When you think of robots designed to help people, you might think of the role of robotics in caring and customer service roles or companion orientated service robots like Pepper, Nao or even Hasbro’s companion pets. Then more recently there’s the emergence of robots as sexual or romantic partners. One start-up from Israel, Intuition Robotics is throwing an interesting offering into the ring, a new AI companion called ElliQ, aimed at keeping older adults active and engaged, and reducing the epidemic of loneliness among older people. I spoke with Dor Skuler, CEO and co-founder to find out more.

Skuler explained the rationale behind the robot:

“We live longer but also healthier lives. 90 percent of older adults want to live in their own home and the period of time we’re still cognitive, still independent and we don’t have to live in assisted care is growing. Conversely, younger people live further, and further away from their parents with hectic lifestyles that rely heavily on technology. About 30 to 60 percent of older adults identify themselves say that they are lonely which usually means that the real number is even higher.”

In terms of function, ElliQ is perhaps closer to Alexa than Pepper as Intuition Robotics is leveraging Cognitive Computing, Human Robotics Interaction, and Cloud Robotics in developing the robot’s ability to proactively recommend digital and physical activities to keep owners active and engaged with family, friends, and life.

The robot creates a conduit for older adults to connect with their family. As Skulker notes:

“What we can do with robots is really simplify the means for older adults to connect with their family. If you look at a typical family, we’re all on Facebook Messenger. We share some of the information and pictures and content but aging parents are not part of that discussion. Teenagers don’t want to call grandparents. But what they love to do is share a selfie, to find the link to a TED talk. They maybe send an emoji or text message and communicate the way they’re used to communicate but just on messenger. So the first thing that we created is in essence, a virtual chat bot for a messenger that allows the family to very easily connect with Grandma.

But it’s extremely intuitive. They don’t have to work the text, they don’t have to unlock their phone. They don’t need to try and look at small letters, they don’t need to click anything with their fingers. We just tell them ‘hey here’s a new picture from your granddaughter do you want to see?’  If she says yes we can show it to her and if she wants to comment then we record a message and it’s sent. So all of a sudden she’s part of the conversation. She gets the opportunity to get the content instead of having that once a week awkward discussion, she’s just part of the family.”

See also: Are robots replacing humans in health care?

It’s a bit like putting older relatives back in the family home where they are content to sit and observe and engage with the family members as they go about their day. ElliQ also takes this a step further with a proactiveness that differentiates the robot from Alexa and Siri that wait for the user to prompt them:

“Older adults by and large become reactive and not proactive. they tend to stick to a routine. They tend not to discover and add new things and new capabilities to their day. If you suggest things to them that are relevant to them there’s a very high probability that they’ll say yes. (Which by the way means you have to be extremely responsible and only suggest appropriate things and never take advantage). So basically ElliQ has extremely smart sensors and the ability to understand what’s going on at home and suggest activities. For example, ‘ Hey, it’s a beautiful day why don’t you go for a walk?’. It might be a schedule reminder to take your meds, a reminder to keep an appointment and it might be in the digital world: ‘Hey you want to listen to some Frank Sinatra? Or here’s a great TED talk you might want to listen to?’”

A unique aesthetic

ElliQ’s innovative design was created in collaboration with Yves Béhar, founder and principal designer of the award-winning industrial design firm fuseproject. It is comprised of two separate elements: ElliQ, the social director, exhibits human characteristics through gestures animated by movement, speech, sounds and light. A LED lighting display, along with a wide range of motions are utilized to convey subtle emotional expressions and give the device a friendly and warm personification. The second element consists of a separate screen that functions in a cradle display or in the user’s hand to view content in the location of their choice.

It’s not every day that you speak to a CEO of a start-up whose first hire was a gerontologist.  Other involved with the project include former VP of Advanced Technologies at Apple, Prof. Don Norman, along with Intel SVP Amir Faintuch, and leading academic experts in the fields of Cognitive Computing, HRI, Machine Intelligence, and Robotics.

Skuler explained that some of their initial assumptions of a robot for the aged were incorrect:

“We thought that we each create an environment in which the older adult needs to take care of ElliQ and we found out that that’s not really the case. The best thing you can do is help people feel like they’re not completely alone at home.  We were worried that older adults wouldn’t want to talk to a machine. Especially when I sat in a room full of older adults and showed them how I use Siri. and I got very strange looks. But we found they are absolutely willing to talk to a machine and over time they treat them more and more as entities rather than devices.” 

ElliQ is currently being showcased at the Design Museum in London and in February Intuition Robotics will be rolling out a trial phase in the homes of older adults in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The idea of creating better cities is as old as human settlement. Smart cities is our latest iteration, amidst the Fourth Industrial Revolution, now that we have exponentially more data and computing power available affordably. This article will focus on illuminating three counterintuitive trends I have observed with smart cities.

Trend 1: Cheap sensors are not enough

There is a widely ingrained belief that having cheap sensors means we will be able to deploy great products and services to manage water, energy or traffic in our cities. Indeed, the cost of sensors has more than halved in a decade but what hasn’t changed yet is the actual placement of these sensors into the end devices. So if you are trying to do vehicle to infrastructure (V2I) communication, outside of a few highly specialized environments, you simply don’t have enough sensors on the road to be able to do anything meaningful.

Even if you are a well-capitalized company you may face the chasm of adoption, like the cautionary tale of iBeacons. Anyone wishing to innovate within smart cities needs to contend that creating highly specialized environments may actually be a precondition, and potentially pushing them through policy a postcondition.

Amit Garg, Principal, Samsung NEXT Ventures

Trend 2: Be iterative & leapfrog

Leapfrog approaches are the stuff that innovators, especially in Silicon Valley, talk about. Take a radically different approach and disrupt this industry, so goes the mantra. When it comes to smart cities I think nothing could be further from truth. Our technology progresses often much faster than our ability to adapt to them and when it comes to adjusting to new ways of living, potentially even relocating, it just adds a significant barrier.

Case in point, the successful smart city projects are being incubated in vibrant places with a long-standing culture of innovation, whether it be Singapore or Songdo right outside of Seoul. Starting from scratch on the other hands has had setbacks, whether championed by a strong government in Masdar City or a powerful corporation in Celebration, USA. I believe iterative approaches are the way to go ie incremental improvements in a city’s infrastructure rather than drastic overhauls.

Trend 3: You do not need scale

We live in an increasingly urban world — 2007 is widely seen as the year when for the first time in history there were more humans living in cities than in rural areas. But the trend is hyper-urbanization, with people concentrating even more in a few cities, and most of those mega cities increasingly in Asia and Africa.

This means that if you are developing an innovation around smart cities you may not need to get to scale in hundreds of cities, just a few markets might actually do it. In fact, if you can get an innovation working fully even in one mega city you may create a hugely successful company with the due caveat that a single point of failure, especially in an area rife with policy, is a high risk.

The author is currently a Principal at Samsung NEXT Ventures, which houses our early-stage investment arm, headquartered in the heart of Silicon Valley. I focus on software, especially Internet & consumer technologies, investing $250K to $3M in seed, series A or B, and helping them partner with Samsung to grow and make a meaningful difference in people’s lives.

Internet of Things (IoT) is changing the world around us. This may look like a bold statement to many, but that’s the truth. From elevators to planes, there will be 30 billion connected devices in the next three years. Clearly, IoT is moving fast, and tech giants are taking bold measures to constantly push the boundaries of what can be achieved with the IoT.

The recent Genius of Things Summit that was organized in Munich, Germany was a demonstration of how IBM’s unrivaled IoT ecosystem is changing the way we live, work, and play. Here are a few notable developments that caught my interest.

Digital twin

The traditional way of conceptualizing, designing, and developing a product is time- and resource-intensive. Digital twin is an initiative to improve the efficiency of the process by using cloud-based virtual image of an asset maintained throughout the lifecycle. The asset, in turn, remains accessible to every individual involved in the process, thereby allowing people to work collaboratively, reduce errors, and improve efficiency.

Airbus and Schaeffler are the two companies that are currently using digital twin engines and bearings. Airbus is using this technology to create a digital thread that allows different engineering divisions to collaborate. This way, in case a problem is discovered, the company can explore whether the product is due to inadequate maintenance, poor manufacturing, or a fault in the design.

Cognitive commerce

The ultimate objective of cognitive commerce is to offer a truly personalized service to customers based on their precise preferences. To achieve this, a wide spectrum of technologies is used, from speech recognition to machine learning.

Visa is working in collaboration with IBM to offer its customers the flexibility to make payments from any IoT connected device. This, in turn, will eliminate the need to carry sensitive financial information embossed on payment cards, thereby making the customer journey simpler, easier, and more secure.

Predictive maintenance

As the name implies, predictive technology analyzes the data collected using sensors to predict the maintenance needs of an asset. This, in turn, improves asset availability, reduces maintenance costs, and improved customer satisfaction.

SNCF, which is a leading freight and passenger transport service, has collaborated with IBM to connect its entire rail system to the IoT ecosystem. Using the data collected from sensors, SNCF will be able to predict repair and maintenance needs of its trains and tracks, improve the security and availability of its assets, and reduce the downtimes associated with unexpected downtimes.

While the Internet of Things (IoT) has the power to change our world, we are still at the beginning of the transformational journey that will revolutionize the way we live and work for the better. In the next few years, we can expect to see incredible advancements being made by tech giants, such as IBM and other companies.

Rather than focus on the disruptive and competitive nature of new technology, New York’s smart city czars are emphasizing collaboration with business and other smart cities.

City technology leaders spoke at a recent event hosted by Brooklyn’s Urban-X accelerator for connected city startups.

Representing the city were Chief Technology Officer Miguel Gamiño Jr and Chief Digital Officer Sree Sreenivasan.

See also: Smart city investment opportunities could top $1.6 trillion

They discussed how city governments are shedding their slow moving reputation when it comes to developing smart city initiatives.

Unlike the ultra-competitive private sector, Gamiño said New York City’s government has the latitude to perceive other smart cities as potential partners not as threats. And this collaborative approach has proven to have enhanced government innovation.

Sreenivasan picked up the thread by highlighting New York’s embrace of the open data movement, with the city releasing over 1,600 data sets to date. He said that this has enabled city governments to share best practices and even source code between them.

“The way we’re going to do this is to partner with great cities in the U.S. and overseas,” said Sreenivasan.

The pair also discussed the role that businesses play in developing smart cities, and how New York was actively working with industry to reduce layers of red tape.

Sreenivasan noted that entrepreneurs developing innovative new services or products often face difficulties associated with highly regulated industries.

For startups looking to loosen regulations related to smart city technology, he advised business leaders to help the discussion with the city by presenting a strong business model.

“Being a sustainable business is important in order to make it worthwhile for the city to change these regulations,” said Sreenivasan.

Not just disruption for disruption’s sake

The city representatives also emphasized the importance of not pursuing disruption for disruption’s sake. Rather, they advised connected city startups to focus on the end goal – making citizens’ lives better.

Gamiño said that this is where the city plays a pivotal bridge role, providing the crucial dialog between the next-level tech industry and NYC’s residents.

Ultimately, he says smart city projects need to contribute positively in areas like economic mobility and job opportunities, which are of key importance to residents.

“The question is always, ‘How does this move the needle on issues everybody, not just technical people, are interested in?’” said Gamiño.

New York City was previously awarded “Best Smart City 2016” at the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona.