For those of use who like to surf or swim in exotic places (read: the hometowns of sharks), there is now a way to make our lives a bit safer. In Australia the number of attacks by sharks on swimmers and surfers has increased in the past years. The number of attacks is still very low, but the Australian government decided to start experimenting with new ways to prevent attacks and the unnecessary killing of sharks.

The solution that seems most promising at the moment is a drone that uses artificial intelligence to spot sharks. While the first prototypes of this drone were produced in 2016, it is finally time to actually start using them now. The drones will fly above the coast lines of New South Wales to spot sharks that are invisible to the eye of the surfers or swimmers. The drones are three times better in recognizing sharks than the human eye and they have a 92% success rate in spotting sharks.

Currently, the drones do not operate completely by themselves. The images they produce are viewed by humans, the so called drone pilots on the beach. They can check if the system is missing a shark, or when a shark is spotted correctly, they can warn the people in the water. Another convenient future that the drone has, but humans do not is that it can drop a flotation device in the water when a swimmer or surfer needs it.

I think the shark spotting drone will help lifeguards in doing their work, but it will not replace them, as AI will almost never replace jobs entirely (Brynjolfsson and McAfee, 2017). Lifeguards will always be needed in case a person is in a dangerous situation in the water and they can’t safe themselves. Furthermore, the drone pilots or life guards are necessary to check whether the AI system spotted a real shark or if it is just spotting a surfer or another floating object, so the shark alarm will not go off an make people panic without a reason.

Another reason to keep life guards and other staff in place is that there are lives at stake when the drone does not see a shark when it is approaching an area where people are in the water. With a 92% success rate, the drone is doing very well, but not well enough to operate on its own. However, this does not mean that the shark spotting drones can’t seriously increase the amount of sharks that are spotted by the life guards. Since it views the sea from above, it shows a very broad image of the coast line, where the lifeguards can only see a small part of the water from the coast or from their boats. Moreover, AI is getting better at image recognition at a fast pace as a result of deep learning (Brynjoflsson and McAfee, 2017). Therefore, in the future the success rate of the drone might be higher, but chances that it will ever be 100% are very small.

For now, the drone using AI seems like a very good solution to the problem. In the future developers might even be able to expand the activities of the drones, for example by spotting surfers or swimmers who have floated away from the coast because of strong current.

Do you think you would feel safer in the water with this device flying above you? And do you think it has potential to completely replace human life guards in the future?

References:
BBC News. (2017). Must See – BBC News. [online] Available at:
http://www.bbc.com/news/video_and_audio/must_see/41640146/a-bird-s-eye-view-of-sharks [Accessed 17 Oct. 2017].
Brynjolfsson, E. and McAfee, A. 2017. The Business of Artificial
Intelligence. Harvard Business Review.

Technology experts are convinced that in the near future, most houses will to some degree be smart homes. Having a smart home can mean that you have a simple voice-compatible devise like the Amazon Echo, but it can also mean that you can control your house completely with just one application on your smartphone. How far developed are smart homes at the moment and what will our future homes look like? Keep reading and you’ll find out!

At this point most people probably own or know some devise that can make a home a smart home. One well known device already mentioned earlier is the Amazon Echo: a voice-compatible device that lets you ask questions about the weather, the news or your schedule for the day, which will be answered by the voice of Alexa. However, she goes further than that. When the Amazon Echo is connected to other systems in the house like the light network, the laundry machine, or even the door locks she will be able to control these when asked (Profis, 2017; Chen, 2017).

Just like Amazon, Apple also launched a smart-home system named HomeKit (Chen, 2017). With this system, people with iPhones and/or iWatches can control their smart-home from these devices. The HomeKit is made to be integrated into already existing homes. However, Apple is even going further than that. This year, the company started a partnership with Brookfield Residential, a homebuilding company (Flemming, 2017). The new partnership lets Apple design smart-homes from scratch, in which the HomeKit system is completely integrated. At this moment the companies built 66 houses together in which everything is connected to the residents’ smartphone.

So, everything is already possible if you connect the appliances in your house to your smartphone with one of these systems. Are there still opportunities for the future? Yes! In the future of smart homes it seems like there are no limits. It is very likely that our homes will know us so well that we will never have to push a button in our house again (Wired, n.d.). To achieve this, some adjustments to our homes and lives are needed. First of all, you need to choose a platform that you trust, because it is going to have a lot of control over practically everything you own. This could be Apple, Amazon or Google, but there are also some less known brands that focus on consumers with a higher budget and offer even higher quality. Once you made your decision and installed the system into your home you’ll need a devise that will be able to track your location in the house. Whenever you wear this device (e.g. an iWatch or Amazons’ Moto watch) the smart home system will know in which room you are at all times and it will adjust the temperature and lighting to your personal preferences. For example, if you usually go to bed around 11 PM, the system could start dimming the lights at 10 PM. Whenever you enter a room, the lights will dim and when you leave they will go back to their normal state or turn off.

Do you think you are ready to give your house and the companies that own these systems this much power over your life? And do you think you will invest in them in the near feature? Please don’t hesitate to leave any opinions about smart homes or experiences with them down below!

References
Chen, B. (2017). How to Make Your House a Smart Home. [online] Nytimes.com. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/guides/technology/how-to-make-a-smart-home?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fpersonaltech&action=click&contentCollection=personaltech&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront&redirect=true [Accessed 17 Oct. 2017].
Flemming, J. (2017). As smart homes become smarter, tech companies rush to get in the door. [online] latimes.com. Available at: http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/hot-property/la-fi-hp-smart-homes-20170923-story.html [Accessed 17 Oct. 2017].
Profis, S. (2017). 10 reasons we can’t stop using the Amazon Echo. [online] CNET. Available at: https://www.cnet.com/how-to/the-best-things-you-can-do-with-amazon-echo/ [Accessed 17 Oct. 2017].
WIRED, S. (n.d.). Smart Homes of the Future Will Know Us by Our Heartbeats. [online] WIRED. Available at: https://www.wired.com/insights/2014/10/smart-homes-of-the-future/ [Accessed 17 Oct. 2017].