Smart helmets: not just protecting your head, but also your wallet

22

October

2017

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As we all know, the most exciting things in life often come with risks. This is especially the case when it comes to extreme sports, like bungee jumping and skydiving, but also for things that you can do on a more daily basis, like riding a motorbike. Statistically, there is a 6% of experiencing a bike accident each time you ride out, which is considerably high compared to the risk of a car accident (1%). The fact that 13% of road fatalities are caused by motorcycles, despite the fact that only 3% of registered vehicles are motorcycles, also adds to the claim that riding a motorbike is dangerous. However, riders wearing an approved helmet reduce the risk of death by 37 percent!

Wearing a helmet is certainly a smart choice, but whereas the helmet used to be really simple in the past, the helmets themselves are now also becoming ‘smart’. One of the first smart motorcycle helmets, the Skully AR-1, took a huge leap in combining a normal helmet with smart functions, like streaming music, handsfree calling, a rear view camera and GPS navigation on a heads-up display. Unfortunately, this Indiegogo project failed and the firm filed for bankruptcy. But, Skully did raise the bar for smart helmets. Other companies have come up with even more elaborate designs, e.g. Crosshelmet, which includes all of the above mentioned functions, but also noise control, group talk and a safety light are included. Crosshelmet also shows relevant journey information, like weather, temperature, and compass direction. LiveMap adds to that by using AR-technology, where the image is projected on your visor instead of on small heads-up displays, and comes with a camera so you can exactly see what happened in case of an incident. FUSAR helmets even add to that, integrating crash detection features and a black box recorder, but also emergency alert systems, which will notify nearby help centers and your emergency contacts if you are involved in a crash. After all of this, what more is there to add?

Well, the last feature combines technology with the ‘human’ side. Since motorcycling is dangerous, you would expect bikers to have insurance, right? Wrong! Especially in developing countries, where mopeds and motorbikes are used a lot, insurance is very expensive! That is why Jarvish is building helmets which they think will ‘transform the global insurance industry’.  This company installs sensors inside motorcycle helmets to measure rider behavior. These sensors can track speed, how hard the rider brakes, how tight they turn corners, when and where they travel, as well as external factors such as traffic conditions. By tracking this behavior, risk calculations can be made and insurances can be priced based on riding behavior. This will not only make insurances accessible to more people, but hopefully people will also adjust their behavior, leading to safer driving. This way, not only the driver will be safer because (s)he is wearing the helmet, but the ride itself will also be safer. What do you think, will this pricing strategy work?

Sources:

Motorcycle Accident Statistics


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorcycle_safety#Consequences_of_accidents
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/skully-ar-1-the-world-s-smartest-motorcycle-helmet#/
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/491835187/crosshelmet-the-smart-motorcycle-helmet
https://livemap.info/
https://badasshelmetstore.com/5-smart-motorcycle-helmets-keep-alive-road-2017/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/pamelaambler/2017/08/01/smart-helmets-are-the-new-frontier-of-insurtech-gadget-saving-your-wallet/#132309875f9c

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Will your clothes replace your personal trainer?

15

October

2017

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A lot of industries are disrupted by new companies, products and services. Some of the most well-known examples are Airbnb and the hotel industry, Uber versus taxi companies and Netflix as opposed to video rental businesses. However, are industries are experiencing this as well. One example of this is the sports and health industry. It is a bit different from the examples above, because there is not one company which is disrupting of taking over the entire industry, but there certainly is a shift here.

Apps
This was first caused by for example food, health and sports apps, which help you track your calorie intake and macro-nutrients, give insight in your sleep cycle, count your steps, plan your workout and check your progress. Examples of these apps are Runtastic, Endomondo, MyFitnessPal, GoogleFit and Apple Health. These apps can also be connected with wearables, like the Apple Watch Sport and Fitbit. However, one of the newest technologies in the sports and health department is another type of wearables: clothes! Not normal ones, but smart clothing!

Smart clothing
A lot of companies are developing smart clothing, which will help you track a whole lot of things. Not only can these track the things your smartwatch can, like measure your heart rate and count your steps, these clothes can do much more. For example, a shirt that measures your body temperature, workout intensity, recovery, fatigue levels, but also air quality and UV levels. Or running shorts that can not only count steps, but also include cadence, ground contact time, pelvic rotation and stride length. This can help you improve your running form and reduces the chances of injury. There are also shirts that detect which of your muscles are working and transfer this workout data to a smartphone, to see if you are favoring one side over the other and if you activate the right muscles with your exercises. There are even yoga pants which pulse at the hips, knees and ankles to encourage you to move and/or hold positions and give you additional feedback through the app afterwards. With all these metrics, who still needs a personal trainer?

 

Sources:
https://www.digitaltrends.com/health-fitness/athos-smart-clothes/
https://www.wareable.com/smart-clothing/best-smart-clothing
https://www.digitaltrends.com/wearables/smart-clothing-is-the-future-of-wearables/

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Technology Of The Week – Industry Disruption in the movie rental industry.

22

September

2017

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“Disruption” is a process in which a small company with few resources successfully challenges the incumbent business leaders. When the established leaders only focus on their most profitable consumers, and disregard the need of their smaller consumer, the entrants can make a move upmarket. They can improve their operations, while protecting their advantages that drove their early success. When the ordinary consumer starts to adopt and buy the entrants products in volume, disruption has happened. Therefore, a disrupted industry is an industry in which a disruptive innovation has taken place and where the incumbent firm has taken on the new business model of the disrupter. A great example of an industry that was disrupted is the movie rental industry.

One of the biggest movie rental companies was Blockbuster. At its peak, Blockbuster employed 84,000 people worldwide and had around 9000 stores. Blockbuster provided the entertainment, but also completed the experience. The revenue streams for rental industry companies were based on rental fees and all the food and beverage sales. But late-fees were their biggest revenue stream. Blockbuster paid a lot for the licenses and inventory of the movies, renting their shops and paying their employees.

In 2000, Netflix proposed a partnership to Blockbuster. Blockbuster rejected this immediately, they did not think Netflix could offer them real advantages. Blockbuster’s disadvantages for customers: extra fees if you returned videos late. Netflix’ advantages: no stores and no rent to pay, a larger variety of videos and subscriptions instead of paying per video, so there were no ‘late-fees’ for their customers. Because videos were sent home by mail, it was a bit slow. Still, people slowly became enthusiastic. The same happened with video streaming in 2007. Initially, internet connections and streaming quality were bad and it only attracted a few customers, but when quality improved, disadvantages disappeared. As more people tried it, more became enthusiastic and spread the word. Netflix became a great success and drove Blockbuster into bankruptcy!

The future of the movie-rental industry: the video-streaming industry. Traditional TV will cease to exist and all forms of video watching will happen through online services; the amount of time people under 35 spend watching traditional TV has been cut in half since 2010. Netflix has an advantage by collecting data from their customers. Based on this, content creation can be steered into a certain direction. Youtube Red, Hulu and Amazon are existing competitors of Netflix. Disney has broken its ties with Netflix and is going to stream through ESPN, while Facebook is working on its own streaming platform, called Facebook Watch. Netflix’ CEO Reed Hastings expects that in 10 or 20 years there will be a lot more operators offering streaming services. Netflix’ goal will be to keep the largest slice of the pie, they know they won’t be the only ones offering this service.

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