{"id":55098,"date":"2012-08-27T09:01:00","date_gmt":"2012-08-27T16:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/customerthink.com\/seven_profitable_opportunities_for_sensors_that_could_reshape_our_world\/"},"modified":"2012-08-27T09:01:00","modified_gmt":"2012-08-27T16:01:00","slug":"seven_profitable_opportunities_for_sensors_that_could_reshape_our_world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/seven_profitable_opportunities_for_sensors_that_could_reshape_our_world\/","title":{"rendered":"Seven profitable opportunities for sensors that could reshape our world"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"excerpt\"><strong>Sensors can make your house more efficient, cars safer, ads smarters, and they&#8217;ll make the next generation of entrepreneurs a tidy profit in the process.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Soon, there will be more sensors in the world than all the phones and computers combined. But there&#8217;s a problem: Many of the people who know sensors aren&#8217;t entrepreneurial (they&#8217;re engineers), and most of the people who are entrepreneurial haven&#8217;t yet realized the huge extent to which sensors will change the world.<\/p>\n<p>Translation: This may be <em>your<\/em> big opportunity.<\/p>\n<p>To illustrate what sensors can do, Michael Hinshaw and I included this intentionally very long paragraph in our recent book:<\/p>\n<p>Today, digital sensors can:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>monitor your tire pressure and avoid dangerous blowouts;<\/li>\n<li>analyze the gait of elderly citizens and warn of falls before they occur;<\/li>\n<li>follow the gaze of shoppers and identify which products they examine &ndash; but don&#8217;t buy &ndash; in a store;<\/li>\n<li>monitor which pages readers of a magazine read or skip;<\/li>\n<li>float in the air over a factory and independently monitor the plant&#8217;s emissions;<\/li>\n<li>detect impacts in the helmet of an athlete and make it impossible for them to hide potential serious blows to their brains;<\/li>\n<li>reveal when a dishwasher, refrigerator, computer, bridge, or dam is about to fail;<\/li>\n<li>trigger a different promotion as a new customer walks by a message board;<\/li>\n<li>analyze the duration and quality of your sleep;<\/li>\n<li>warn drivers that they are about to fall asleep;<\/li>\n<li>prevent intoxicated drivers from operating a motor vehicle;<\/li>\n<li>warn a person before he or she has a heart attack;<\/li>\n<li>detect wasted energy in both homes and commercial buildings;<\/li>\n<li>warn a parent or boss when anger is creeping into their voice, to help prevent them from saying or doing things they will later regret;<\/li>\n<li>tell waiting customers how far away the pizza delivery guy is from their house;<\/li>\n<li>analyze the movements of employees through a factory to detect wasted time and efforts;<\/li>\n<li>trigger product demonstrations or interactive manuals when a customer picks up or examines a product;<\/li>\n<li>congratulate an athlete when she swings a tennis racquet properly or achieves an efficient stride while running.&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;The big question is: What will you do with them tomorrow? Here are seven ways you can personally profit from sensors:<\/p>\n<p>1.) <strong>Add sensors to any dumb object, and give it the ability to act intelligently.<\/strong> Without a sensor, when the water filter in your refrigerator gets too old, you keep using it anyway. Add a sensor, and your refrigerator tells you to stop using it. Find something that bugs people with its stupidity, and make it smart.<\/p>\n<p>2.) <strong>Learn to program a robot.<\/strong> Robots are moving collections of sensors, and some of the wisest folks among us are learning how to program the software that controls robots. This video from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aldebaran-robotics.com\/en\/Discover-NAO\/videos-gallery.html\">Aldebaran<\/a> highlights the talents of an incredibly versatile robot with facial- and speech-recognition capabilities.<\/p>\n<p><a rel=\"post\" href=\"http:\/\/cdn4.digitaltrends.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/electricfoxy-move.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-371871\" src=\"http:\/\/cdn4.digitaltrends.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/electricfoxy-move.jpg\" alt=\"electricfoxy move wearable sensor clothing\" width=\"550\"\/><\/a><br \/>\n<br clear=\"all\"\/><br \/>\n3.) <strong>Help people improve their athletic performance with sensors.<\/strong> The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.electricfoxy.com\/move\/\">Move<\/a> project at ElectricFoxy is studying ways to do this, and over at <a href=\"http:\/\/senseofthefuture.com\/\">Sense of the Future<\/a> we have identified over 200 health and fitness apps that use sensors.<\/p>\n<p>4.) <strong>Make computers &ndash; and everything else &ndash; simpler to use.<\/strong> One way might be by incorporating gestural interfaces, like what <a href=\"http:\/\/primesense.com\/\">Prime Sense<\/a> is developing. We are getting very close to the day when our technology becomes so advanced that it disappears. Personally, I can&#8217;t wait to throw away all our remote controls.<\/p>\n<p>5.) <strong>Build a new business around sensors.<\/strong> My friend likes to windsurf, so he uses a sensor on the buoy outside his favorite harbor to show him when the winds top 20 mph. He does this via a service called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iwindsurf.com\/\">iWindsurf<\/a>, which is basically a collection of sensors placed along the coastline. Where could you place sensors to deliver a valuable new service to a group of people with a strong interest? For example, I&#8217;d pay $5 to get a video of my son scoring a soccer goal, so someone might want to mount sensors and a camera in the crossbar of soccer goals and sell the videos to parents.<\/p>\n<p>6.) <strong>Increase safety with sensors.<\/strong> Without a sensor, your car will run over the tricycle your son left behind your real wheel. With a sensor, your car will warn you not to back up. How can you use sensors to make the world safer, or at least your corner of it?<\/p>\n<p><a rel=\"post\" href=\"http:\/\/cdn3.digitaltrends.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/emotive-neuroheadset.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-371869\" src=\"http:\/\/cdn3.digitaltrends.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/emotive-neuroheadset.jpg\" alt=\"emotiv neuroheadset brain control sensors\"  width=\"550\"\/><\/a><br \/>\n<br clear=\"all\"\/><br \/>\n7.) <strong>Use your brain (better).<\/strong> Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) are sensors for your brain. Right now they are mainly used in research labs, but a few companies like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.emotiv.com\/\">Emotiv<\/a> have headsets you can buy today, and more are on the way. There are lots of overblown claims what these devices can do &mdash; most still require dorky, greasy caps &mdash; but anything that helps train your brain is a good thing.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve just scratched the surface. For the next few days, imagine that everywhere you go everything has a sensor inside it. What would you want it to tell you, and when? Even better, what entrepreneurial opportunity can you create? There are millions of possibilities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sensors can make your house more efficient, cars safer, ads smarters, and they&#8217;ll make the next generation of entrepreneurs a tidy profit in the process. Soon, there will be more sensors in the world than all the phones and computers combined. But there&#8217;s a problem: Many of the people who know sensors aren&#8217;t entrepreneurial (they&#8217;re [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7235,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[128,91,84,36],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55098"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7235"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55098"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55098\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}