasked by Shapiro was whether a libertarian FCC leadership under Pai that has been loath to interfere in the “free market” is well-suited to helping out some 200,000 “small cell” providers.

Asked by Shapiro about the deployment of 5G, Pai admitted that a host of obstacles stand in the way of getting it installed everywhere equally in fast order. The first problem, he said, is a trained workforce large enough to string fiber on a vast forest of utility poles across the continent. “It’s hard work, outdoors, in all kinds of weather.”

He cited other practicalities such as the availability of materials like utility poles and copper. He noted the need to be more aggressive about rural broadband and to “get electric companies far more involved.”

Additionally, noted Shapiro, there are some communities, states, and cities that object to the intrusion of 5G “aesthetically.” In this case, Pai came firmly against “too many layers of government getting in the way.” In this case, he suggested, the feds should rule.

“The more disparate these regulations are, the fewer companies will be able to get into the market,” he warned.

Chairman Pai, who sported a pair of colorful “sushi socks” with his loafers, brought a certain measure of suspense to his appearance at CES. Until his chairmanship, a chat between Shapiro and the FCC chairman was an annual ritual. But after threats were issued against Pai during the net-neutrality battle, he begged off the trip to Las Vegas. He agreed to attend the session after only a two-year hiatus. Even this year, the hundreds of convention-goers who arrived at the Las Vegas Convention Center meeting room were subject to stop-and-frisk bag searches and pat-downs before being allowed into the hall.

Shapiro began the session by saying, “He said he was coming a couple of times and he didn’t show up.” But then, smiling, Pai broke the tension and strode onto the stage.