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July 2, 2013

Intel Labs Looks Into the Future of Tech and Big Data

Alex Woodie

Intel Labs shared some of the innovative things it’s working on during an event held last week in San Francisco. Among the potential products the respected lab has cooking are intelligent headlights for cars, personalized shopping experiences for consumers, and sensors that automatically warn people about bad air quality.

Attendees of the 11th annual Research@Intel event last week were presented with 20 research projects from around the world. Each of the projects fell into one of four categories, including: “Enriching Lives,” “Intelligent Everything,” the “Data Society,” and “Tech Essentials.”

Building smarter headlights that can block out raindrops and snow is of particular interest to Intel CTO Justin Rattner, who demonstrated the new technology at last week’s event. The smarter headlight technology utilizes a camera that scans for raindrops or snowflakes, a computer processor, and a light projector. When a raindrop is detected by the camera, the processor predicts its path, and the projector then prevents light from shining on the raindrop, effectively blocking it out.

Rattner told the Research@Intel audience that its smart headlight technology has the potential to prevent up to 800,000 crashes, 200,000 injuries, and up to 3,000 fatalities per year, based on 2010 statistics. Intel is currently shopping the technology to major carmakers.

The new “shelf edge technology” that Intel Labs presented in the “Enriching Lives” demo looks especially promising. For example, if a person enters an auto parts store, the SET technology would alert the person to the fact that the air filter in his car needed replacing. If a person has peanut allergies, SET could warn of potentially dangerous products to avoid. Or if SET detects that a person is cooking salmon for dinner, the technology could recommend wine pairings.

Helping people to take advantage of big data to improve their lives is a major focus of Intel Labs. During the “Data Society” portion of the show, the group demonstrated the potential to combine public data, private data, and context-aware algorithms to present the most useful information to individuals. For example, if a person suffers from allergies, the technology could gather data from air quality sensors and help a person avoid especially bad spots during allergy season.

In the “Intelligent Everything” demo, Intel Labs also showed some potentially useful hacks that homeowners could do to improve their live. For example, a family could create a next-gen baby monitor by detecting contextual cues from a baby in a crib using a standard Web camera, and using it to send alerts to a baby alarm.

The group also demoed some technology during the “Tech Essentials” bit that helps a user protect their personal information by blocking malicious parties from accessing data recorded by cameras, microphones, and GPS locators embedded in mobile devices.

Some of technology demoed last week came out of Intel Labs, while others came out of supplemental research centers that Intel founded two years ago, including the seven Intel Science and Technology Centers (ISTCs) and six Intel Collaborative Research Institutes (ICRIs).

Rattner stepped down as CTO late last week after the Research@Intel event, in accordance with an Intel bylaws that block Intel employees from serving as corporate officers after the age of 65. Rattner is expected to come back to the company in a different capacity.

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