Operational strategy of Google with Google Glass is exceptionally brilliant as well as unique. As estimated by experts, although Glass will take a while to shape up to emerge as the next generation ‘iPad’, the company is aware that connected eye gear and eye wear hold tremendous potential for ushering in a new age of wearable computing to be able to control household devices. In other words, Google Glass takes home automation to the next level. Google Glass was being chiefly employed for outdoor applications. But now with intelligent integration, many devices in a home can be automated and used on voice commands via the Google Glass technology. The applications of Google Glass use the automated system of a home and offers full control of it. This software can connect to a smartphone, and binds all current technologies to permit end users to unlock the door, turn light on and off, turn on/off the heating, etc.
The device is equipped with a hands-free camera for shooting videos and photos by means of voice commands. The drawback of the device is its limited battery life. In this context, Google glass could be less efficient if the whole house is controlled over a long period of time. Furthermore, the speaker of the device, which is based on the bone conduction technology, lacks the requisite qualities. A user may face difficulties and hearing issues if the speaker, transmitting sound via the skull for letting in ambient noise, is used in any environment expect for a quiet room.
Google’s smart headset allows its wearers to control all household devices. By looking at a connected device like a smart lock displays an operating menu on the Google Glass display. For home automation, Google Glass is able to free data from personal computers and portable devices and allows the wearer to take charge of different equipments.
According to the review presented by the team at Revolv, a firm specializing in home automation, the ‘glass’ also allows its users to play songs via Sonos, lock and unlock doors, just with some gestures, few swipes and voice commands; so much that the colour of the Philips Hue lights can also be changed through the application. As a matter of fact, theoretically, it is possible to expand the existing scope of use; it must be considered as an initial level of Google Glass’s potential and efficiency within a field that had been less focussed on (Khan, 2013).
Another most important feature of Google Glass for home automation is its ability to video conference with friends and family members and it lets the wearer share what they are seeing. With this technology, iphone and ipad users can access and control entertainment systems, automated locking systems, wireless lighting, and thermostats.
With display technology Google Glass puts data and information at the wearer’s vision courtesy of a prism screen. There is no requirement for a viewfinder in Google Glass’s in-built camera since it records the first-person perspective letting the wearer take photos or videos of what they are seeing in reality.
Another technology being developed by the technology giant is Driverless Cars. The Google driverless car is like any other car but it can steer itself while looking out for obstacles. The car has automatic acceleration feature to reach the correct speed limit. Based on any traffic rule, the car can decelerate, stop and go automatically. Passengers can rely on this fully automated car to reach desired destination, in a safe, legal and comfortable manner (Mission Critical, 2013).
The Google driverless arrangement gathers data from Google Street View by means of AI software to combine inputs from embedded video cameras, a LIDAR (light detection and ranging) sensor placed prominently atop of the car, radar sensors positioned at the front, and a position sensor installed on a rear wheel for locating the vehicle’s exact position. The development is underway and is efficiently devised as a replication of human drivers’ capabilities – such as viewing, sensing and detecting road conditions and other vehicles around, pedestrians – whilst substantially reducing or eliminating completely the issues of accidents due to human error and misjudgement. Simply put, even though Google driverless car can be considered as a turbulent technology in a way that it eventually gets rid of one of the backbones of the auto-mobility system (ie the licensed, legally responsible driver linking the car to the road and traffic management infrastructure), it is still a state-of-the-art product whose productivity graph elevates to great heights with potential for steady evolution and convergence of several modern technologies.
The car’s software effectively integrates Google Maps with several forms of hardware sensors as well as artificial intelligence software. With Google Maps, the vehicle is able to obtain road information, hardware sensors allows for real time environmental conditions, and artificial intelligence will enable the car to take real time decisions. The GPS system of the car interacts with Google Maps which acts like a database of information. Through GPS and Google Maps, the car is able to maintain speed limits, get notifications on upcoming intersections and turns, receive traffic reports, directions and notifications of nearby collisions. Consulting Google Maps also helps in receiving advance notifications of things such as lights, traffic signs, etc (Mission Critical, 2013).
As aforementioned, Google driverless cars are heavily based on LIDAR which is an optical remote sensing technology which is used for measuring the distance to, or other properties of a target by illuminating the target with light, usually using pulses from a laser.
With video cameras equipped within the car, the AI software is connected to all the sensors of the car ready to receive input from Google Street View. Further in this direction, the artificial intelligence is responsible for stimulating processes for human perception and decision-making in order for controlling action in driver-control systems like braking and steering wheel control.
As far as green and clean energy is concerned, the team at Google is striving hard to power the company with 100% renewable energy and power. The firm sees renewable energy as a major business opportunity and continues to make investments in speeding up its development. As much as 34% of Google’s operations are powered by renewable energy, with introduction of newer strategies to raise the use of clean energy. These strategies include establishing new technologies at their offices and purchasing green power around data centres.
The technology giant conducted tests on new renewable energy technologies based on a few criteria such as: clean energy should be productive and make good business sense, be likely to have a long-term substantial impact and shape the industry. having said that, Google, Inc, set up the most prominent corporate solar panel facility —1.7 MW—at their Mountain View campus. The company’s system size has expanded to 1.9 MW generating sufficient power to supply for 30 percent of the major load of the buildings on which it is based. A whopping $1 billion has been allotted to different renewable power projects.
Google has earned its recognition for its dedication to utilizing and investments in renewable energy, and for mitigating their overall effect of environment. The company proudly support and collaborates across the technology industry. Google also showed its commitment towards attaining clean energy by being the co-founder of two global groups that strive towards greater efficiency and sustainability measures called the Climate Savers Computing Initiative and then became an active participant in The Green Grid. By proclaiming their vision of a green energy future, Google proposes Clean Energy 2030 according to which the company suggests to reduce the power production based on fossil fuel, transportation oil consumption, electrical sector carbon emission, foreign oil imports, personal vehicle sector carbon emission, and total US carbon emission by 88%, 38%, 95 %, 35%, 38%, and 48% respectively (McDermott, 2008).
At present, a small percent of global power is generated from renewable sources such as solar and wind. Google attempts to change that with purchases made on renewable energy from in-house utility providers as well as wind farms located near their data centres. Clean energy is generated and stored at reasonable costs, with money being transferred to green farm owners who then finance and develop their new clean energy installations.
For Google, contributing to a clean energy future means making investments in advanced, ground-breaking, large-scale power projects. Till date, by investments done worth $1 billion for building wind and solar power plants, Google attempts to build a better future for coming generations whilst yielding lucrative financial returns.
The company also makes electrifying of transportation and re-invention of electric grid possible. A "smart grid" enables one to charge when power is costing less, and the user can sell off unused electricity back to the grid. Furthermore, plug-in cars are emerging as winners in this market with Toyota, General Electric, and other leading manufacturers introducing new cars every year. Google’s RechargeIT program is already up and running with a fully operational fleet of Toyota Prius and Ford Escape plug-in conversions. The converted Prius plug-ins and the Escape receive more than 90 MPG and 50 MPGm respectively. Nonetheless, in order for successfully putting thousands of converted cars on the road with a regular supply of green electricity, the company has felt the need for a smart grid which does the overall management when the cars are charged and how the company is billed. With smart grid, users can get a two-way flow of power, and there is potential for large-scale integration of sporadic wind and solar energy. Google’s version of renewable energy technology in its present electrical grid was implemented in 1960 and is inefficient and wasteful. By building clever partnerships with GE, Google will look forward to speeding up the smart grid development and support constructing advanced transmission lines in order to harness a broad renewable energy resource.
Another technology underway is Google Smart Thermostat. Users of Google Glass are now considering a Nest thermostat to be installed in their houses. Boasted as being the “next generation” technology, the Next thermostat can be controlled via a smartphone as well as the device promises to reduce the household electricity bills and heating and cooling bills by up to 20 %. Further in this direction, this state-of-the-art thermostat is now embedded with a Google Glass application termed as the Glass Nest. Through Glass Nest, users are enabled to monitor and control their thermostat by saying phrases and voice commands. Even though there are various in-built commands, they all ultimately lead to three main functionalities which are: temperature adjustment, setting the thermostat to ‘away’ mode, and setting the thermostat back from ‘away’ to ‘normal’ mode. A few examples include commanding “temperature to [degrees]” or “away status to true” to set away mode, and “away status to false” for taking the thermostat out of away mode (Kaiser, 2011).
Users who prefer using less technical or informal commands and a bit more realistic commands in terms of the way they talk usually, they can simply say “I’m home” if they want to get out of away mode. However, at present the Glass Nest application is rejecting any new users trying to register or use the application. As soon as this issue is solved and the app starts accepting new users, they need to follow the following steps: new users will be required to login and enter their Google credentials, after which they must enter their Nest thermostat credentials. After this step, the user will receive a Glass Nest card within their Google Glass timeline.
Nest eases navigation and is user-friendly since it is equipped with a circular screen along with a dial-based interface which is easy to understand and use. The application displays the present temperature of the zone it is in, and time taken to arrive at a desired temperature so that the homeowner does not continuously do manual settings for reaching that temperature sooner and end up over-correcting.
Another effective feature of Nest thermostat is the inclusion of two types of proximity sensors. One sensor does the job of activating the screen when the user nears it, thereby saving internal battery, increasing battery life when the user is not in front of the device. Second sensor studies and determines the user’s occasional presence in the room; this allows it to notice when they are away or in the room. With automatic adjustments of appropriate settings when a user is away, the Nest thermostat can save substantial amount of energy. With changes settings for a few degrees for energy savings, a glowing leaf id displayed.
Commonly known as a learning thermostat, Nest can automatically learn about its users’ schedules and timings via the users’ actions. For example, if a user has a regular work schedule of leaving home at 9 a.m. and returning at 5 p.m., Nest thermostat will adopt this pattern and accordingly set the appropriate temperature reading. When a user changes the heat or air conditioning settings, the device will focus on what is preferred by the user. Nest takes only a week to adopt and learn about the homeowner’s regular patterns and starts to make settings automatically for him (Kaiser, 2011).
iPad, iPhone, and Android users can also control the device with Nest’s built-in Wi-Fi, by means of their mobile phones with Nest learning these actions and making appropriate settings.
Google has also made its name in the biotechnology field with heavy investments made in Foundation Medicine, Inc (FMI) to treat cancer patients. FMI aims at changing the way cancer patients are cured and used effective algorithms and techniques to analyze tumour tissue samples in all types of cancer. It also diagnoses and treats cancer patients with brief reporting capabilities and aggregating patient-related information. FMI’s modern products offer genomic data and details on every patient’s individual cancer, thereby allowing doctors to provide quality and improved treatments in healthcare practice and letting biopharmaceutical firms to formulate targeted oncology therapies. FMI’s first clinical product, FoundationOne, “the only commercially available comprehensive molecular information product designed for use in the routine care of patients with cancer” (Seiler, 2013)
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Additionally, FMI produces FoundationOne test kits for physicians to suggest proper treatment options for patients as per their genetic profile.
Personalized medicine has evolved as the next generation technique for treating cancer patients. It directly targets and treats the type of cancer rather than focussing on the organ where the tumour lies. It allows for genetic testing for predicting patients' susceptibility to diseases and identifying particular medicines for each patient. With the help of Google Ventures and Google, Foundation Medicine has been successfully innovating their lab reports. FMI feels that Google has been playing a pivotal role as a lead investor in the evolution of Foundation Medicine. Google has given access to quality resources and necessary expertise within their companies, or their list of affiliated companies, so that FMI can be assisted anywhere on a given issue.
Moreover, it is a well known fact that Google takes monumental amounts of information and distils it down in an effective and user-friendly manner. In addition, the actual report received by the doctor can be many pages long, but on the first page itself all the data is distilled for making the report usable. A physician can review the primary genomic changes seen in a patient’s cancer within 30 flat seconds. Then, the related therapies are displayed as per the detected genomic alterations, in case there are FDA approved therapies associated with those alterations in various states of diseases, along with a wide variety of clinical trials applicable to those alterations so as to enrol a patient in a proper clinical trial.
The Google financed Foundation Medicine trial is said to be the most complete clinical-grade test for solid tumours that covers thousands of genes with just a minor sample of nucleic acid, thereby detecting numerous markers with 99% sensitivity and particularity. Experts call this a sea change, which provides an opportunity for medical specialists to have a rationale for therapy which was non-existent earlier instead of disregarding chemotherapy.
Foundation Medicine can be described in other words as a molecular information company aimed at fundamentally altering the way cancer patients are treated. The company’s molecular information platform produces actionable genomic data regarding a patient’s individual cancer. This allows oncologists and doctors to optimize interventions in clinical/medical practice and to enable biopharmaceutical firms to establish targeted oncology therapies efficiently. As discussed previously, the Company’s first clinical product, “FoundationOne, is the first commercially available comprehensive molecular information product designed for use in the routine care of patients with cancer” (Coxeter, 2012).
References:
Coxeter, R., (2012). Startup Chief: Big Data May Yield Cancer Breakthroughs. Retrieved from
http://www.cnbc.com/id/49261493
Kaiser, T., (2011). Former Apple, Google Engineers Develop Nest Learning Thermostat. Retrieved
Khan, V., (2013). Revolv Uses Google Glass For Integration Into Home Automation
Systems. Retrieved from http://www.hashslush.com/revolve-uses-the-google-glass-for-integration-into-home-automation-systems/
McDermott, M., (2008). Clean Energy 2030: Google's Green Energy Future Revealed -- It'll Save U.S.
$1 Trillion. Retrieved from http://www.treehugger.com/renewable-energy/clean-energy-2030-googleatms-green-energy-future-revealed-itatmll-save-us-1-trillion.html
Mission Critical., (2013). ‘Driverless Vehicles Make Inroads in Military’. 3 (2). Retrieved from
http://velodynelidar.com/lidar/hdlpressroom/Mission_Critical_DC_2013-05.pdf
Seiler, G., (2013). Keeping tabs on Genomics. Retrieved from http://www.moneyshow.com/investing/article/1/tptp072513-32896/Keeping-Tabs-on-Genomics/
