the Lantern editorial team

Smart toys are the next big thing in the toy industry. They can be designed to use facial recognition and artificial intelligence (AI) to learn about the child user and personalize the playing or learning experience for them. For example, these smart features can be combined with dolls to learn about a child’s favourites and speak to the child. In fact, smart toys have already been developing and become commercially available over the past few years. The global market for these types of toys is estimated to reach $18 billion by 2023. The growing market for smart [...]

As many parts of the world are working towards higher environmental standards, more energy will be produced by decentralized, renewable sources. These sources come in the forms of wind farms, private solar panels, microgrids, and batteries. This fragmentation of the energy sources will add complexity to the grid’s management. This will come in the form of millions of power sources, such as residential and commercial solar panels, that will be uploading power to the grid. And millions of more power sinks, such as electric vehicle charging stations, which will be pulling electricity from the grid. The system will [...]

5G networks are the next generation of cellular networks that are being developed and deployed worldwide. These newer networks will bring more benefits than just being a faster iteration of 4G. Their wide usability in business will transform the working landscape for many people across the globe. The tech has the potential to bring about higher productivity, higher job satisfaction, and a far lower risk profile for a variety of occupations. As 5G becomes more accessible it will continue to affect more jobs and works. Wuhan doctor monitoring patients remotely [Source: Huawei] At the present, there [...]

The Smart Agriculture Competition was an inaugural event co-organized by Pinduoduo and the China Agricultural University. In the competition, four technology teams utilizing AgriTech practices competed with traditional farmers over four months to grow strawberries. Sensors deployed in the greenhouse to monitor plant growth at the Smart Agriculture Competition [Source: Pinduoduo] The tech teams utilized artificial intelligence (AI) and Internet of things (IoT) in their strategies. The results yielded an average of 196% more strawberries, by weight, than traditional farmers. The technologies also outperformed farmers in terms of return on investment by an average of 75.5%. [...]

The UK currently spends about £5.5 billion a year on 1.5 million road excavations that are needed to maintain and repair their complex network of water and sewer pipes. Researchers are working on ways to reduce the time and money needed for this maintenance and one solution is to use robots. Pipebots is a large UK government-funded project working on robots that are intended to help maintain the pipe system.  The Pipebots are being developed to inspect for leakages and blockages, map the location of the issues, and monitor the conditions for signs of trouble. These robots will [...]

The Great Wall of China is the only landmark visible from space is a commonly perpetuated myth. However, with modern satellites we can take HD images of far smaller objects like elephants. And with the help of deep learning those objects can be easily detected and tracked. A team of researchers at the University of Oxford and the University of Bath did just that. Using imagery from Maxar satellites they were to develop a new method for monitoring vulnerable and endangered animals. An example elephants detected by the CNN model (green boxes), and the true detection labels [...]

Self-driving car maker Cruise and majority shareholder General Motors announced their partnering with Microsoft to accelerate commercialization of driverless vehicles. The companies will combine their software & hardware engineering with cloud computing capabilities and manufacturing knowledge. Cruise will leverage Microsoft’s Azure for cloud and computing solutions at scale. “Our mission to bring safer, better, and more affordable transportation to everyone isn’t just a tech race - it’s also a trust race,” said Cruise CEO Dan Ammann. “Microsoft, as the gold standard in the trustworthy democratization of technology, will be a force multiplier for us as we commercialize our [...]

The idea of a 4-day work week is nothing new. Various companies and governments have been experimenting with pilot programs in the past. However, the on-going pandemic has continuously pushed for more flexible working arrangements. As a result many campaigns for more flexible work have reignited. For example, last month Spain’s Vice President Pablo Iglesias made a proposal for a 4-day work week that could lead to more jobs, improved health, and increase productivity. Similarly, the British company Unilever announced they would by trialing a year-long program and access the outcome. Whenever the subject is [...]