SiliconANGLE’s Smart World Round-up

This week’s Smart City roundup features a survey on smart city realities, a personal robot that carries your things, and a fresh perspective on how workplaces can take advantage of Google Glass.

Do people really know about smart cities?

Frost & Sullivan Inc. recently conducted a survey over the summer to determine how aware people are of smart cities, and the findings were of little surprise to the research group.

Frost & Sullivan Energy & Environment Director and Partner Roberta Gamble summarized the findings of the the survey in a blog post titled “Survey Says: General Population Lacks Awareness on Smart Cities“. One thousand consumers participated on the survey and were asked questions such as whether they have heard of ‘smart cities,’ how they define such a term, and if there are any US cities that can be described as a smart city.

Only 39 percent of the respondents have heard of the term ‘smart city’, and the majority of those people were urban or suburban, had at least an undergraduate college degree, and/or earned $100,000 per year or more. The survey also showed that as income and level of education increases, so does the understanding of what smart cities are. Moreover, respondents without a high school degree are less likely to have heard of or know what a smart city is.

“This lack of awareness is probably not surprising.  But if cities are looking to use smarter systems to improve living conditions, as well as to increase voter turn-out and civic activity, they may want to consider focusing efforts on smart city education to these less informed demographics,” Gamble stated.

Budgee the robot

People with disabilities, such as those with ambulatory issues or elderly that are too weak to carry grocery bags, will soon have their very own robot companion to literally do the heavy lifting.  Earlier this year, Five Elements Robotics launched a project on Kickstarter Inc. called Budgee.

Budgee is a robot that follows you around using the location data on your smartphone and is able to communicate with the user. Budgee uses sonar and ZigBee to lock into a user’s location and if the user is walking too fast or went out of range, it sends a message telling them to slow down or that it has lost them.

The personal robot comes with a basket capable of carrying a 50 lb load, and has a locking mechanism to secure items. Budgee comes with a rechargeable battery that lasts 6-8 hours of use, and folds up for storage and transport.

Though the Kickstarter project was not successful, the company is still selling the robot for $1399 and will ship in November 2014.

Augmate transforms deskless jobs

Augmate Corp. is transforming deskless jobs by making work fun and easy with the use of heads up display units, such as Google Glass. Augmate is an enterprise platform for industrial, smart eyewear applications, to create customizable and scalable apps for deskless workers such as those employed in warehouses, retail stores, stock rooms and other jobs that would require the worker to know product details and other pertinent information.

One use case would be a shop clerk helping customers select items or provide information about a piece of interest. Getting things from the backroom will be easier as items needed are available on the smartglass, no physical list needed to complete the errand, and bosses can rest assured that employees are knowledgeable about products.