Archive for category: Technology

If you’ve been traveling internationally for a decade or more, the vast amount of innovation has been amazing. Most of it has been driven by technological advancement and come to the fore just in the past few years. From the planning and booking stages to the actual arrival at your destination, here are a few of the innovations currently reshaping international travel by leveraging state-of-the-art technology.

Security has always been a crucial part of traveling, and the focus placed by countries on identifying and ensuring the safety of people who want to travel has been increasing, along with technology available to the authorities. One of the ways that this is being done is by employing a combination of biometric technology and AI to identify and match passengers to manifests. These systems typically employ fingerprint and iris scans, as well as facial recognition, and are currently being used in the U.S., China, Australia and UK. And the technology is certain to spread out even wider as more countries take the chance to improve security and increase efficiency at the same time.

Before, the process of applying for passports or visas was a complicated one that involved a lot of waiting time and anxiousness. Now, the advanced integration and communication features of the internet are being leveraged to ensure that you can essentially skip the red tape and have all the documents you need for smooth travel between countries delivered within a short period of time.

This represents a significant advance from the days of paper-based documentation to a position of full synchronization with the digital-first world. As a business traveler, it’ll make your activities so much easier and more efficient. From the perspective of businesses and other organizations, the savings in terms of time and cost could also be very significant, especially at scale.

From boarding passes to the check-in process, mobile phones are rapidly taking the place of the usual paper documents that facilitate travel. Mobile boarding passes have many factors going for them, including the increased security they offer both to the airlines and passengers. They help to ensure that the boarding process is streamlined by cutting out the wait times of printing the passes and even the hassle of dealing with lost passes.

The ability to check in online, while not new per se, is constantly being improved and has also sped things up significantly, since it’s now possible to go straight to security without having to stand in line or interact with any staff unless you have luggage. Another interesting way airports are leveraging mobile technology is by allowing passengers to synchronize their smartphones with the departure displays, thus helping them to keep a close eye on their flights and even get direct notifications wherever they are.

Data science and its cousin, machine learning, have been facilitating disruptions in a variety of industries, and the travel industry is one of those that are ripe for attendant innovations. The travel and tourism industry, being as dispersed as it is geographically and otherwise, is poised to benefit from the increased efficiency that comes with being able to analyze big data in order to understand trends and predict the market effectively.

 

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As the new-age consumer gets increasingly difficult to win over, brands and retailers are investing heavily in technology to provide their consumers with unforgettable experiences across online and offline channels. After all, the consumer of today is omnipresent. They’re online, in-store and browsing online while they’re in-store.

One of the most powerful ways to offer customers unique experiences is through technology. Whether you’re looking to add an additional layer of convenience or an Instagram-worthy experience that will have customers asking for more, here are three technologies that can transform retail and take customer experience to the next level.

Augmented reality (AR) is essentially the ability to superimpose computer-generated images over a user’s view of the environment around them. AR has a number of use cases for retail, especially in the home and furniture segment. IKEA has made AR the centerpiece of its mobile apps, allowing customers to virtually try furniture in their households before they buy it, thereby enriching user experience and cutting down on returns from unsure customers in the process.

AR has the potential to change the landscape of fashion retail as well, especially in the footwear and sneakers segment. Recently, secondhand sneaker marketplace GOAT integrated AR into its app to allow their customers to virtually try on the company’s rarest sneakers.

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Lexington police detectives say more property crimes are being solved because of home security cameras.

“We’re getting more and more evidence, more and more video to review,” Lt. Clay Combs said. “Every time we get out on something, it’s like that.”

But Lt. Combs said with every new piece of technology there’s good and bad. He said people will call in with video of a car in the middle of the night, and no one, not even police, can tell what the car is, or who’s driving it.

But sometimes, when a thief’s face comes in contact with the camera, it can be a home run for police.

“We now have lots more opportunities to solve some of the things. We have a lot better evidence to go on, get people’s pictures out, information out,” Lt. Combs explained.

He said the cameras aren’t just catching events at one home anymore. They’ve become a way for neighbors to share videos and help each other.

“Now, some of the home security systems have the ability to hit a button and share with your neighbors,” Lt. Combs said. “If you had someone come up in your driveway who was suspicious, you can share a video to everyone within a certain radius of your home.”

The detective reminded homeowners that just because there are so many cameras and so many people are caught on them, you shouldn’t forget to call the police.

“A lot of times, there’s an assumption that we have that video, and a lot of times we don’t. A lot of times, we’re seeing it the first time when we see it on social media,” said Lt. Combs.

 

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No other power-generation technology matched solar’s pace of cost reduction this past decade. The game will change again in the 2020s.

The cost of multi-silicon solar modules fell from $2 per watt to just over $0.20/W during the 2010s.

Solar energy grew by leaps and bounds in the 2010s. According to Wood Mackenzie, global annual solar installations grew more than six-fold this past decade, from 16 gigawatts in 2010 to 105 gigawatts in 2019.

In the meantime, multi-silicon solar module prices dropped from over $2 per watt to just over $0.20 per watt in Q3 2019. That 90 percent price reduction is one of the most critical factors driving the global expansion of solar.

No other electricity generation technologies have been able to keep up with solar’s pace of cost reduction over this period.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)’s data show that the overnight capital cost required to build new onshore wind and conventional natural gas combined cycle power plants in the U.S. decreased by 38 percent and 2 percent, respectively, between 2010 and 2018.

In the meantime, the cost to build combustion turbine plants has gone up by 11 percent. The same unfavorable economics has led to very few new coal plant constructions in the second half of the 2010s.

The main reason solar modules have become increasingly cost-competitive is due to economies-of-scale production along the entire supply chain. Global polysilicon production capacity grew more than four-fold this past decade, while the price of polysilicon, the primary feedstock for solar module production, declined from over $80 in 2010 to just $8.40 in 2019.

Similarly, accompanying the steep module price decline was a five-fold increase in the global module production capacity. Wafer and solar cell production capacity also experienced huge growth over the decade.

Global solar manufacturing capacity vs. module price, 2010 – 2020ESource: Wood Mackenzie

This supply-chain-wide development created a robust and competitive solar marketplace. Nowadays, successful manufacturers continue to produce at scale while innovating their business models and technology offerings.

In addition to their significant cost decline, solar panels have improved a lot in the past decade.

The average nameplate power output of a standard 72-cell multi silicon module was around 290 watts in 2010. Today, consumers can expect at least 345 watts at one-tenth of the 2010 price. It is like getting the latest iPhone at a 90 percent discount on the old iPhone price. Although that may never happen in the mobile phone market, solar has been seeing better products at lower prices every year for a decade.

The 2010s also witnessed solar modules getting better in a few other ways:

• Higher-efficiency mono silicon-based modules are replacing multi silicon modules to become the predominant module type. • Modules increasingly use advanced cell architectures such as Passivated Emitter and Rear Contact (PERC), Interdigitated Back Contact (IBC), Heterojunction with Intrinsic Thin Layer (HIT), and bifacial cell technologies. • Modules based on large-size wafers (158mm and above) and n-type wafers are gaining market traction. • Innovative module techniques such as half-cuts and shingles are capturing market shares.

 

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A deconstructed view of the HandsFree Labs technology that is making inroads in the sneaker world.

When HandsFree Labs founder Mike Pratt decided to create a hands-free sneaker technology, it wasn’t about finding just one way to do it. He sought to invent every way. And now HandsFree Labs dominates the market —owning six brands of patents with another 26 pending helps the cause — of hands-free sneaker entry with the likes of Nike licensing the technologies.

“(Mike) and our team literally invented dozens of ways to enter shoes hands free and chose one solution we call the titanium arc,” says Monte Deere, Handsfree Labs CEO. “We started by commercializing that in our Kizik brand. At the same time, we’ve been patenting other solutions one by one.”

What that creates is a portfolio of what the brand calls Foot Activated Shoe Technologies (FAST), all designed to create opportunities for the wearer to step in and out of shoes without using hands. This allows HandsFree Labs to license technology across the footwear industry, no matter the end user.

An Air Jordan 1 that includes hands-free technology.

The hands-free solutions work for anyone who wears shoes. “For everyone that wears shoes,” Deere says. “Everyone.” And while people with disabilities or the aging population may see the immediate need more clearly, the hands-free shoes work for people going through airports, toddlers or folks putting on boots, to name a few. Deere says the more than a dozen different patent families signify a host of technologies that can work to allow any person to step into any kind of shoe.

At the core of the technology, hands-free isn’t about simply a slip-on design. “When the shoes are on, they are on and they feel like a fully laced shoe,” Deere says. The technology is simple, yet complex enough to form to a human foot. The brand’s titanium arc technology, for example, uses aerospace grade titanium built into the heel of a shoe. When a wearer steps onto the preloaded back of the shoe, the retractable heel fits comfortably around the heel. As the foot moves forward into the shoe, the retractable heel comes up and around the heel.

The HandsFree Labs KIZIK brand offers an opportunity to use its own technology in shoes.

HandsFree launched its own Kizik brand in 2017, showcasing FAST potential. It plans to roll out Pilar, a style aimed at a younger, more trend-savvy consumer, in a direct-to-consumer model, in mid-2020. But that isn’t all that HandsFree is about on the business side. And the Nike agreement has made that strategy quite visible.

After launching Kizik in 2017 other footwear brands took notice of FAST and by 2018 Nike was interested. HandsFree then introduced Nike to not just one FAST method, but the entire suite of opportunities. “We were excited to introduce Nike to our portfolio and we were excited to work together,” Deere says.

Nike has based its entire line of FlyEase footwear around HandsFree Lab technology, which gives Nike the “potential to broaden and enhance” its effort to create greater access to sports for all athletes by removing barriers to play, says Tom Clarke, Nike president of innovation. “Our partnership with HandsFree Labs builds on Nike’s leadership in using innovative technology to meet consumer needs,” he says.

Since its debut, FlyEase has found its way into more than 20 footwear styles across Nike and Jordan Brand basketball, running, sportswear and football cleats. They’ve been worn on the WNBA court by Elena Delle Donne and NFL field by Seattle Seahawks linebacker Shaquem Griffin.

Nike has the rights to do whatever they want with HandsFree technology, which is exactly what Deere says his company wants. “We know Nike has the reach and the innovative genius to put hands-free shoes on people all over the planet,” he says. So, while Nike has access to an entire portfolio of technologies and free reign to do as they wish with the product, Deere says he expects to see license agreements with other companies really explode over the next few years. “We think kids will be wearing hands-free shoes from the beginning of their lives and never lace their shoes again,” he says. “It’s happening quickly.”

While Nike puts a focus on athletes, Deere expects to see the technology move into every category of shoes. “Humbly speaking, our patent portfolio really creates a situation where hands-free technology and footwear is going to run through HandsFree Labs,’ Deere says. “I don’t think Nike would talk with us if that were not the case.”

 

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