Monthly Archives: June 2021

Autonomous robotics company Starship Technologies has a new CEO. The company on Tuesday said Alastair Westgarth, the former CEO of Alphabets Loon, would be leading the company as it looks to expand its robotics delivery service.

Westgarth previously headed Loon, Alphabets experiment to deliver broadband via high-altitude balloons, from 2017. The project shut down for good at the beginning of this year. The company said in a farewell blog post that the road to commercial viability has proven much longer and riskier than hoped. Prior to working at Loon, Westgarth headed the wireless antennae company Quintel Solutions, was a vice president at telecommunications company Nortel and director of engineering at Bell Mobility.

He will be joining Starship Technologies at a time of rapid expansion. At the beginning of 2020, Starship only had a couple hundred autonomous bots operating in a few neighborhoods and college campuses. Last month the company said the number of deliveries since the start of the pandemic quadrupled, hitting a milestone 1.5 million commercial deliveries globally.

Autonomous delivery is changing logistics as we know it, impacting billions of people around the world, Westgarth said in a statement Tuesday. The team at Starship has been developing and perfecting the technology and its operations for years, since creating the robot delivery category in 2014 [] Im excited about this opportunity and looking forward to helping the company scale both on campuses and in neighborhoods, giving millions more people access to this market-leading, convenient, safe and environmentally friendly delivery service.

Starships previous CEO Lex Bayer quietly departed in December 2020, after nearly three years at the helm. Its co-founder Ahti Heinla, who acted as interim CEO, will now become Starships CTO.

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Former head of Alphabets Loon joins Starship Technologies as new CEO - TechCrunch

COLOGNE, Germany--(BUSINESS WIRE)--HRS, the leading corporate lodging platform, is leveraging its capabilities to support corporations, governments and health responders that face crisis situations arising from pandemics, natural disasters and other causes. With automation as its foundation, and supported by the companys globally-renowned Clean & Safe Protocol, HRS can quickly perform hotel procurement in any location and set up easy-to-use online booking access within hours of contract signing.

The random manner of COVID breakouts and new strains flaring up in different countries and cities demonstrates the need for fast, proven solutions to help people find safe hotels. Given the resource challenges many communities deal with in disaster situations, HRS Crisis Management Solution offers a superior option for urgent, high-volume lodging. The combination of new technology, on-the-ground hotel relationships, secure payment and unmatched speed to stand up localized solutions is ideal for the distinct emergency lodging needs of individuals, families, professionals and isolation scenarios.

Proven Technology with Rapid Deployment Already in Use on Multiple Continents

HRS end-to-end platform has been deployed with timely results in multiple locations:

Centralized Virtual Payment Solution Eliminates Expense Burden on Hotel Guests

Organizations can leverage HRS Touchless Payment functionality to streamline the financial component of the costs of extended hotel stays. Using proven virtual procedures and secure APIs with credit card providers and financial institutions, the process automates reconciliation and reimbursement processes while eliminating fraud opportunities. Hotels gain from timely payment and incremental occupancy, while guests dont need to worry about extensive costs that can accrue from lengthy stays at a hotel.

HRS Crisis Management Solution builds off the companys innovative Clean & Safe Protocol. Less than a year after its introduction in June 2020, the Protocol has been adopted by more than 65,000 hotels across 192 countries. These properties have elevated their hygiene standards in reaction to COVID-19, even for extended periods often required for emergency circumstances.

Organizations can learn more about this innovative solution at HRS website, or they can email a HRS Crisis Management team member at crisisresponse@hrs.com.

Its been gratifying to see our lodging expertise and technology help people impacted by the pandemic and other crisis situations, said HRS CEO Tobias Ragge. One outcome of the past 18 months is the irrefutable evidence of the role technology can play to expedite solutions that support communities and relief organizations at their time of need. Weve now refined our Crisis Management Solution to work on a global basis, and stand ready to assist corporations, governments, insurance entities and other parties navigating the lodging-related challenges driven by emergency circumstances.

About HRS

HRS is revolutionizing managed lodging programs for corporations, hotels and business travelers worldwide with its proprietary technology and expertise. The company is committed to facilitating safety, savings, security, satisfaction and sustainable hotel options for its global client roster. Leveraging its unique Lodging as a Service platform, HRS oversees the totality of corporate hotel programs for its clients, from initial procurement and rate assurance to booking, virtual payment and expense management. With more than 65,000 hotels joining HRS Clean & Safe Protocol in 2020, and the recently launched Green Stay Initiative, the company provides newly-prioritized information on key decision factors impacting post-pandemic travel. The companys data-driven solutions deliver savings and performance for corporations across all hotel categories, including transient, meetings and long-stay lodging scenarios all while digitizing processes on the hotel side for a better traveler experience. Founded in 1972, HRS today works with 35 percent of the global Fortune 500, as well as the worlds leading hotel chains, regional hospitality groups and independent hotels. More information at http://www.hrs.com/enterprise.

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HRS Crisis Management Solution Delivers Turnkey Technology and Safe Hotel Options for Corporations, First Responders and Governments - Business Wire

Ragpickers search for reusable items from a heap of garbage, at Sevapura dumping yard in Jaipur,Rajasthan, India, Wednesday, April 07, 2021.

NurPhoto | NurPhoto | Getty Images

Humans generate a remarkable amount of garbage: over 2 billion tonnes per year, according to the World Bank, or approximately 4.5 trillion pounds annually. And that figure is going to grow. Global garbage is expected to reach 3.4 billion tonnes by 2050.

Even if you could figure out where to put that much garbage, it's going to leak dangerous greenhouse gasses that contribute to climate change. Solid waste landfills are the third-largest source of methane emissions in the United States, according to the most recent data available from the Environmental Protection Agency. In 2019, landfills released 15% of methane emissions, which is equivalent to emissions from more than 21.6 million passenger cars driven for one year.

Recycling is no panacea. And furthermore, there's a wide gap between what's possible to be recycled and what actually is recycled. Dry recyclables such as plastic, paper and cardboard, metal and glass are equal to 38% of municipal waste, according to data in the World Bank's What a Waste 2.0 report. Meanwhile, only 13.5% of those dry recyclables are actually recycled globally.

Technology companies are trying to tackle the garbage problem from multiple directions, improving recycling processes and creating new materials to make single-use products that are compostable.

The U.S. waste industry can use the help. Richer countries do a better job of recycling than poorer countries, but the United States isn't near the top of the list, recycling 34.6% of its garbage. While poor countries on average only recycle 3.7% and many don't recycle at all or don't have data, some of the best rates are in Europe and especially among some of the smallest territories, such as The Faroe Islands, a self-governing archipelago which is part of the Kingdom of Denmark, which is No. 1 in the world, recycling 67% of its garbage.

"The basic principles of recycling are the collection, sorting, manual and or mechanical processing, and then delivery of the required quality of recycled materials to manufacturing industries," Ross Bartley, the trade and environment director at the Brussels, Belgium-headquartered Bureau ofInternationalRecycling, told CNBC. "Even in industrialized countries, manual sorting may be necessary and that can be complemented, and maybe replaced, by automated sorting systems using suitable technologies."

Automated sorting happens with magnets, flotation, wind sifters (to separate light and heavy materials), and cameras, among other techniques, according to Bartley, and such equipment can be bought off the shelf and integrated into recycling plants.

But key questions include how much the separation equipment costs, the all-in running costs per tonne of processed materials, and what is the added value to each of the separated streams of materials. In other words: "When is it profitable?" Bartley said.

Matanya Horowitz, the founder and CEO of AMP Robotics, which ranked No. 25 on this year's CNBC Disruptor 50 list, got his big recycling idea after visiting a materials recovery facility (MRF) the destination for residential and commercial recyclables and learned not only how demanding work conditions are, but how inefficient the process can be.

Horowitz was looking for applications of robotics technology that could be improved. He got his doctorate at California Institute of Technology and when he was there, he worked on several Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) challenges. "That helped me understand what was working well in robotics and what remained a challenge," he told CNBC.

It was clear to Horowitz that computer vision could improve the work of sorting garbage for recycling. In July 2014, Horowitz launched AMP Robotics and has raised $77.8 million and has almost 130 employees. In April 2020, AMP Robotics announced it had processed more than one billion recyclable objects in a year.

A primary challenge for AMP Robotics is that sorting garbage is endlessly complex. "Recycling is a tough business to be in," Horowitz says. "You can't control the materials you're processing, and there are all kinds of odd contaminants that people put in their recycling bins. The result is that you have to build exceptionally tough and high-performance pieces of equipment."

AMP Robotics uses robotics and artificial intelligence to sort recycling.

Photo courtesy AMP Robotics

He's aware of the historic insufficiencies of recycling. "These materials (plastics, metals, paper) all have true value. The problem is that the cost of sorting erodes away that value," Horowitz says. "If you reduce the cost of sorting, the margin you can extract on all those materials increases and you naturally find an incentive to capture that material. That's precisely what our technology does, and how we go about our mission of enabling a world without waste."

Horowitz is optimistic. "A quote I've always liked is, 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,'" he said.

Consumer brands can help increase the success of the recycling supply chain, too, according to Steve Alexander, the president and CEO of the Association of Plastic Recyclers, by designing packaging that can be recycled.

A label on a soda bottle that has a lot of adhesive or ink may not be consistent with other recyclable designs in the soda bottle category, and might in the fact contaminate that stream.

"Even though it's been separated as a soda bottle, or water bottle, it still could contaminate," Alexander tells CNBC. "It all comes down to design. The first thing we have to do is ensure the products we buy be compatible with recycling."

Brands are being pushed to be better and more transparent about their package recyclability by consumer demand. "It's on the goodwill right now of the consumer brand company," Alexander says, but there's interest in governmental regulation mandating consumer brand package design.

Troy Swope, the CEO of Footprint, a technology company focused on eliminating single-use plastics through development and manufacturing of compostable containers, says to focus on improving recycling for plastics is chasing the wrong solution.

"Just to be real clear: Recycling is a joke when it comes to plastic," Swope said. "It's one of the biggest lies we've ever been told."

Swope pointed to CarbonLite Holdings, a large plastic bottle recycler that filed for bankruptcy protection in March. "Without value, no matter what we do to infrastructure... if nobody wants it at the end, nature can't digest it, it doesn't mean anything. It has no value," he said.

Troy Swope, a co-founder and CEO of Footprint

Photo courtesy Footprint

Just to be real clear: Recycling is a joke when it comes to plastic.

Arizona-headquartered Footprint, which ranked No. 45 on this year's CNBC Disruptor 50 list, is focused on making compostable single-use products from cellulose, plant-based materials, such as a recycled cardboard box, wood fibers and agricultural waste. The goal is for all products to be biodegradable or compostable in 90 days or less.

And they're doing so at scale. "We're going to deliver close to a billion units this year, probably just under a billion units from three factories," Swope told CNBC.

Current Footprint customers include McDonalds, SweetGreen and Conagra Brands.

"Next year, we will sell billions of units," Swope said.

Footprint has three factories currently, one in Arizona, another in South Carolina and a third in Mexico. It is in the process of building a research center in the Netherlands and a manufacturing facility in Poland.

"I think recycling, and I say this as a recycling company, is not the answer to garbage," said Tom Szaky, CEO of recycling company Terracycle and zero-waste packaging company Loop, in a recent CNBC Evolve livestream event. "It's an answer to the symptom of garbage, maybe the best way to manage waste, but I think we have to go much deeper and enable an economy where garbage doesn't exist."

Indeed, that's a plug for Szaky's company, Loop, which has consumer brands partners collaborate to make "reusability, ideally, as disposability."

But it also gets at a nuance of the garbage problem which David Allaway, a senior policy analyst at the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality Materials Management Program in Portland, Oregon, covered in a report questioning the environmental impact of recycling.

"In this country, most of the impacts of consumer goods and single-use items and packaging whether it be in toxics, climate change, water depletion, habitat disruption, or other impacts is not a result of disposal. Rather, it is a consequence of supply chains, manufacturing and production," Allaway tells CNBC. "And, as our research showed, items that are 'recyclable' and 'compostable' are not necessarily better for the environment or result in lower human health impacts than functionally equivalent items that are not 'recyclable' or 'compostable.'"

That is not to say that recyclability and composability are necessarily unhelpful.

Items with these popular attributes could be less impactful, and some of them are less impactful, but recyclability and composability are inconsistent predictors of environmental goodness, according to his work, which summarized roughly 17 years of international research on the topic.

For example, elemental mercury is very recyclable but a bad neurotoxin, and whale blubber is compostable but still not a raw material that is desirable.

"Simply knowing that an item is 'recyclable' or 'compostable' tells us surprisingly little about the actual impacts on human health and the environment, or the trade-offs between different materials," Allaway said.

There also are downstream effects of waste decomposition.

"Biodegradable is a great solution in countries that lack solid waste management infrastructure, but in this country, where most of our non-recovered waste goes to landfill, biodegradable means that the material will decompose and produce methane, which is a powerful greenhouse gas," Allaway said.

He cautions that promoting these popular attributes such as "recyclable" and "compostable" is a common marketing strategy that plays to popular wisdom, "which is always popular, but not always wise."

What's most important, in his view, is that producers quantify the total environmental impact of a good with a life cycle assessment. Otherwise, Allaway says, society has no way of knowing whether any of these efforts are steering us in the direction of actual sustainability, or just "feel-good" shifts in pollution involving visible, obvious forms, such as plastic in the oceans.

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Trillions of pounds of trash: New technology tries to solve an old garbage problem - CNBC

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., June 1, 2021 /PRNewswire/ --The spread of inaccuracies on social media including political "fake news," and misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines has led to a plethora of problems in areas as disparate as politics and public health. To combat the spread of false and misleading information, MIT Sloan School Professor David Rand and his colleagues have been developing effective interventions that technology companies can use to combat misinformation online. A study just published in The Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review by Rand and other researchers at MIT's Sloan School of Management, Political Science Department and Media Lab, as well as the University of Regina, and Google's Jigsaw unit, introduces a suite of such interventions that prompt people to think about accuracy before sharing.

"Previous research had shown that most social media users are often fairly adept at spotting falsehoods when asked to judge accuracy," says Rand. "The problem was that this didn't always stop them from spreading misinformation because they would simply forget to think about accuracy when deciding what to share. So we set out to develop prompts that could slow the spread of false news by helping people stop and reflect on the accuracy of what they were seeing before they click 'share.'"

In April and May 2020, the team showed 9,070 social media users a set of 10 false and 10 true headlines about COVID-19 and measured how likely they were to share each one. The team tested a variety of approaches to help users remember to think about accuracy, and therefore be more discerning in their sharing. These approaches included (i) having the users rate the accuracy of a neutral (non-COVID) headline before they started the study (thereby making them more likely to think about accuracy when they continued on to decide what news they'd share), (ii) providing a very short set of digital literacy tips, and (iii) asking users how important it was to them to only share accurate news (almost everyone think it's very important). By shifting participants' attention to accuracy in these various ways, the study showed that it was possible to increase the link between a headline's perceived accuracy and the likelihood of it being shared that is, to get people to pay attention to accuracy when deciding what to share thereby reducing users' intentions to share false news.

This work isn't just consigned to the ivory tower. MIT is working with Jigsaw to see how these approaches can be applied in new ways. Accuracy prompts offer a fundamentally new approach to reduce the spread of misinformation online by getting out ahead of the problem. Instead of just playing catch-up with corrections and warnings, accuracy prompts can help people avoid unwittingly engaging with misinformation in the first place. "Most internet users want help navigating information quality, but ultimately want to decide for themselves what is true. This approach avoids the challenges of 'labeling' information true or false. It's inherently scalable. And in these initial studies, users found accuracy prompts helpful for navigating information quality, so we're providing people with tools that help accomplish pre-existing goals," according to Rocky Cole, one of the Jigsaw researchers on the team.

"From a practical perspective," says Rand, "This study provides platform designers with a menu of effective accuracy prompts to choose from and to cycle through when creating user experiences to increase the quality of information online. We are excited to see technology companies taking these ideas seriously and hope that on-platform testing and optimization will lead to the adoption of new features to fight online misinformation."

Rand and Cole co-authored the paper "Developing an accuracy-prompt toolkit to reduce COVID-19 misinformation online," which was published in the Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review, with MIT Ph.D. student Ziv Epstein, MIT Political Science professor Adam Berinsky, University of Regina Assistant Professor Gordon Pennycook,andGoogle Technical Research Manager Andrew Gully,.

About the MIT Sloan School of ManagementThe MIT Sloan School of Management is where smart, independent leaders come together to solve problems, create new organizations, and improve the world. Learn more at mitsloan.mit.edu.

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Technology companies testing anti-misinformation accuracy prompts developed by MIT research team - PRNewswire

The International Space Station (ISS) is not only the largest and most sophisticated orbiting research facility ever built, it is arguably the most important research facility we have. With its cutting-edge facilities and microgravity environment, the ISS is able to conduct lucrative experiments that are leading to advances in astrobiology, astronomy, medicine, biology, space weather and meteorology, and materials science.

Unfortunately, the cost of transporting experiments to and from the ISS is rather expensive and something only a handful of space agencies are currently able to do. To address this, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and Tiger Corporation partnered in 2018 to create a new type of container that would cut the cost of returning samples to Earth. With the success of their initial design, JAXA and Tiger are looking to create a reusable version that will allow for regular sample returns from the ISS.

Established in 1923, Tiger is an international corporation based in Osaka, Japan, that specializes in vacuum insulation and related technologies. This technology, which the company has used for decades to create insulated water bottles, also has applications for space exploration. In recent years, JAXA began investigating the technology to create storage containers that could keep experimental samples cool during their return to Earth.

In September 2018, JAXA launched the Kounotori 7 (HTV-7) mission, the seventh flight of the H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV). While transporting supplies to the ISS, JAXA decided to use this flight to validate a new method for transporting samples of protein crystals (which were part of a growth experiment conducted inside Japans Kibo Laboratory Module) back from the ISS.

This consisted of a special sample container (NPL-A100) co-developed by JAXA and Tiger that was placed inside the HTV Small Re-entry Capsule (HSRC). Since the re-entry capsule was too small to rely on an electrical cooling system, JAXA and Tiger needed a sample container that relied on passive insulation methods to keep its contents at stable temperatures.

In the end, they used the same technology Tiger relies on to create stainless steel thermal bottles to develop a double-walled, vacuum-insulated vessel that weighed about 9.7 kg (21.4 lb). As Keiji Nakai, who is the manager of the Product Development Group(3rd section) at Tiger explained to Universe Today via email, the container had to meet some very strict requirements:

The double-walled, vacuum container for this mission had to maintain the temperature inside the container at 4 C 2 C (39.2 F 3.6 F) over the course of four or more days and protect the containerfrom the enormous 40G impact when landing in the ocean upon returning to Earth.

A number of cold packs were also included in the capsule to ensure that the containers temperature remained stable. The mission was a success and represented a major milestone for JAXA, which previously did not have the option of independently recovering materials from the ISS. Like many space agencies taking part in the ISS, JAXA had been dependent on Roscosmos and NASA to provide transportation services.

The next step in the JAXA-Tiger collaboration involves the creation of a smaller, lighter, and more durable container that can keep samples stable at lower temperatures and for longer. But the most stringent requirement is that it must be durable enough to be used more than once. Said the representatives at Tiger, these and other specifications have gone into the design of the second generation NPS-A100 container:

We have reduced the weight of the container from 9.7 kg (21.4 lb) to nearly 3 kg (6.6 lb) while also making it more compact. With the addition of ice packs, it will maintain temperatures inside of 20 C 2 C (68 F 3.6 F) for at least twelve days, from the time the re-entry capsule leaves the ISS to when it lands back on Earth. We have also made the container more durable so it lasts at least three years or six missions.

The NPS-A100 is likely to be transported to the ISS as part of the CRS-22 commercial resupply mission that is scheduled for early June and will involve a SpaceX Crew Dragon transporting supplies and experiments to the ISS. Once again, the container technology will be used to return protein crystals that are part of ongoing biomedical research taking place in the Kibo Laboratory inside the ISSs Japanese Experiment Module (JEM).

This research is leading to advances in the field of medicine and the development of new cures and medicines. Beyond sample containers, the technology resulting from this collaboration also has numerous commercial and industrial applications. These include transportation solutions for medical samples and reagents that require storage under strict temperature conditions.

It could also lead to new applications for thermal management in electric and hybrid cars. But perhaps the most interesting application is in the development of next-generation building materials that could provide high levels of insulation in extreme environments such as Antarctica (where research stations need to conserve heat!) and even on the Moon and Mars!

The potential applications of our vacuum insulation technology are limitless, states Tiger on their website. This technology will support cutting-edge fields in every industry, helping them lead us towards a dynamic, exciting future.

Update: It has since been confirmed that the new vacuum container will be launched aboard a Crew Dragon spacecraft on June 3rd to the ISS, as part of the CRS-22 cargo resupply mission. The Tiger Corporation also plans to launch a new line of products for the US market, which is tentatively planned for September.

Further Reading: JAXA, Tiger Corporation

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JAXA Using Water Bottle Technology for Sample-Return Missions From the ISS - Universe Today

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Universal Electronics Inc. (UEI) (NASDAQ: UEIC), the global leader in wireless universal control solutions for home entertainment and smart home devices, announced that Chairman and CEO Paul Arling and CFO Bryan Hackworth are scheduled to attend the virtual Baird 2021 Global Consumer, Technology and Services Conference Wednesday, June 9 and Thursday, June 10, 2021.

Management will present at 2:35 PM ET on June 9 and will host one-on-one meetings on June 9 and 10. A copy of managements supporting material will be available at https://investors.uei.com/.

About Universal Electronics Inc.

Founded in 1986, Universal Electronics Inc. (NASDAQ: UEIC) is the global leader in wireless universal control solutions for home entertainment and smart home devices. We design, develop, manufacture, ship and support control and sensor technology solutions and a broad line of universal control systems, audio video accessories, and intelligent wireless security and smart home products. Our products and solutions are used by the worlds leading brands in the video services, consumer electronics, security, home automation, climate control and home appliance markets. For more information, visit http://www.uei.com.

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Universal Electronics Inc. to Present at the Baird 2021 Global Consumer, Technology and Services Conference - Business Wire