The Launch of Human 2.0

CES is America's annual gadget show. Whilst the tech giants such as Google and Amazon don't normally announce much here, the ecosystem of companies who exploit products such as Android and Alexa/Echo use this as a platform for launching new products. Apparently, this year's theme is Voice as a host of home automation products, exploiting voice commands and Alexa's AI capability, are using CES as the platform for their launch. Although you may be interested to know that Alexa will soon be available on Windows 10, challenging Microsoft's Cortana assistant.

Meanwhile, the latest cool device in the Wearables arena has been announced by Innomdle. This is the Sgnl which is a wristband cum watch strap which converts your fingers into a telephone receiver. When paired with a phone, it transmits vibrations down your hand to your fingers, so you can hear your phone by touching them to your ears. The device also has notification and fitness features. Initial reviews are positive and the shipping date has been announced as March.

At the same time the range of new Wearables announcements include: 

• The Eagle a wearable home theatre system from Kopin and Pico Interactive. A key feature of this is that you retain awareness of the outside world, lending it to scenarios such as automated plant control.

• Omron's forthcoming Heartguide which promises to deliver accurate blood pressure monitoring (countering reports that many smart watches are innacurate);

• Fitbit's hint that it will be delivering blood sugar monitoring technology.

So what does this mean to people looking at digital exploitation? my thoughts are this is the year when Human 2.0 gets launched. What do I mean by this, well Human 2.0 places people at the centre of automation and control of an extended network of digital assets and automated devices. So a person can control an automated production cell or a power plant with integrated feeds of information, slave AI bots to carry out standard operating procedures, and all relevant KPI information and alerts fed to him or her. At the same time, a raft of wearables will monitor and tend for the person, as it is only a short step from wearable monitoring to automatically administering nutrition, hydration and medecines.

This means that most current concepts around Industry 4.0 need to change.