New Florence. New Renaissance.

Harvesting energy from sidewalks

Energy harvesting, which converts ambient, otherwise wasted, energy sources into usable electricity, is expected to contribute to the formulation of a self-generating power grid. This type of grid can enable sustainable operation of wireless sensor networks as the “Smart City” vision becomes reality. Human walking is a plentiful mechanical energy source wasted during daily activities. This study aims to develop an omnidirectional biomechanical energy harvesting (OBEH) sidewalk block that is able to generate electricity from human walking. 

Springer

Here is a startup working on kinetic sidewalks

 

 

The future of insurance

One of the most profitable in the world, the insurance industry exceeded $1.2 trillion in annual revenue since 2011 in the U.S. alone.

But risk is becoming predictable. And insurance is getting disrupted fast.

By 2025, we’ll be living in a trillion-sensor economy, projected to generate bronto-bytes (1000 trillion trillion) of data, as explained by TSensors Summit co-founder Janusz Bryzek. And as we enter a world where everything is measured all the time, we’ll start to transition from protecting against damages to preventing them in the first place.

But what happens to health insurance when Big Brother is always watching? Do rates go up when you sneak a cigarette? Do they go down when you eat your vegetables?

And what happens to auto insurance when most cars are autonomous? Or life insurance when the human lifespan doubles?

For that matter, what happens to insurance brokers when blockchain makes them irrelevant?

Read about in in Peter Diamandis’ blog post

Video below has another perspective on the industry

 

Making cities more livable

Bloomberg profiles several cities which are tackling urban annoyances from public brawls to garbage piles.

An example In Stratumseind, a street in the Dutch city of Eindhoven known for its nightlife, cylinders on lampposts and balconies dispense aromatherapy to deter brawls. After an experiment showed that citrus helped calm prisoners at police stations, Eindhoven is trying it out in an area where police break up fights an average 400 times a year.

Another is waste management in Cascais in Portugal

 

Home of the Future – in 2068?

We’ve finished building our Home of the Future. But now it’s starting to feel more and more like the home of the present. Grant Imahara of The Verge looks at how the tech in our home can change in the next 50 years.

 

BMW’s voice-controlled assistant

It can pick up on routines and habits, allowing users to simply say "Hey BMW, take me home" when they want to navigate back to their house, for example. Additionally, simple statements like "Hey BMW, I'm cold" or "Hey BMW, I'm tired" will lead the assistant to adjust settings like the temperature, lighting and music, accordingly.

Users can also ask the assistant about various aspects of their vehicle, such as how the automatic high beams work, if the oil level is sufficient or whether there are any current warnings. Drivers can also give it access to their calendars in order to receive updates about when they should leave for a scheduled appointment. In the future, BMW says the assistant will also be able to alert drivers to potential issues, like the tire pressure being low, share fuel-saving tips and arrange appointments with a service center. It will also be compatible with other digital assistants, like Alexa, and will be accessible from smart speakers and phones.

Engadget

Disrupting the Car

From CB Insights

In this briefing, we dive into how Big Auto, Big Tech, and startups are battling to own this future, covering the following:

• What’s driving record levels of investment in bike- and scooter-sharing startups, including Uber and Lyft’s recent moves to acquire startups in the bike-sharing space.
• How advances in battery technology are generating a resurgence in investment in electric vehicles, including bikes and scooters.
• Where the $3.4B invested in self-driving technology went in 2017, and how major AV players such as Waymo and GM will influence the ride-hailing business moving forward.
• How OEMs such as Daimler and BMW are changing the face of auto retail with car subscriptions and car-sharing services.

Smart Home – circa 1925

We were recently at Ca D’Zan, the Venetian Palazzo of John and Mable Ringling (of circus fame) overlooking Sarasota Bay. While the 56 room, 36,000 square foot home on which construction started in 1924 has all kinds of spectacular touches like reflecting pool, oriental carpets, rose garden, solarium and teak dance floor, I was particularly impressed with the technology and gadgets the couple felt comfortable introducing into the place where they frequently entertained.

Food and drink

• Kelvinator refrigeration unit with shelves big enough to hang large pieces of meat
• Westinghouse electric range. May not sound exciting today but back then this was innovative  “Each heater is controlled separately by a switch giving three distinct ranges of input. High, Medium and Low. The advantage of this arrangement lies in the fact that one can set the two heaters in the oven at different temperatures which will permit either a slow or quick heat, but when the predetermined temperature is reached the current will be automatically cut off by the circuit-breakers.”
• Vulcan gas stove
• German silver sink – with a soft metal surface from an alloy of copper, nickel and zinc to protect the fine china from breakage
• Tiffany bronze humidor with wood lining
• Diebold vault – yes this was during Prohibition and the house had a tap room so guess what else was behind those thick doors?

Entertainment

• Aeolian organ with 2,289 pipes installed behind curtains in a chamber on the second floor. You could hear it chime far out in the Bay.
• Steinway Grand Piano
• The Zalophus – all-steel yacht with a cruising radius of 4,000 miles to take guests in and around Longboat and other nearby keys

Mobility

• Otis elevator – wrapped around by a stunning marble staircase
• Patrick and Wilkins (likely) annunciator – to summon help when you could not or did not want to move

Lighting

• Pairpoint Glass Works (likely) chandelier relocated when the Waldorf-Astoria hotel was torn down in New York
• others from the famous glassworks island, Murano near Venice in Italy

We got a tour for about 45 minutes, were not allowed to take photos so I only jotted down a handful of things I observed. Go check out the place for yourself. Truly spectacular.

More cashier-less grocery stores

With it, San Francisco gets its first automated checkout market, which will expand up to nearly 500 square feet to become a full-sized cashier-free convenience store in the coming months, says Motukuri. Not only a first for San Francisco, Zippin–as far as we can tell–is the first Amazon Go rival to open to the public anywhere.

It’s far from the only competitor, though. Bay Area neighbors such as AiFi, Aipoly, and Standard Cognition and Israel’s Trigo Vision are all developing similar systems. They each use arrays of inexpensive cameras positioned overhead to track people and the products they pick up. The camera feeds are analyzed by algorithms trained through machine learning to recognize the appearance of each product the store carries.

FastCompany

The Costco Gas Pump: a thing of beauty

Give me 3-4 minutes and my curiosity will usually run wild and I will Google for something. So, today, thanks to the hold-open clip at the Costco pump, I had those 4 minutes with two free hands. In some states, those clips are still not legal due to concerns about static electricity, so I would have been facing the car. Instead I was taking photos of the pump.

Costco for gas? You have to be a member, but I find it is always 10 to 15 cents a gallon cheaper than many competitors (nationwide it may be over 20c cheaper). And the gas is Top Tier rated – has detergent additives to better protect engines from carbon buildup and deposits on the intake valves. As a result there are some Costco locations where the lines are long, even when they have three pumps on each side of the lane, and 8 to 10 lanes. So readers there may not call Costco gas pumps a thing of beauty.

But back to the pump. The hoses are extra long and allow you to fill from either side of your vehicle (factoid – most German cars have caps on the right.  Most Japanese cars in US have cap on left. In Japan they don’t. Most Ford cars are on the left but the Focus was not. In rental cars, I learned a long time ago to look for the icon which shows which side the cap is. But I am usually baffled by where to find the button to unlatch the cap door).

The lanes are unbelievably clean for a high-volume gas dispensing area. There is always an attendant walking around even though the facility is completely self-service  – helping those who need it, directing traffic, and also watching out for open container safety violations.  The receipt printers always seem replenished. The pumps are about to get Apple Pay so should shave a few more seconds from the visit and hopefully reduce skimming scams.

And if you are curious – the pumps are made by Gilbarco Veeder-Root.  They are also into software for fuel management and point of sale among other functionality. And Gilbarco traces its history back to 1865 – just think how far gas pumps have come! 

So next time you have 4-5 minutes at a gas pump, thank me for all this useful trivia

McDonald’s Experience of the Future

The future of McDonald’s arrived in Chicago today, with the opening of a sleek, brand new 19,000-square-foot contemporary restaurant Thursday morning that has risen from the ashes of the iconic Rock-N-Roll McDonald’s.

a floating glass garden of ferns and white birch trees accompanies more than 70 trees and shrubs lining the interior walls and more than 1,000 solar panels sitting atop the roof

The restaurant is now lined with touch-screen kiosks, a standalone McCafe area and 27-foot windows, but guests will find no sign of the former McDonald’s “Play Place.”

The new River North McDonald’s includes some of the futuristic design elements that are part of the Chicago-based company’s “Experience of the Future” initiative. The company plans to modernize most of its 14,000 McDonald’s locations in the U.S. by 2020, Easterbrook said.

CBS Chicago