Everything’s smart

A NumbeR of products that utilise Intel’s hardware and software solutions to produce “smarter” connected devices were also exhibited this year.

Here are the highlights of Intel’s Internet of Things showcase.

Connected wheelchair

Originally a project started by young interns at Intel, the connected wheelchair project aims to collect live information from wheelchair users.

built on an Intel Galileo board, the device sits in the back of the wheelchair with its own power and collects a variety of biometric data from the user, as well as information from the wheelchair and sends it to the Cloud.

For example, the system will measure the user’s heart rate, positioning of the chair (whether it’s on an incline) and even the geographical location of the wheelchair.

This information is then uploaded to the Cloud and can be used, for example, to alert a family member if the user is in trouble or to the wheelchair manufacturer to help in improving the design.

The connected wheelchair is not yet a commercial product.

Smart beer dispenser

The SteadyServ iKeg attempts to solve the problem that many bars have — running out of beer and not having replacement kegs arrive in a timely manner.

With the SteadyServ system, each beer keg is tagged with an RFID (radio-frequency identification) label which identifies the beer type.

When this tagged beer keg arrives at the bar, the keg is put on a special weight sensor which constantly monitors the weight of the beer keg and uploads it to the Cloud along with information obtained from the RFID tag about the type of beer.

When the weight of the keg hits a certain level, the system will send out an alert that the beer is running low and allow the distributor to send replacements at the right time to ensure that the taps never run dry.

The smart beer dispenser is already in use at several bars in Indiana in the united States.

Smart surveillance

China company Kedacom’s Smart IP surveillance camera shows just what can be done with a camera that does more than just record moving images.

The camera’s internals have been beefed up with a board running an Intel Atom processor which is used to analyse the video stream as it comes in, detecting movement, amongst other things.

While this isn’t anything unusual in itself, this camera can squeeze an hour of footage into a two-minute clip.

It’s not simply a speeded-up version of the existing footage — the Kedacom camera actually analyses the footage, isolates the parts (such as people walking or cars moving in and out of the scene) and then overlays only the moving parts onto the short clip, all at once.

For example, a one-hour video of a very lightly trafficked location with perhaps a few people and cars passing by will be condensed into a two-minute footage, essentially overlaying all the activities in a single window.

This allows security personnel to very easily and quickly analyse the footage without having to sit through an hour’s worth of video.

With the amount of computing power available, the camera does all this internally and then sends out the condensed clip.

The Kedacom camera will be launching in beijing in October with other markets to follow.