IoT, Autonomous Vehicles, Robots: Safety Will Determine Success

The current climate of non-stop cyberattacks seems remote to our everyday existence because it doesn’t affect us physically. A hacker can hold data hostage and hit a company for thousands of dollars in ransom without anyone blinking an eye. Although this hurts bank accounts, it reinforces the reality that money doesn’t have anything physical backing it. The digital world of big data and money continues on, apologies are made, sometimes salaries suffer, sometimes an IT guy loses his job ”but no one gets hurt.

This won’t be the case with the IoT and autonomous vehicles. By nature, these advancements will have a profound effect ”for bad or for good ”on our physical well-being.

IoT Looks Primed for Safety  

The internet of things will play a big role in the transportation sector, a sector where safety and efficiency can use a boost. Sensors and cameras enable more knowledge, while the net enables better communication. There are multiple ways in which the IoT could affect transportation tech:

• Sensors in seat belts and seats can tell whether a driver is drunk and relay that information to the vehicle so that it won’t start
• Like rearview cameras in cars, sensors can relay information to drivers and cars to help prevent accidents
• Smart cars can override potentially harmful driver decisions
• Sensors can collect data in cities to determine where city officials can optimize infrastructure to promote safety

Also, although it sounds ominous, the IoT could allow law enforcement to improve traffic monitoring. Already there are cameras mounted on lights in some high-traffic intersections. But how many times have you been driving as safely as you can, obeying the law, only to watch another driver blatantly break the law and get away with it? Sensors could help cops bust people who drive dangerously.

While the IoT could improve transportation safety, it could also help in the home. The University of Southern California points out that smart homes help with gerontology: A smart refrigerator could sense when there is not enough food and order items from a local grocery store or supermarket. An app connected to a door lock system could make it easy for an elderly person to let in a family member or trusted caregiver without having to get up and open the door. These innovations already exist. Smart refrigerators are available from LG and Samsung, and smart door locks are available from a lot of companies, including Kwikset, Lockitron, and Schlage.

More interesting is USC’s discussion of robotic care , including IBM‘s MERA.

Robots and Autonomous Vehicles

A robot like IBM’s MERA (Multi-Purpose Eldercare Robot Assistant) will use sensors and AI to maximize safety for the elderly in their homes and for anyone who needs an in-home assistant.

According to IBM’s Kevin Nowka, director of research, the sensors allow MERA to scan and read heart rate, heart rate variability, and breathing rate. It can also see when someone has fallen and can’t get up, thanks to visual recognition tech from Rice University. Through IBM’s Watson and IBM’s cloud, it uses cognitive tech to field health-related questions. Most importantly, if you fall and can’t get up, it helps you up. MERA can also interact with a smart home.

Much like autonomous cars could replace drivers, so could robots like MERA replace human assistants. A human assistant might not know the answer to a health-related question, but MERA can simply search a cloud database. A human assistant who hasn’t been properly vetted could become cruel with their assistee, but a robot is incapable of cruelty. Right?

Proponents are touting another kind of robot, the autonomous car, as the solution to the problem of human inconsistency and volatility. An autonomous car can’t have road rage or drive drunk. But humans are still in the picture.

Autonomous trucks are on the horizon, and skeptics and realists are asking if self-driving trucks will be vulnerable to hacking. Elon Musk has suggested that drivers could have an override authority in case of a hack, but the lawyers Nelson, MacNeil and Rayfield bring up the very good point that the override feature still requires someone to be inside the vehicle paying close attention to make sure nothing’s going wrong.

An autonomous truck may increase safety on the road because AI can’t fall asleep behind the wheel, but having to staff a trucker in the vehicle would increase costs for trucking companies. They’ll already be paying for an insanely expensive truck, yet staffing expenses would not go down. And what if a hacker figures out how to override the driver override?

The same issue arises with in-home care robots. If the robot is connected to the cloud, that’s an entryway for hackers. Sounds like a B-horror movie, but imagine a hacker taking control of a robot and instructing it to do harm. In that case, I guess the hacker would be a slasher hacker. More likely, the hacker would just have the robot loot the house.

Likewise, the IoT isn’t safe, because all devices in a smart home don’t meet security criteria. There are too many disparate devices from various manufacturers, too many entry points for hackers, and not enough regulations.

In the end, the answer may come from AI smart enough to act as a security program, not just an operating system. Yet there is always a backdoor in security programs because they’re human-made. You can see where this is going. In a cyber world where humans insert uncertainty, there is always a weak link.