Consumer Products & Services

In a test kitchen in a corner building in downtown Pasadena, Flippy the robot grabbed a fryer basket full of chicken fingers, plunged it into hot oil -- its sensors told it exactly how hot -- then lifted, drained and dumped maximally tender tenders into a waiting hopper. A few feet away, another Flippy eyed a beef patty sizzling on a griddle. With its camera eyes feeding pixels to a machine vision brain, it waited until the beef hit the right shade of brown, then smoothly slipped its spatula hand under the burger and plopped it on a tray. The product of decades of research in robotics and machine learning, Flippy represents a synthesis of motors, sensors, chips and processing power that wasn't possible until recently. Now, Flippy's success -- and the success of the company that built it, Miso Robotics -- depends on simple math and a controversial hypothesis of how robots can transform the service economy.

Edge computing, which is the concept of processing and analyzing data in servers closer to the applications they serve, is growing in popularity and opening new markets for established telecom providers, semiconductor startups, and new software ecosystems. It's brilliant how technology has come together over the last several decades to enable this new space starting with Big Data and the idea that with lots of information, now stored in mega-sized data centers, we can analyze the chaos in the world to provide new value to consumers. Combine this concept with IoT, and connected everything, from coffee cups to pill dispensers, oil refineries to paper mills, smart goggles to watches, and the value to the consumer could be infinite. However, many argue the market didn't experience the hockey stick growth curves expected for the Internet of Things. The connectivity of the IoT simply didn't bring enough consumer value, except for specific niches. Over the past five years however, technology advancements as artificial intelligence (AI) has begun to revolutionize industries and the concepts of the amount of value that connectivity can provide to consumers. It's a very exciting time as the market can see unlimited potential in the combination of big data, IoT, and AI, but we are only at the beginning of a long road.

JUUL has been called'highly addictive', but the firm may be developing a new product that helps users kick the habit once and for all. The San Francisco company filed a patent that describes an artificial intelligence powered product that delivers fewer nicotine amounts to the user by learning their smoking habits over time. The document highlights a device that alternates between nicotine and a non-nicotine product in order to gradually reduce the intake of the drug. The device may also be connected to a smartphone that could log how much nicotine is being consumed, allowing the device to determine how it should regulate the drug, as first reported on by The Logic. JUUL started off as a way of providing the world's one billion smokers with an alternative to combustible tobacco products.

Amazon's radical new approach to buying foods and speeding up the checkout process goes the next mile today, with a full-size grocery store here. The Amazon Go Grocery opens Tuesday, with more than four times the space of the original, 7-Eleven-style, on-the-go type stores first opened in 2018. The e-tailer, which also owns Whole Foods, launched the Go stores as a way for local workers to get in and out, with a just basics menu that bypassed essentials like fruit and frozen foods. "We believe'Just walk out' technology," makes shopping a better experience, says Cameron Janes, vice-president of Amazon's physical stores division. He gave USA TODAY a sneak-peek tour of the new concept Monday.

Costa Group, one of Australia's largest horticulturist companies, has begun rolling out an artificial intelligence (AI) system to help the company better understand and manage the quantity and quality of its berry crops. The Sensing system, developed by Sydney-based company, The Yield, has been designed to measure 14 variables of a typical agriculture model such as rain, light, wind, temperature, and soil moisture in real time. The information is then ingested into an Internet of Things (IoT) platform and combined with existing data sets shared by Costa before AI is applied to create a localised prediction of each berry crop. "We literally describe the system like a maths robot because it's effectively crunching through data and selecting the most important feature sets, creating models, putting them into production, measuring the accuracy, feeding that back in, and continually adjusting," The Yield founder and managing director Ros Harvey told ZDNet. The system was recently installed within the polytunnels of Costa's eight berry farms in New South Wales, Queensland, and Tasmania.

Local councils in England must be given powers to regulate Airbnb and other short-term letting sites in order to alleviate the "intolerable" pressure they put on the availability of local housing, the Green party MP, Caroline Lucas, has said. Her intervention followed a Guardian investigation that found one Airbnb listing for every four residential properties in some hotspots across Britain. Airbnb has disputed the finding. Meanwhile, an organisation representing landlords has warned that imminent tax changes will drive an increasing number of landlords towards Airbnb and its rivals, depriving renters of long-term, stable tenancies. Last month Lucas asked the government to make it easier for councils to impose a 90-day cap on homes let out on Airbnb and other online platforms.

Automation has made it much easier for businesses to operate, especially by taking over repetitive, menial tasks. But as new advances are going live, the threat of automation to the job market seems like it might be a reality. Whether for good or ill, automation is currently an established part of business operations. As they become more sophisticated, automation systems combined with other new technology such as artificial intelligence and internet of things could signal a massive shift in how employees see their jobs and their responsibilities. Below, 15 professionals from Forbes Coaches Council share their predictions about what automation will do to the job market as it continues to reach new industries.

The science and art of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has already racked up vital transformations in varied industries. And the travel industry is no exception to many business verticals affected by AI. No doubt, the context of AI cannot be precisely defined. Here is information about the travel industry building its immunity with artificial intelligence. Some of the major leagues of AI are "Internet of Things," "Machine Learning," "Neural Networks," and "Chatbots," to name a few.

The study on the Artificial Intelligence in Food and Beverages Market Research offers a profound comprehension of the market dynamics like opportunities, drivers, trends, and the challenges. The analysis further elaborates on the micro and macro-economic aspects which can be predicted to shape the rise of the Artificial Intelligence in Food and Beverages Market throughout the forecast period (2019-2029). The introduced study elucidates the key indexes of Market growth which contains a comprehensive analysis of CAGR development the value chain, and Porter's Five Forces Analysis. This data will enable readers to know the qualitative growth parameters of their worldwide market. The development prospects of this Artificial Intelligence in Food and Beverages Marketplace in various Regions are analyzed in the report together with information such as political, the regulatory frame, and economic outlook of each region.

Eddy Travels, an AI-powered travel assistant bot which can understand text and voice messages, has closed a pre-seed round of around $500,000 led by Techstars Toronto, Practica Capital and Open Circle Capital VC funds from Lithuania, with angel investors from the U.S., Canada, U.K. Launched in November 2018, Eddy Travels claims to have more than 100,000 users worldwide. Travelers can send voice and text messages to the Eddy Travels bot and get personalized suggestions for the best flights. Because of this ease of use, it now gets 40,000 flight searches per month -- tiny compared to the major travels portals, but not bad for a bot that is available on Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram, Rakuten Viber, Line and Slack chat apps. The team is now looking to expand into accommodation, car rentals and other travel services. Eddy Travels search is powered by partnerships with Skyscanner and Emirates Airline.