IoT news of the week, February 11, 2022

No, IRS; you can’t ID.me: A few newsletters back, I called attention to some disturbing facial recognition news in the U.S. The Internal Revenue Service was planning to require face scans using ID.me for any citizens accessing or filing their federal taxes online. But following an onslaught of negative feedback, the IRS has relented and scrapped its plans. While this solution may have added a level of data security, few Americans want the government to have a biometric database of its citizens. (Gizmodo) — Kevin C. Tofel

Apple is beefing up AirTag privacy: Not long after Apple’s AirTags hit the market in 2020, people began reporting being unknowingly tracked by the small devices. It turns out some nefarious folks had been slipping AirTags into the bags and cars of unsuspecting people, causing understandable concern. Apple this week indicated that it’s working with law enforcement in these situations, as each AirTag has a specific serial number that can make clear to police whose Apple account is associated with the hidden tag. Apple will also introduce additional alerts in iOS to help people quickly know if an AirTag has been planted on them or their nearby belongings. (Apple) — Kevin C. Tofel

Microspi raises $30M to train robots: Microspi’s clever approach in the industrial robotics space — the company’s software is used to train robots by leveraging humans to guide them through various tasks, making the learning process faster — netted the company $30 million this week in a Series B round of funding. While this human-to-robot knowledge transfer sounds good, I have serious questions about Microspi’s choice of name for its platform, which is MIRAI. Has it not heard of the Mirai malware that spawns botnet attacks? (Robotics Tomorrow) — Kevin C. Tofel

Wirepas powers EnviroSmarts leak detection solution: We’ve had mesh networks in smart homes for a while, but now it’s time for mesh networks in apartments and hotels, too. As of this week, Wirepas is providing mesh networks to EnviroSmarts leak sensors. They communicate over the Wirepas network, which can then signal a shutdown valve to engage. It’s not cheap to deploy a network in large-scale tenant-occupied properties, but using the mesh network where sensors act as communication nodes keeps the deployment costs down. EnviroSmarts customers are saving on the back end, too, earning back their infrastructure cost in less than two years while also decreasing property insurance costs and repairs from water leaks. (Wirepas) — Kevin C. Tofel

Another way IoT and AI can help with sustainability: One way to reduce your carbon impact is to use things longer. To find an excellent example of how sensors and AI can help with that, look to the skies. Actually, look to Mars, where the Curiosity rover is trundling along on degrading wheels. To keep the robot rolling along the surface, NASA has developed an algorithm that offsets the wear and tear from Mars’ rocky soil by tracking the soil composition and adjusting the rover’s speed accordingly. This is an extreme use case, but it’s not crazy to imagine adaptations to our cars to compensate for aging tires or algorithms that can tweak machines so they can run longer. Of course, the rover ends up going slower to preserve its tires, so there’s going to be an inevitable tradeoff between sustainability and speed. (NASA) — Stacey Higginbotham

The ioXt Alliance is extending its security certification to networked lighting: The ioXt Alliance, which has created a security certification for apps on phones, televisions and other connected gear now has a certification for commercial lighting. The Alliance says it will certify networked lighting controls (NLC) that are used in commercial buildings. The focus is on securing the wirelessly connected elements of such a system. Buildings are adopting networked lighting in droves both as an energy conservation effort as part of a massive move to replace older lights with LEDs, and more recently to put occupancy and other sensors in the ceilings to help with COVID protocols. (ioXt Alliance) — Stacey Higginbotham

Are you ready for some algorithmic accountability? I am. And a new bill proposed by Sen. Ron Wyden (D. Ore.) looks like a good one. The bill calls for audits of company algorithms that can have “significant effects” on users, such as preventing them from getting loans or influencing hiring practices. The bill calls for impact assessments that show how the algorithm might affect different populations and also requires companies to show what data they used to train an algorithm. Wyden proposed a similar bill in 2019 that didn’t go anywhere, but today there is much more awareness about how algorithms can affect people’s lives and how little recourse they have to even understand that software made the decision much less figure out how software decided. (Protocol) — Stacey Higginbotham

No chips means a Wi-Fi 6E skip? Thanks to the ongoing chip shortage, there’s an expectation that many large organizations will bypass Wi-Fi 6E gear and simply wait for the next generation of wireless networking. The Dell’Oro group made this prognostication this week and I think there’s some merit to it. There simply aren’t enough current mobile devices and laptops equipped to take advantage of Wi-Fi 6E to justify the upgrade when supply is constrained. The Wi-Fi 6 uptake on network hardware is really just beginning. And we know that Wi-Fi 6E doesn’t bring much, if anything, to the table for IoT devices. Perhaps this is why MediaTek began showing off its Wi-Fi 7 chips last month, even before the standard has been approved. (TheRegister) — Kevin C. Tofel

New material could bring lighter, stronger screens to wearables. The latest materials research out of MIT is both fascinating and promising. MIT Chemical Engineers have, for the first time, created a two-dimensional sheet of polymers that’s twice as strong as steel but lighter than glass. Up to now, polymers have only been created in chains. The new approach can create sheets of the material with these useful attributes. Even better, the sheets are self-creating; to boost the output and size all it takes is using more starting solution in the process. Given how many wearable displays I’ve scratched, and one that I cracked, I’m all for more of this research. It could even be useful to cover camera sensors on cars to protect the lens from a stray rock. (MIT News) — Kevin C. Tofel