Internet of Things News of the Week, July 28 2017

Here are top stories related to the Internet of Things from the past week. Get this summary in your inbox every Friday morning when you subscribe to Stacey’s IoT newsletter.

Roombas and the future of the IoT:  This week the internet freaked out about iRobot’s Roomba vacuums selling mapping data of their homes to third parties. Reporters surmised that the data could be used to understand who lives in various rooms in a home based on the layout of furniture or that Google or Amazon might notice that your living room lacks a side table and would show ads for them. While not far-fetched, most likely such data would be better used for understanding how homes are laid out around the country and using that information to inform product design for speakers or Wi-Fi routers. However, the idea that the inside of our homes would be accessible to the big tech firms was upsetting, and people once again woke up to the fact that their privacy is at risk when using connected objects. I think these sorts of stories, if they come fast enough, will act as a deterrent to many consumers when it comes to buying connected devices. That’s why I would like to see companies step up and clearly lay out their privacy policies in some highly readable format, as opposed to burying them in legalese. Without this, these sorts of stories will only continue and consumers will back off connected products. (Reuters)

Not everyone dislikes iRobot: It appears that Softbank, which has purchased ARM and Boston Dynamics (the maker of scary military robots) has taken a small stake in iRobot, the maker of the Roomba and other household robots. It’s unclear if this a Softbank investment or an investment made by its $93 billion Vision Fund, which is betting on IoT robots and other future-focused tech.  This falls in line with Softbank’s other investments or ownership of robotics companies. It purchased Boston Dynamics from Google earlier this year and also owns the popular Pepper robot through its Robotics division.  (Bloomberg)

A new way to measure heart failure? Several firms including Riot Ventures and Bose made an investment in a heart-rate tracking startup this week that caught my eye. The startup, Signature Medical Inc., is developing a wearable that uses sound to measure heart issues. Other sensors use light, movement or other pieces of information to track heart rates and problems, but the idea here is to develop algorithms that track sound waves. I’m not sure where one would wear this, but it’s clearly designed as a medical device since it’s designed for monitoring patients after a visit to the hospital. That means it should have to undergo testing and FDA approval. So, it’s far off from becoming a real product, but with heart problems being so prevalent every tool helps. (MobiHealthNews)

Don’t forget about smart thermostats: Roughly 10 percent of U.S. homes have purchased a smart thermostat, but growth in sales has dropped off. So a Chicago utility wants to make buying them and getting a rebate even easier, so it can boost the number of homes that can take advantage of the energy savings. The Chicago utility one day hopes to use the thermostat to help remotely control temperatures in customer’s homes to help regulate demand — something my own utility already does. These demand-response programs generally involve the customer getting a notice that their thermostat will be set higher during peak demand hours and then the thermostat automatically adjusting. In my area, consumers can opt out if they want. However, in the UK things are getting a little more aggressive. The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has worked with regulator Ofgem to create a plan that will depend on multiple smart appliances managing electricity use to save money for the consumer and conserve electricity when needed. For example, a customer might set her washing machine to run a load when electricity costs are cheaper, or the utility might turn off a dryer when energy demand is particularly high. (Chicago Tribune, Engadget)

This review of Cabin blew my mind: We talk a lot about what autonomous cars will mean for traffic, job loss and even architecture, but this review of a bus service that has sleeping pods changed my perspective on autonomous cars again. Cabin is a startup that’s starting an overnight bus route between LA and San Francisco that offers a luxury sleeping pod for passengers who board the bus at night, fall asleep and wake up in the morning at their destination. Cabin’s founder discusses how this type of travel may make sense for commuting and travel regionally once buses become autonomous. The world he paints is very different than the one I was imagining, but that’s why I liked it. (TechCrunch)

Get a smarter kitchen for $149: Y’all know I’m obsessed with my June oven, but its $1,500 price tag is a bit rich. For those who despaired of ever getting a smarter appliance comes the Tasty One Top, which is basically an induction burner that’s designed to look good on Instagram. Like any good piece of connected hardware (see the essay above) this isn’t just a smarter cooktop, it’s the physical embodiment of the Tasty cooking app and site. Send Tasty recipes to the One Top, pop your thermometer into the food and it cooks it for you, setting the exact temperature and time based on the data it has collected. I can even tell you when to flip your pancake. The device can be ordered now and it will ship in November. I imagine it would make a great Christmas gift for a college grad. (Tasty)

Big money for Israeli agtech company: Farms of the future are here today with everything from drones to data analytics helping farmers produce more food with fewer resources. To this end, startups in the space are getting customers and venture backers. Israel’s Prospero, which uses computer vision to detect pests and plant health, has raised $15 million in a Series B funding round from Qualcomm Ventures, Cisco Investments, ICV and returning investor Bessemer Ventures. To my eye, these investments are likely going to end up as part of a larger ag tech company, especially because a working farm needs to piece many of these technologies together to get a picture of the physical and fiscal health of their farms. (TechCrunch)

CableLabs is betting on LoRa: If you heard this week’s podcast, you won’t be surprised by this. Cable Labs, the standard setting group for the cable technology industry, is developing an open-source LoRaWAN platform. Cable Labs is the organization that brought the industry the DOCSIS standards in use today, so this is a significant indicator of how the cable providers plan to tackle the networking needs for the IoT. The initial platform provides specifications for a LoRa App Server, a network server to manage active nodes, a LoRA Gateway Bridge based on the UDP protocol, and a software library for handling encryption. (Telegeography)

Connected road construction has arrived: Forget putting sensors in roads and let’s just use the connected tech we have today to track potholes and survey construction sites. This story details how road crews are using drones and sensors on cars to improve a valuable piece of U.S. infrastructure. (The Mercury News)

Insights for everyone with Iguazio: Another big funding this week occurred when Inguazio scored $33 million from a bevy of corporate investors eager to use Iguazio’s easy-to-understand data analytics platforms. As sensors send ever more data for analysis, parsing the results can be trouble for business managers or those without stats degrees. This software wants to help the “normals” of the business world understand how to put complex data into intelligible formats. Verizon, Bosch and Dell apparently believe Iguazio can help. (TechCrunch)