In the Las Vegas Renaissance Hotel, two service robots—both Relay robots from San Jose-based Savioke—are quietly at work. These robots, named Elvis and Priscilla, are full-time employees of the hotel.

Are these the only robots? No. Savioke founder Steve Cousins says his company currently has robots in 70 hotels, including the two at the Renaissance. In IEEE Spectrum, Renaissance Hotel manager Carl Krueger explains, “Guests are almost shocked” to see a robot at the door. “We don’t tell them ahead of time that a robot will be making their delivery. They typically open the door and freeze for a moment. Then they’ll read the instructions, push a button—and often giggle.”

These armless robots can’t actually knock. Instead, they robo-call the hotel room and tell the occupant that a delivery is waiting at the door. Elevators are also a challenge—one of the hotel elevators has been adapted to allow the robots to communicate with it wirelessly.

Your Neighborhood

You will find robot delivery in more places than hotels. In January, Amazon submitted a patent application for a sidewalk rolling robot. Amazon wants its robot to carry items from a delivery truck to a person’s front porch, or even bring them into a house. It’s part of a wider effort to solve the perennial last-mile problem for any company trying to deliver goods to your door, one that self-driving vehicles are expected to solve over time. Amazon’s patent application describes a robot that has the technological capability to open doors or garage doors, which isn’t far off a trend that Amazon is already pushing with Amazon Key.

If that isn’t enough to get your attention, two former top executives of Google’s self-driving car project, Jiajun Zhu and Dave Ferguson, think robotic vehicles that deliver only goods can be ready this year. They believe this, because they are the two co-founders of California-based Nuro. Their startup is building an initial fleet of six unmanned electric vehicles about half the size of a passenger car to carry groceries, food orders, flowers, packages and boxes to homes and businesses in urban and suburban neighborhoods.

Nuro has tested conventional vehicles equipped with its autonomous drive software and hardware in California since 2016 to work the kinks out, but is shifting its focus to the small, battery-powered models that look like rolling storage cabinets. While the vehicles aren’t designed to drive on the highway or at high speed, deploying them in other areas such as public roads is dependent on federal and state regulations that are still being finalized.

“By custom-designing vehicles that are specifically for goods transportation you can actually create the safest vehicle on the road,” Ferguson told Forbes. “That vehicle will care about the most vulnerable road users more than it will care about anything that it’s carrying. It can literally choose to run into a tree rather than hit a pedestrian because it knows one of those is a strictly safer outcome than the other.”

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors may perk up their ears at Ferguson’s comment. In December, the board voted to severely restrict delivery robots that roll on San Francisco sidewalks. Now, startups will have to get permits to run their robots under strict guidelines in particular zones, typically industrial areas with low foot traffic. And even then, they may only do so for research purposes, not making actual deliveries. It’s perhaps the harshest crackdown on delivery robots in the United States.

As these events indicate, robot delivery will continue to become a sign of the times. In fact, a report by McKinsey predicted autonomous vehicles in a variety of forms would deliver around 80 percent of all purchased goods in the future. So, you may be sharing your sidewalks, streets and hotel hallways with numerous, non-human forms of delivery sooner than you think.

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Ryan Lahti is the founder and managing principal of OrgLeader. Stay up to date on Ryan’s STEM organization tweets here: @ryanlahti

(Photo: Food Delivery Robot, Flickr)

When Apple opened Siri to developers last year, that was the first step in making the voice assistant a viable competitor to Google Assistant, Alexa and Cortana. This month, Apple allowed developers to help Siri manage to-do lists, take notes, display QR codes and more according to Wired.

Even though Siri already resides in 375 million iPhones, iPads and Macs, Apple is more aggressively inserting Siri into your life. Before, Siri cooled its heels until you summoned it. Apple wants to make it a little more proactive. A new “Siri face” on the Apple Watch will display things Siri thinks you need to know—calendar appointments, reminders, the apps you check most frequently. Siri will watch as you browse the web, building a profile of your interests and activity to make it more useful in recommending articles and sending notifications.

With iOS 11, Siri evolves into more than a voice assistant. It pervades everything that happens on your device, whether you notice or not. When you open Mail, Siri sorts it so the important stuff appears up top. Siri can handle real-time translation, a remarkable achievement even in the few languages it supports. Siri keeps all your data in sync across devices, and works everywhere you need it.

The clearest indication of Apple’s increased confidence in Siri is the new HomePod smart speaker. In-home voice assistants are difficult to get right. They must handle multiple voices, often talking over each other and any background noise. They must respond clearly and correctly, because people quickly grow impatient with a system that doesn’t work. Yet this 7-inch tall speaker—which Wired reported sounds brighter and louder than a Sonos Play:3 or an Amazon Echo—will soon play prominently in people’s homes. It features some controls on the device, and you can use AirPlay to select music, but it’s very much a Siri machine. All this is happening now, because voice recognition and natural-language processing only recently achieved the accuracy and reliability required.

Apple tried to approach Siri as holistically as possible. Rather than do absolutely everything half-well, forcing users to learn a complicated vocabulary (“Alexa, let me talk to Nest”), Apple tried to go deep and then wide. It has been working on teaching Siri how to understand a user’s intent, what the person meant to say and not necessarily the specific words. It wants Siri to only do things it could do well. That hasn’t always panned out, of course—lots of people sneer at Siri because for a long time it couldn’t even handle basic tasks. Now, at least Apple believes it can. And as a result, Siri is starting to conquer the space on, in, and between all of your devices.

The Established Competition

What about Google Assistant? Google Assistant is Google’s latest iteration of an assistant. It’s considered an upgrade or an extension of Google Now – designed to be personal – as well as an expansion of Google’s existing “OK Google” voice controls.

For anyone who has been using an Android device for some time, you know that the Google Now feature quickly pulls out relevant information for you. It knows where you work, and it knows your meeting locations and travel plans, the sports teams you like and what interests you. This data is presented to you in cards and through reminders on your Android device.

Google first unveiled Assistant at Google I/O in May 2016. The company launched it on the Google Pixel and Pixel XL phones, brought it to Google Home and then Android Wear 2.0. At the Google I/O 2017 developers conference, Google confirmed it plans to roll out Assistant as a separate iOS app. Although Google Assistant is becoming a multi-platform voice assistant, it won’t work like it does on Android devices due to API restrictions.

Amazon and Google are thinking along the same lines. Amazon is planning to bring its talkative voice assistant to your iPhone and Android smartphone, according to a high-ranking executive. Currently, the Alexa smartphone application is more of a utilities app to help you manage your skills, profile, etc. The new app will bring Alexa capabilities to your smartphone.

Perhaps you’re curious about new Alexa capabilities on the Echo. With Amazon’s new Speech Synthesis Markup Language that the company introduced last month, Alexa can now whisper, vary its speaking speed, and bleep out words. You can also make free phone calls to other Echo or Alexa app users.

For Cortana fans who want something like Echo or Google Home, you should be pleased that Microsoft has partnered with Harman Kardon to create Invoke. So, you will soon be able to voice control your music and smart home, make and receive hands-free calls with Skype and get answers to your questions on a Cortana-based device. Unfortunately, the release date has not been announced yet. You have to register your email with Harmon Kardon to find out when Invoke will be available.

Voice assistants continue to make everyday tasks a little easier by doing them for us or entertaining us while we do them ourselves. Whether you prefer Siri, Alexa, Cortana or Google Assistant, you definitely have some new enhancements to explore.

Related posts:

Apple and Google Vie with Amazon for Your Smart Home

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Ryan Lahti is the founder and managing principal of OrgLeader, LLC. Stay up to date on Ryan’s STEM-based organization tweets here: @ryanlahti

(Photo: Siri Gets Passive Aggressive, Flickr)

“Alexa, when will Siri join you in managing devices in smart homes?” The answer to this question may not be too far off. Apple Inc. is pressing ahead with the development of an Echo-like smart-home device based on the Siri voice assistant, according to Bloomberg sources.

Started more than two years ago, the project has exited the research and development lab and is now in prototype testing, said the people who asked not to be identified discussing unannounced Apple projects. Like Amazon Inc.’s Echo, the device is designed to control appliances, locks, lights and curtains via voice activation. Apple hasn’t finalized plans for the device and could still scrap the project.

If a product reaches the market, it would be Apple’s most significant piece of new hardware since the company announced the Apple Watch in 2014. Echo has been a surprise hit, even to Apple engineers working on their competing project, and is already being baked into smart-home systems made by a range of companies. Besides taking on the competition, Apple is looking for a new hot seller to augment the iPhone.

The company is attempting to differentiate itself from Echo with more advanced microphone and speaker technology. Some of the prototypes in testing include facial recognition sensors. Apple has acquired the facial recognition startups Faceshift and Emotient over the past two years, which may help the device act based on who is in a room or a person’s emotional state.

Besides serving as a controller for other smart-home devices, the speaker would theoretically be able to process many of the Siri commands available on the iPhone. For example, users may be able to ask the device to read e-mails, send text messages and Tweets, and stream content from Apple Music. Apple has also considered integrating mapping information into the speaker, potentially allowing the device to notify a user when it’s time to leave the house for an appointment.

Google is trying to get into your house as well. According to Bloomberg, the internet search giant introduced Google Home, a voice-controlled wireless speaker that looks and acts much like the Echo. The device comes packaged with Google’s digital assistant technology, a conversational interface that is becoming increasingly critical to the company as its main business, Search, adjusts to a world without screens. The speaker is integrated with other smart-home devices from Philips, Samsung and Nest, a separate division of Google parent Alphabet Inc.

Google hopes its advanced search and artificial-intelligence capabilities will appeal to more consumers in the nascent market for smart home gadgets. Its new device comes out alongside other products that Google designed in-house — a departure for the company, which has historically worked with hardware partners.

Google has tried its own devices before, the most successful being the Chromecast media streaming stick. Google is pricing Home relatively cheaply, a strategy that helped Chromecast’s popularity. The new speakers will retail for $129 in the U.S. Amazon’s main Echo device sells for $179.99, while a smaller Echo Dot speaker ships for $49.99.

The Telegraph reports that the number of people shopping for smart-home gadgets has increased six fold over the last year. So, it is not surprising that tech giants such as Apple and Google want to join Amazon in the enticing smart-home technology market. Although Alexa was the first houseguest, it looks like she will have to get comfortable sharing the space.

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Ryan Lahti is the founder and managing principal of OrgLeader, LLC. Stay up to date on Ryan’s STEM-based organization tweets here: @ryanlahti

(Photo: Cord Not Cord By Mikekuba)

If you’re a busy executive who travels for work and has to leave your four-legged buddy at home, what do you do? In the past, you would hire a pet sitter, board, or leave your dog with a family member. Your canine buddy would be taken care of, but you don’t have a chance to see how and what he’s doing. This might have been partially addressed if your dog walker sent you some photos while your dog is being exercised, but that is about it.

Americans spent $60.28 billion on pets in 2015 and are expected to spend $62.75 billion in 2016. So, it’s not surprising that existing products are being used for pets, or new high-tech pet gadgets are hitting the market to enable pet owners to remotely connect with their four-legged friends.

With videoconference technology being made easier for everyone to use, many people are using Skype to check on and interact with their dogs and cats. For example, Paris Permenter, Skype’s pet brand ambassador who travels extensively, sets up a Skype session for her pets.

More specifically, Permenter sets up a pre-arranged call time with her pet sitter to check in and make sure all is going well in her absence. Professional pet sitters, more than ever before, now expect to stay in touch with pet parents who are traveling. While many routinely email photos and daily updates, most are happy to hop on a Skype video call as well. Permenter makes it easy for the sitter by providing treats to be distributed during the call. She says it’s nice to call and get an update on the pets when traveling, but it’s especially helpful to be able to see them (and often interact with them) via Skype.

Petcube, a San Francisco-based company, takes it a step further. Petcube sells a smart camera that allows users to watch their pets in real time as well as talk and play with them remotely using a laser pointer. Customers simply use their smartphones to check in on their pets. “It’s basically like Skype for you and your pet, but your pet doesn’t have to pick up the phone,” said co-founder Yaroslav Azhnyuk.

Petcube is part of a growing market for high-tech pet gadgets. Apps like Wag let users book on-demand dog walkers in San Francisco and other cities. Petcube also has direct competition in the pet camera space from products such as the Petzi Treat Cam, a camera that dispenses pet treats, made by San Jose-based Petzila.

David Clark, president and CEO of Petzila, said he’s seen the pet tech industry expand significantly since he founded his company in 2012. “We all care for our pets and wonder what they’re doing when we’re not there, and of course, want to be good pet parents,” Clark said. “It seemed very much like a logical progression for technology to begin to incorporate our pets.”

The Petzi Treat Cam jingles when its human user turns it on remotely, Clark said, which alerts the dog or cat to expect its owner’s voice. After talking to their pet, users can press a button on their smartphone to launch a small treat into the room. The treat is important, because it gives the animal an incentive to approach the camera once it is activated.

The idea behind Petcube was sparked by Azhnyuk’s co-founder, Alex Neskin, who couldn’t get his Chihuahua, Rocky, to stop barking when he wasn’t home. Neskin turned to Google for a solution, but the most high-tech option he found was an anti-bark collar. Since Neskin was bothered by the idea of shocking his dog, he and Azhnyuk created Petcube based on the assumption that Rocky would calm down and stop barking if he heard Neskin’s voice. It worked.

High-tech products like Petcube and Petzi Treat Cam represent good news for busy pet owners. If you feel the need to remotely check in on your Labrador or tabby in real time, now you have gadgets to help you do it.

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Ryan Lahti is the founder and managing principal of OrgLeader, LLC. Stay up to date on Ryan’s STEM-based organization tweets here: @ryanlahti

(Photo: waiting by the front window, Flickr)

Smartphone ownership by Americans increased 33 percent, and tablet ownership increased 42 percent in the last five years according to recently released survey data from the Pew Research Center. As of 2015, 68 percent of U.S. adults have a smartphone and 45 percent own a tablet. Smartphone ownership is nearing the saturation point with some groups: 86 percent of those ages 18-29 have a smartphone, as do 83 percent of those ages 30-49 and 87 percent of those living in households earning $75,000 and up annually. These changes are all taking place in a world where smartphones are transforming into all-purpose devices that can take the place of specialized technology, such as music players, e-book readers and gaming devices. There is even a Kickstarter campaign in the works to fund the development of a 3D scanner for smartphones.

Although smartphone and tablet ownership increased, the survey suggests the adoption of some digital devices has slowed and even declined in recent years. For example, e-reader device ownership has fallen. Today, about one-in-five adults report owning an e-reader, while in early 2014 that share was a third. Ownership of MP3 players has not had a notable decline, but the percentage of adults who own one has hovered around the 40 percent mark since 2008. Computer ownership levels have stayed roughly where they were a decade ago.

Some of the changes in device ownership patterns are particularly evident for young adults. Among those ages 18-29, ownership of MP3 players and computers has declined by double digits in the past five years. In 2010, three-quarters of 18- to 29-year-olds owned an MP3 player. By 2015, only 51 percent had one.

There is a similar pattern with computer ownership. Today, 78 percent of adults under 30 own a laptop or desktop computer, compared with 88 percent who did so in 2010. Smartphone ownership, on the other hand, has surpassed both of these devices, with 86 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds owning one in 2015. In other words, as smartphones came to prominence several years ago, younger owners did not seem to feel as much of a need as their older peers to have other kinds of devices.

The Pew Research Center studies different types of digital devices, because their use often affects how people connect with each other, with information and with media. The devices also impact the way people spend their time. Each kind of device has its own attributes of how people use them and engage with the material they provide. Consequently, device usage has notable social, cultural, political and macroeconomic implications. For example, every major media industry – those built around video, audio and text – has been disrupted by these devices.

Cell phones (including smartphones) continue to top of the list. Ninety-two percent of American adults own a mobile phone of some kind. Although these mobile devices are ubiquitous today, the share of adults who own one has risen substantially since 2004, when Pew Research conducted its first poll on cell ownership. At that time, 65 percent of Americans owned a cell phone.

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Ryan Lahti is the founder and managing principal of OrgLeader, LLC. Stay up to date on Ryan’s STEM-based organization tweets here: @ryanlahti

(Photo: Tablets and Phones, Flickr)

How many steps have you taken today? This is a question that makers of fitness trackers hope people will continue to ask. If you pay attention to the technology industry, it may seem like this industry is determined to make people healthy. Wearable products like fitness trackers continue to appear on the market that are focused on creating healthier lifestyles. Two companies that are responsible for a lot of this attention are Fitbit and Jawbone.

With 76 percent of the market share, Fitbit is the leader in the fitness tracker space. The company garnered attention recently, because it went public in June. Since then, its stock price doubled in value. Consequently, Fitbit seems to be doing well. The true test is whether Fitbit can sustain this success over time. Fitbit has six products on the market, but it has not fully clarified its position. More specifically, Fitbit bracelets being made by a fashion designer and celebrities endorsing Fitbit creates some murkiness regarding how much Fitbit products are fashion items compared to fitness items.

One of Fitbit’s chief competitors, Jawbone, has been in the news a lot because of its actions toward Fitbit. More specifically, Jawbone has filed three lawsuits against Fitbit in two months. According to Fortune, Jawbone filed two lawsuits claiming that Fitbit had stolen trade secrets when it hired some of Jawbone’s former employees. The lawsuits were filed in San Francisco Superior Court and in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. In a little more than two weeks ago, Jawbone filed a third lawsuit with the International Trade Commission in order to block Fitbit from importing fitness trackers or their parts. Jawbone’s delays regarding one of its newest fitness trackers along with a new $300 million round of funding that’s believed to be needed to keep Jawbone afloat make you wonder how Jawbone can manage all of these things in order to stay in business.

Fitbit and Jawbone now have competition from Apple Watch and other smartwatches that provide the same functionality of fitness trackers plus additional features, such as showing news updates and boarding passes for flights. According to Forbes, Apple Watch has been a disappointment. For example, Apple Watch eats up your iPhone battery, and the interface for the Apple Watch is not as intuitive as the iPhone. At this point in time, the Apple Watch does not appear to be a big threat to fitness trackers, but that could quickly change if Apple addresses the preceding issues.

Even though Fitbit currently seems to be sitting in a comfortable spot compared to other fitness trackers, it cannot become complacent. Sales of Fitbit and other fitness trackers are strong, but many of their owners lose enthusiasm for them once the initial interest in knowing how many steps they’ve taken fades. A market research firm, Endeavour Partners, estimates that about a third of fitness trackers are abandoned after six months. According to investment fund, Rock Health, Fitbit’s regulatory filings suggest that only half of Fitbit’s nearly 20 million registered users were still active as of the first quarter of 2015. So, there is more work to be done if Fitbit and other fitness trackers want to have success over time.

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Ryan Lahti is the founder and managing principal of OrgLeader, LLC. Stay up to date on Ryan’s STEM-based organization tweets here: @ryanlahti

(Photo: Wearable Technology for the Wrist, Flickr)

Market research not only shows greater customer loyalty to the Apple platform but also greater interest in switching to this platform. Based on a survey by 451 Research/Yankee Group conducted before the introduction of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, 24% of Android users in the U.S. reported that they intended to switch to Apple. By comparison, only 9% of Apple customers shared they intended to switch from Apple. Furthermore, the last time the iPhone screen size increased (i.e., the iPhone 5 in 2012), 24% of the consumers who purchased it in the first quarter were Android owners, and Apple still holds the largest share of smartphones for three of the top four U.S. mobile carriers according to research conducted by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners and appleinsider.

While these statistics support Cook’s point, actually making the transition will involve incurring another sunk cost which may be a bit of a deterrent for those considering the transition. Photos and contacts can be moved from one platform to another with relative ease, but apps are another story. The manufacturers of smartphones want to keep you as a long-term customer. So, they look for ways to discourage you from switching from one phone to another. One way is by not allowing you to take apps with you as you switch platforms.

Nielsen research shows that U.S. users spend 65% more time each month using apps than two years ago, and the average number of apps used per month is around 27. Therefore, apps are an important area of concern related to the transition. If you are an avid downloader or user of apps and you switch from Android to Apple, you will have to start from scratch with your apps.

A potential app argument for the Apple platform is the number and quality of existing apps. Historically, more apps have been available for the iPhone. Although the increasing number of apps available for the Android platform is reducing Apple’s advantage, Apple users still spend more on apps which leads to larger paydays for the developers of the apps. In fact, Apple gives about twice as much of its proceeds from apps to developers compared to Android. Consequently, there is still a stronger incentive for app developers to focus on apps for the iPhone making it more likely that the Apple platform will continue to be a higher priority.

Regardless of which smartphone camp you call home, there are pros and cons to both the Android and the iPhone platform (including any issues that usually become evident with release of the latest version). Before you make the decision to switch to the iPhone 6, it is worth considering the amount of time, energy and other resources such a transition will involve. For more information, see 451 Research/Yankee Group, Consumer Intelligence Research Partners and appleinsider.

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Ryan Lahti is the founder and managing principal of OrgLeader, LLC. Stay up to date on Ryan’s STEM-based organization tweets here: @ryanlahti

When the CEA study analyzed the importance of Internet connectivity in consumer devices by country, the analysis provided results that might surprise a lot of people. Many people would assume that more consumers in the United States would consider Internet connectivity to be important. This was not the case. The importance of Internet connectivity was highest in China (89%) and Russia (87%). Upon further analysis, these results make sense, because consumers from Russia and China spend the most time on the Internet per day (4.0 and 3.9 hours respectively).

The CEO of CEA, Gary Shapiro, believes that smartphones and tablets are just the starting point for the mobile connectivity of global consumers. Consumers will continue to demand more connectivity in other forms. At the 2014 International Consumer Electronics Show, innovations in wireless technology were seen in the health and fitness, automotive and home automation industries.

For a cross-market briefing related to this study, click on this link: Global Consumer Technology Trends

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Ryan Lahti is the founder and managing principal of OrgLeader, LLC. Stay up to date on Ryan’s STEM-based organization tweets here: @ryanlahti