A Wrench That Goes with Any Nuts or Bolt

Nuts and bolts are one of the most traditional human tools but have never been fully standardized. Size and shape are different from one country to another. This fact requires households to have several sets of drivers but still cannot cover all possibilities. However, Gator Grip, inventor of Endeavor Tool Company, aims to replace all the drivers in your house. Its innovative shape fits almost any nut or bolt, and even other screw-like things.



Rather than jointing to a nut with a certain shape, it grabs a whole nut with collective thin metal bars. Its simple but innovative design will certainly be a great hit capturing customers; not only in households but in factories as well.

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The most personalized car in the world

The car of the future will be more personalized than ever before. Picking up the new trends in mobility like car sharing and the driverless car a group of students of the International MBA at IE in Madrid picked up the trends and designed the most personalized car in the world. The car is targeted at a new type of customer. A customer who values personalization, who wants to be expressive and is savvy with the concept of the shared economy.

The car makes the user the designer. It features a fully digital interior design that is changeble with the use of a mobile application. Interior designs can be downloaded from and shared on an online plattform. Whenever the user enters the car with the application, the car personalizes the interior of the vehicle to the user’s settings.  The customization includes saved automatic seat and mirror position adjustment to ensure secure driving, settings of the entertainment system and automatic updates of preferred radio stations, music from the cloud and user playlists from streaming services like Spotify. But above all the selection of interior design colors.

All special interior design elements like buttons, strips and other facings will be based on colored ePaper technology.  A similar technology like it is used in Amazon’s Kindle today on a black and white basis. The interior design elements are fully digital and therefore changeable in any desired color or pattern. The technology makes the car not only the most personalized car but also the most shareable car in the world. Shareable in the sense that designs can be published over the online platform, but also shareable in regards to sharing the car with family, friends or as part of car sharing ring. As the car adjusts to the user's settings all drivers have a truly unique experience tailored to their individual preferences.

With a car like this the options become infinite. Unfortunately that it only exists on paper so far, but we hope to see more of it in real life soon.

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ROBOTS ARE NOT JUST SEX TOYS!

Robot receptionists are now a reality at this Tokyo department store thanks to Toshiba - where "Aiko Chihira" (the Robot) through interactive systems engineering, deals with people who are interested in inquiring anything from where are the women's footwear, to can you please indicate where the nearest cash machine is.

The system uses technology developed by android pioneer Hiroshi Ishiguro, from the Osaka University of Intelligent Robotics Laboratory. Aiko it seems "interacts" with the customers by reading out programmed scripts, but soon will be getting upgrades in the languages she speaks.

I don't know what's more hilarious about the article, the fact that one of the "real" receptionists are giving an opinion about how the robot's smile is very stiff, (you go girl, protect your job post!) or the fact that the store manager believes that this is a better user friendly interaction for customers, vs using a touchscreen panel for general information! All the same, Judgement Day, here we come! 

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Augmented Reality - Try before you buy in new dimensions

The retail market is embracing digital technology and trying to further blend offline with online experience. New trends are changing the way we might shop in the future.

A women's dream comes true. Sephora is pioneering an augmented reality digital mirror. With real time 3D face recognition the software keeps track of the position of your head and adds your preferred eye shadow to your eye lids. You can move your head and lock at the result from various angles.

3D scanning is also the tool to find your perfect pair of jeans at a department store. By creating a full 3D model of the customer's body it is able to recommend the best fitting pants for your personal measures

The technologies combined were presented on a Toshiba show where you can take a full body scan and use it as a virtual fitting room.

As you can see from the videos the concepts are truly amazing. However, the executing of the augmented reality feels still somehow stiff and not fully tailored to your actual body proportions. However especially in online retailing I can see a large application of the technology. In the online business where about 20-40% of all purchases are returned there is a valid business case for the investment in technology that helps consumers find the right products in the right size.

The future looks bright, but it also is still a couple of years away.

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