Connected Devices Weekly Update/2016-10-06

• Completed Gate 1 review on Tue Oct 4th with PIB. We passed!
  • UX delivered out of box user journey wireframes
  • Feedback to provide at next PIB status checkin:
    • Provide more details on project critical path
    • Detail project cost analysis; fixed vs variable, scale market cost for min and max, data cost for AWS usage
    • Completed initial legal review on project requirements for future Hardware ODM partnership to support program launch
• Initiate User Test planning for user interviews in Taipei for late Oct.
• Kickoff discussion with Hardware consulting vendor Kaizen Dynamics to support creation of early sensor prototypes by end of Dec 2016.
• Project Goals:
  • Evidence from the experiments to show the consumer needs. (consumer service)
  • Defined product (kit) to be prototyped by partner (hardware solution)

• Survey completed through SurveyGizmo Panel Support
  • Results being analyzed and will be shared next week

• User Study Update
  • Participants recruited
  • Software and hardware for prototype is complete
  • Prototype assembly in progress and shipping on 10/7
  • 
• Check point with leadership on Nov 3rd

Defining the platform story at a more granular level:

• • Studying gaps in other IOT platform offerings in market and defining our differentiation aspects. (openness/inter-op, security, data management practices etc)
  • Evaluating use cases (devices, services) to prioritize for platform those focus areas are key.
  • List the architecture blocks we need for these use cases. Some will be extracted from track 1 products. Others will be built into platform for completeness & for others to build products on.

Components

• Current list includes OTA framework, security policies, voice enablement. DevKit will be used to support developers with tools/utilities/APIs around these.

Technology

• • Assessing options for technology architectures for fit and pros/cos with our target use cases.
  • e.g. Web of Things (https://www.w3.org/Submission/2015/SUBM-wot-model-20150824/)

Weekly Notes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yo1AtuozukgfkZwzO745LdEsB1fdZrEWoIYr8F9eydo/edit#heading=h.qgtmzupjdx35

• Currently testing how accurately our deep speech algorithm is
  • We are doing this by feeding a sentence to our algorithm and seeing if it can produce the same output as the input
• Benchmarked the GPU and CPU (https://github.com/lissyx/DeepSpeech/tree/issue37/benchmarks#what-runs-where)
  • Findings showed that we should be optimizing work on the GPU to have the fastest training period (want to get training down to a day)
• Loading the TED-LIUM corpus (recordings of TED talks) into Deep Speech so we can start training with that corpus

Architecture Components

• Device
  • starts listening when tapped
  • streams voice reminder requests to voice server
  • speaks voice reminder confirmations
  • setup
• Voice Server
  • based on Vaani server
  • will handle the STT (using google)
  • will incorporate the existing cue intent parser
  • Will use the existing cue server to create reminders
  • Will do the TTS (using google), sending the result to the client
• Existing Cue Server
  • will be used as it currently is (with some functionality being added)

Prototype Testing

• Discussions held on hardware components for the prototype and marketing strategy
• Use cases were reviewed and prioritized. Decision was made to focus the prototype testing on reminder functionality.
• Video will be developed that describes the overall purpose and functionality of Abigail to get consumer feedback.
• High level schedule
  • Prototype development during the month of October
  • Testing in homes in early November
  • Synthesis of study/testing data in late November

Vision

• Democratize story telling so people never miss the stories nearby that matter to them

Why?

• Deploying digital content into physical spaces requires excessive time, money and expertise.
• Today nearby content is siloed, requiring a different app for each experience. A single open platform is more convenient for users and accessible to all content owners.

For whom?

• An easy and affordable way for any storyteller to deploy content to physical locations for others to discover.
• A single immersive experience for curious and inquisitive learners to discover the hidden stories behind their surroundings, wherever they happen to be.

Team's focused on:

• Gate 0 pitch scheduled 12th October
• Working week in MTV next week to work on the deck, will be circulated this week
• Creating the stories / user journey
• Narrowing the MVP for the pilot and breaking down the tasks so the engineering work can start next Monday

Status

Finalising product definition this week, gate 0 pitch deck will be sent out tomorrow in advance of pitch on Wednesday 12th October.

Vision

An affordable home monitoring system which gives users peace of mind without compromising on their privacy or locking them into a single provider.

Strategy

Create an initial limited run product to prove the end user value of a self-installed and self-hosted home monitoring system. Then look to partner with ISPs to scale the product worldwide.

Problem Hypothesis

We believe that early technology adopters have a desire to monitor their home over the Internet so that they can have peace of mind that their home, family, pets and belongings are safe.

Solution Hypothesis

We believe that for early adopters who are currently using analog or cloud-based home monitoring solutions with a recurring subscription, if we create a simple web based system hosted in the home itself we can provide a more private, secure, cost-effective and future-proof alternative.

Product

Home monitoring system

• Access securely from any device using the web, no OS-specific apps or cloud services required
• All private data stays in your home by default
• A future-proof system you can expand over time using sensors from multiple manufacturers
• No recurring subscription costs

Key use cases

• Securely view live video footage of your home directly over the web
• Sound an alarm if motion is detected or a door is opened while you’re away
• Receive notifications on your smartphone when activity is detected
• Play back recorded video clips of activity inside your home
• View logs of door entry and occupancy over time

Product Definition

• Use case refinement in progress. Narrowing down use cases into what we can prototype. Working on what we can demo at the Gate 0 Pitch presentation and also on what should be tested if it passes gate 0.
• Focus on product differentiation and tech enhancement opportunties. Many, many possibilities so team is trying to keep scope narrow but adaptable

Engineering

• Continued evaluation of different types of technology - capacitive, magnetic, and LED and sound augmentation
• Have developed early prototypes of tech enhanced spinner and dice

• Converging on things to work on and build for Hawaii pilot testing

Engineering

• Engineers are working on image acquisition and image matching to prove out the technology and have made a lot of progress in the past week.
• Image acquisition
  • Re. the image separation challenge - progress made in separating out the image from the background
  • Re. the portability issues - a quick prototype has been developed that fits in a pocket

• Image matching
  • Re. the challenge to match a reference image to a new image to successfully identify an object - different images of the same object were taken and matched on many points

• Team is looking for an additional engineer to help on this project

• We met with Houman to give us feedback and we need to go deeper into the security and the usability. We'll work on it during next week.

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• (Read Only) 4 Volunteers accepted for Hawaii.

• Google Home, the company’s competitor to the Amazon Echo, is now available for preorder. It will cost $129, cheaper than Amazon’s device. You can preorder it today in the US and it will start shipping November 4th. After The Verge's brief testing, it was a little smarter than Siri and a lot sharper than Alexa, able to understand context in a question and suss out information from around the web when Google's knowledge graph didn't have the answer.
• More than 9 out of 10 people worldwide live in areas with excessive air pollution, contributing to strokes, heart disease, lung cancer and other problems, the World Health Organization said. The U.N. health agency revealed in a new report that 92% of people live in areas where air quality exceeds WHO limits, with SE Asia, eastern Mediterranean and western Pacific regions hardest hit.
• IoT Dev Kits: Arduino launched a Kickstarter for an IoT Invention Kit which adds Internet of Things capabilities to other hardware products. This self-described “plug-and-play toolkit” lets you connect multiple sensors and outputs together to create various systems. This chart shows a few of the possible permutations. Everything is controlled via Arduino’s online IDE.
• Artificial Intelligence:
  • Microsoft is combining its team working on bots with its longstanding Microsoft Research lab into a single 5 000 person unit dedicated to Artificial Intelligence. This move is part of an effort to infuse artificial intelligence into a range of Microsoft products from smart agents like Cortana to apps like Skype and Office as well as into the infrastructure and services it makes available to others (aka platforms).
  • Google has opened up its Cloud Machine Learning to all businesses in a public beta, after a few months of testing it in private alpha. The tool makes it easier to train models at a much faster rate, and is integrated with the Google Cloud Platform. This has applications for businesses in areas such as customer support (learning how to automate responses to a variety of queries and complaints) or any kind of repetition-heavy task.
  • Amazon, Google, Facebook, IBM and Microsoft are forming a non-profit to develop best practices on the challenges and opportunities within AI. The organisation, called Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society, will address legal and ethical challenges that AI presents, encourage public discourse and identify opportunities to use AI to bring improvements to society.