ROBOTICS

Cleaning House (and Everywhere Else, too)

There’s a Gilmore Girls episode that opens with the two main characters on the phone, watching their respective robot vacuums: 

LORELAI: “Is this more or less fun than watching the same TV show at the same time?” 

RORY: “I think more.” 

Fifteen years after that ep’s debut, cleaning bots of all shapes and sizes are still adding new features—and on the commercial side, COVID-19 has led to staggering growth since March. Talk about spring cleaning. 

Root, root, root for the homebots team 

Recently, iRobot unveiled its new “Genius Home Intelligence” platform, including new features that don’t… suck: 

• The ability to set voice command shortcuts (e.g., “Clean around the couch”) 
• If-this-then-that routines like cleaning after you leave (triggered by your home’s smart lock or thermostat) 

Caveat: In the first half of 2020, iRobot's shipments were down ~10% from last year. 

Commercial is king 

Commercial cleaning bots these days put Mr. Clean to shame, wielding everything from broad-spectrum ultraviolet light to disinfectant fog. 

Growth spurt: They’re gaining steam worldwide. The global market size for cleaning robots is projected to reach $6.2 billion in 2025, according to an analysis published in July—up from $2.5 billion in 2018. 

• Sales of Neo, Avidbots’ commercial floor-scrubbing bot, have roughly doubled each year since 2016—but in 2020, demand has spiked 100% between March and August alone, reports the NYT. 
• Brain Corp., which creates software to power commercial cleaning bots, told Fortune that usage of its bots increased by 24% year over year in April.
• UV-C light disinfection robots—initially developed to sanitize hospitals—are being used in new sectors, like food warehouses. Owing in part to COVID-19, the global market is projected to grow from $171.8 million in 2019 to $1.46 billion in 2027. 

Bottom line: It’s safe to say that between the office, the supermarket, and retail stores, we’ll soon cross paths with more of these bots. Expect new homebot updates to roll out in the coming months/years, too, as the consumer segment looks to replicate B2B growth. 

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FACIAL RECOGNITION

Faces and Places

Last week, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a report on U.S. airports’ use of facial recognition for identity verification.  

The assessment? 

...not good 

After auditing the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the GAO found facial recognition programs fell short in a few areas: 

• Performance tracking. Although the tech accurately identified over 90% of those exiting the U.S. by air, it didn’t consistently photograph all travelers—and there's no mechanism to alert officials when the tech misses minimum requirements. 
• Partner audits. CBP can conduct audits on all of its partners, but as of May, it had audited just one of more than 27 airlines. 
• Clear communication. U.S. citizens and eligible non-citizens can opt out of facial recognition, but CBP consistently failed to make that known. 

“The bottom line is that we found that CBP's privacy notices—which inform the public about its use of this technology—were not always current or available where this technology is being used or on CBP's website,” Chuck Young, the GAO’s managing director of public affairs, told me. 

For context: As of December 2019, facial recognition helped identify seven “impostors” out of 16 million passengers scanned, according to CBP officials. 

Zoom out: Facial recognition tech still has a lot of problems, including racial and gender biases. And the stakes of a false positive are very high.

GEOPOLITICS

A Conscious Uncoupling

Yesterday, China announced an international data security initiative, urging countries to develop one set of international rules to abide by. A few highlights: 

• Countries should “maintain an open, secure, and stable supply chain” of global tech products and services. 
• Governments should oppose mass surveillance through these products—and respect each other’s data “sovereignty.” 
• Tech companies shouldn’t install “backdoors” in their products to illegally collect user data or control devices. 

Rewind

China’s initiative comes after the Trump Administration announced its Clean Network program last month, which seeks to bar Chinese apps, telcos, cloud providers, and undersea cables in the name of data security. 

Burn, baby, burn: Although the initiative’s text doesn’t directly mention the U.S., Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi included a clear jab in his speech Tuesday. 

• “Bent on unilateral acts, a certain country keeps making groundless accusations against others in the name of ‘clean’ network and used security as a pretext to prey on enterprises of other countries who have a competitive edge,” said Wang, according to a transcript cited by the WSJ. “Such blatant acts of bullying must be opposed and rejected.” 

Big picture: Another week, another U.S.-China splinternet story. 

BITS & BYTES

Stat: With 13% of the global market, Samsung ranks in fourth place on 5G network sales, according to market research by Dell’oro Group and cited by the WSJ. Still, Samsung beat out its rivals in a $6.7 billion deal to provide 5G networking equipment to Verizon. 

Quote: “It is our goal for Samsung’s 5G technology market share to exceed 20% by 2021 and to become one of the top three global network equipment suppliers within the next five years.” —Youngky Kim, president of Samsung’s networks business, in February 2018. Looks like the company’s got a lasso around that pie in the sky. 

Read: Bloomberg breaks down the deal in the context of Huawei’s struggles. 

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WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• Apple will seek damages against Epic for its alleged breach of contract. 
• General Motors will engineer and manufacture the Nikola Badger, the electric vehicle company’s marquee pickup truck, as part of a new strategic partnership. 
• In the wake of Amazon’s protests, the Pentagon is standing by its $10 billion decision to award Microsoft the JEDI cloud contract. 
• With the goal of all-electric by 2040, Uber will incentivize drivers to switch to electric vehicles by offering them $0.50 to $1.50 more per ride. 
• Google partnered with the National Science Foundation to form a research institute focused on human-AI interaction.
• The Trump Administration may place export restrictions on SMIC, China’s leading semiconductor manufacturer.

TRIVIA

For Labor Day, Emerging Tech Brew ran a special issue on tech and labor. Over the past couple of years, tech workers of all kinds have leaned further into organizing. Let’s see how much you remember. 

Take the quiz here.

TECH THINGAMABOBS

For your perennially late friend: Researchers at DeepMind worked with the Google Maps team to improve ETAs in high-traffic cities worldwide. Thanks to graph neural networks (one type of ML architecture), accuracy improved by 21% in NYC, 37% in Osaka, and 51% in Taichung City. Check out DeepMind’s graph for more cities. 

For an escape: NASA released a new image collection spotlighting galaxies, planetary nebulas, stars, and supernova remnants, primarily captured via the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Since you may not be hopping on a plane anytime soon, get an interstellar travel fix.

ICYMI

Catch up on the top Emerging Tech Brew stories from the past few editions: 

• How Tech Workers Adapted to Activism From Home 
• QuantumScape Will Go Public at $3.3 Billion Valuation
• FAA Gives Amazon Air Carrier Certification