This week we kick off the show with a bit about voice such as Google getting better at understanding your commands, the ability to talk to Waze and notifications coming to the Amazon Echo. We also touch on China’s plans to create standards for the smart home, including a preference for NB-IoT over Wi-Fi. Weather reporting gets more accurate without sensors and Kevin and I discuss the end of two smart light bulb startups. Finally, I offer a pro tip for the holidays and we answer a listener question about WeMo and HomeKit.
After all the news, things get a bit grim as I discuss the future of battle with Tarek Abdelzaher, a professor of computer science at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. He’s part of a team that won a research grant from the U.S. Army Research Lab to figure out how to bring the internet of things to the battlefield. Our discussion ranges from technical elements to the ethics of having machines kill people. It will make you think.
Hosts: Stacey Higginbotham and Kevin Tofel
Guest: Tarek Abdelzaher, a professor of computer science at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign
Sponsors: Spark Cognition and ADT
- Google Home gets a great new feature
- China’s setting some standards for the smart home
- Goodbye Emberlight and so long Stack Lights
- What can Facebook teach us about programming sensors?
- Will machines kill in the war of the future?
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It’s Urbana Champaign! Not Champagne….
Fixed. I think that was an auto correct error i failed to notice. My apologies.
Stacey Higginbotham, Hi, please update in the Podcast episode description, I shared the description today and it was spelled “University of Illinois Urbana Champagne”.
I did. I’m so sorry about that. I didn’t notice it had autocorrected me.
Hey Stacey and Kevin,
Awesome episode as all ways.
The interview with Professor Tarek Abdelzaher I found particular interesting. Considering much of the work in the Military space is done by defense contractors it was interesting to hear how the Army is is working with an academic group to come up with a solution. However, having some sort of open standard architecture for device communication with a simplified interface would make things much easier for the boots on the ground.
I thought you guys might get a kick out of this. Just for the holidays, how about adding a Furlexa to the shopping lists. This is an Alexa Voice Service enabled Furby that acts just like an Echo. The guy took a Raspberry Pi Zero with Alexa Voice Service (AVS) Device SDK installed to replace the Furby processor board. It’s a bit freaky but sort of cool as well. Could this be the future? Perhaps the next step to the Gearbox “waifu” assistant.
https://howchoo.com/g/otewzwmwnzb/amazon-echo-furby-using-raspberry-pi-furlexa
Cheers,
Jon