Locust-Shaped, 3D-Printed Robot Can Traverse Rocky Terrain, Assist In Search And Rescue

In recent years, advanced robotic platforms have provided assistance to crisis intervention teams in the wake of man-made and natural disasters. The objective of such robots, in various sizes and shapes, has been to intervene where humans cannot and send life-saving data to rescue teams in the field
By NoCamels Team

Now, a miniature robot is poised to make a major contribution to the field of advanced robotics. The new locust-inspired robot, developed in Israel by researchers from Tel Aviv University and Ort Braude College, is five inches long and weighs less than one ounce. It can jump 11 feet high — more than twice the height of similar-sized robots, according to the researchers — and cover a horizontal

distance of 4.5 feet in one leap. The researchers believe the robot will perform well in search-and-rescue missions and in reconnaissance operations in rough terrain.

Inspired by nature
“Our locust-inspired, miniature jumping robot is a beautiful example of bio-inspired technological innovation,” TAU’s Prof. Amir Ayali, who led the research, said in a statement. “Miniature robots are of special interest in the robotics field, attracting a lot of attention and research. The manufacture of tiny robots is cheap and efficient; their small size allows them to traverse difficult and unknown terrain; and many can be used in any given situation.”

SecurePush: Plataforma digital de validação de identidade

Confirmação e validação de identidade dos clientes é uma preocupação, e às vezes um problema, de segurança que empresas, como aquelas do setor bancário, passam diariamente. Atualmente, as organizações têm que recorrer a confirmações manuais de dados do cliente, um método já ultrapassado que não somente toma tempo como corre risco de fraude. Portanto, com o objetivo de modernizar e melhorar esse processo, foi criada a SecurePush, uma plataforma digital que utiliza smartphones, tablets ou smartwatches para uma identificação e autenticação robusta de maneira confiável.

Usando a tecnologia SPAuth, suportada por iOS, Android e Windows Phone, a SecurePush é uma solução de segurança para contato entre empresa e cliente, bem como para compras e outros pagamentos. Através de um app, a SecurePush confirma a identidade de um cliente em poucos segundos. Dessa maneira, não somente empresa e cliente economizam tempo a partir de uma técnica segura, como a experiência do consumidor melhora consideravelmente.

Conheça mais sobre essa inovadora plataforma lendo as sessões a seguir. 

Como a plataforma funciona?
O cliente, ou mesmo um fornecedor, deve ter instalado em seu aparelho o app da SecurePush. Quando for feito o primeiro contato com a empresa, é criado um link único que garantirá a comunicação entre companhia e consumidor. Em novos contatos, a plataforma é acionada e o cliente valida sua identidade com um simples toque em seu aparelho, ou mesmo poridentificação biométrica ou reconhecimento facial, caso seja necessário. 

Como ocorre a solicitação de validação?
Contato empresa-cliente: A organização pode fazer a solicitação de validação, enviando uma notificação ao aparelho do cliente, que rapidamente confirmará sua identidade.

Contato cliente-empresa: Quando for, por exemplo, ligar para uma companhia, o cliente pode poupar tempo validando sua identidade pela SecurePush antes mesmo de falar com um atendente, fazendo com que o atendimento seja mais direto ao ponto. 

Quem pode se beneficiar da plataforma?
Call Center: Um dos objetivos da SecurePush é justamente melhorar a experiência do cliente e reduzir os tempos médios de atendimento. Portanto, a plataforma proporciona às empresas que trabalham com call center uma redução imediata das despesas operacionais (OPEX). Por exemplo, um call center de tamanho médio lida com cerca de 60.000 chamadas recebidas diariamente; se a SecurePush economiza apenas 1 minuto por chamada (tempo médio de identificação), ele economiza cerca de 1.000 horas por dia!

Setor de Educação: A plataforma de envio seguro fornece às instituições de ensino segurança na identificação de alunos, corpo docente e administrativo, fornecedores e outros usuários.

Setor Financeiro: Bancos e outras empresas do setor prestam vários serviços que requerem identificação, e a SecurePush garante a segurança que os usuários precisam.

Setor da Saúde: Servindo milhares e milhões de clientes com múltiplos canais de atendimento, empresas do setor podem usar a plataforma de envio seguro para autenticar pacientes, pessoal, fornecedores e outros usuários.

Setor de Seguros: Seguradoras e, também, agentes de seguro terão a possibilidade de fazer uso da plataforma digital em operações com clientes e prestadores de serviço.

Para mais informações, agende uma visita com a FLAR Consulting

An introduction to dynamic pricing for E-commerce

Introduction

Dynamic pricing is a price-setting approach relying on data analysis and flexibility. It allows to shape and control price changes on the fly, depending on customer’s previous interactions with the website and his general profile. Items like past searches and purchases, location, time and date of previous searches and purchases are taken into account to generate a personalized offer.

Dynamic pricing has been around for nearly 15 years when retailers like Amazon started testing this. So, this isn’t a new practice but each year that technology advances, so does the way we use dynamic pricing. As a business owner, the opportunities for delivering more relevant propositions have improved.

From search history to previous purchases, customer location to general tastes, it allows a business owner to personalize its offer on a user per user basis.

This is not only useful for the company (as personalized offers are more likely to lead to sales); but also for the customer as many potential cross sells based on his/her interests are uncovered. However, the amount of information used for personalization can seem daunting at first – where to start? What can be collected? How can it be used to make sure it doesn’t invade user privacy?

It generally starts with a cookie, those tiny text files a website drops on your machine each time you visit a website. There are ways to limit cookie usage/tracking (and the European Commission has recently brought the matter to a vote), but everyday users are generally unaware of how far this goes.

Advertising like Dynamic Pricing and re-purpose advertising are targeting customers with impressive accuracy these days and the customers themselves are likely unaware of what is happening.

With the advent of big data, the total number of information any business possesses and is able to analyze has dramatically increased. Simply put, the more users and interaction with your website that occurs; the more data that is available for collection and analysis.

Business Intelligence tools are nowadays more and more sophisticated; predictive analysis is becoming the norm rather than the exception. So the question becomes: 

How can you use information on your customers and prospects to personalize your offer – and make it stand out? Is dynamic pricing the way to go? 

· Dynamic pricing is an old practice

As early as 2000, Amazon was experimenting with dynamic pricing: users were seeing a different price for the same item after having deleted their browser cookies. This was mostly used for loyalty purposes; existing customers were recognized and offered a better deal. The result, a feeling of being ‘special’ and an increased loyalty to the business.

· Dynamic pricing can lead to stronger and quicker sales.

In the early 2000s, it became the norm, notably on airline websites. Customers with a very specific intent (a plane ticket between 2 cities on a specific date) were identified during their price hopping and this led to increased fare on their next visit.

The user, while this was not specifically the case, sensed an urge to book as an increased fee could mean there were fewer available seats. The sales process is complete and the margin is better.

· Dynamic pricing is based on segmentation

The most important aspect of dynamic pricing is segmentation; you must understand your user’s base and know what they are interested in and which price they are ready to pay.   The more segmented the better, as it allows you for further control and further personalization.

· Dynamic pricing can lead to a better margin

If and when your customer base has been properly segmented and analyzed, specific demographics can be applied, notably in term of median household income.   Asking prospects to enter their postcode (either when creating an account or during the sales process) can lead to identifying which suburbs are financially healthier and this can lead to a slightly different price, increasing your margin.

· Dynamic pricing offers ways to beat competition

A business might compete nationally with other national businesses and at the same time with local retailers who can be more aggressive on prices. Again, when asking customers to enter their postcode, it allows you to align your prices on the competition, should this be your business model of course.

· Dynamic pricing can be applied on patches

As a company, you do not have to apply dynamic pricing on your entire catalog. You can however decide to run experiments and see what difference it can make.   in the 2012 London Olympic Committee applied this strategy to maximize profits from the ticket sales. The same tactic was also applied by numerous Major League Baseball clubs on a few thousands of their stadium seats, with increased revenue of half a million dollars. It might or might not work for you; start by running a test and see the final numbers.

· Dynamic pricing heavily relies on data analysis

Even at a smaller level, a free tool like Google Analytics can in its latest developments offer a professional level of data analysis to help you make sound pricing decisions.   Use the Channel Contribution mode to figure out which marketing funnel initiated or brought the most sales; align customer behavior data with your own CRM to identify visitors; run multivariate tests; track cross-platform visits under the new Universal Analytics model… The sky is the limit.

· Dynamic pricing is widely accepted

Users have become familiar with ever evolving prices online, even on the same website and even during the same browsing session. They have accepted the fact that they will not pay the same price than the person sitting on the next seat in their flight. Customers have been shopping around; using price comparison websites and sometimes different browsers/platforms to get a feel of what would be the lowest price for an item they are willing to buy.

· Dynamic pricing is legal

As long as dynamic pricing is not discriminating users based on their sex, age, race, religion and other usual discriminative factors, it is perfectly legal.

Dynamic pricing has a bright future

Long will be the days when dynamic pricing was solely limited to online purchases. Trends for dynamic pricing lie in retail. Products will see their price tag vary based on multiple factors and likely to be nearly individually

set.

However, dynamic pricing is not ready for brick and mortar businesses; you simply cannot change a price tag in front of a customer or update it before he goes to the register. The key here resides in tailoring promotions and discounts, rather than the item price itself.

The long and the short of it is that dynamic pricing has been around for a long time now and it’s only getting more and more advanced. From profile to taste, needs and aspirations, it allows a better price shaping for an increased margin. It is however becoming a topic for retail shopping as well. And this is where the present and future of dynamic pricing resides:

Being able to identify and target specific customers on an individual basis and offer them a product they want, they can afford, and that they need at that exact moment, will possibly change retail forever.

However, the whole dynamic pricing model does imply two major changes:

1. The business will need to be ready to adapt prices on the fly, sometimes multiple times a day, no more fixed prices for everyone. This flexibility will be the key to success.
2. Customers will have to adapt to ever changing prices. Some customers will win, some will lose; and as a business you need to be ready for managing this important behavioral change within your customer base.

Even if price plays an important role in the final purchase decision, this is just one of the factors customers take into account when deciding on a purchase. Things like shipping, customer service, and convenience all play a part in the equation. At the end of the day, don’t put all of your eggs in the same basket and make sure you never veer from your businesses core values or initial goals.

Summary - Dynamic pricing for retailers/e-commerce

Dynamic pricing is expanding into new areas, such as retail and E-commerce. This has been driven by advancements in technology and new sophistication - and expectations - of consumers. 

Amazon may have been the first to try dynamic pricing in the early 2000s, and was met with widespread criticism. Today, it continues to adjust prices dramatically in an effort to discover the best price to maximize its revenue and inventory utilization. Walmart, Target, and most other major retailers do the same. 

Dynamic pricing in retail is less obvious than hotels, but the effect is similar:

• Increased demand results in higher prices
• If sales drop, indicating reduced demand, lower prices are tested 
• Weather and other external factors influence price - in different ways for every business
• Inventory levels, particularly clearing out old inventory (also known as markdowns)
• Channels have different willingness to pay, and smart retailers take advantage. Higher prices are ok in a store versus on the web. 
• Website traffic also demonstrates increased demand for a product - and may trigger a dynamically higher price
• Perfect Price analyzes all of these factors, and its Price API delivers the right price to test (and can be specific to a group of users, their region, or a specific brick and mortar store). 

BioBee To Ship 600 Million Spiders To Colombia

There is a way to get rid of pests without using toxic pesticides, and the solution is simpler than one might think: Employing predatory bugs that will attack and kill damaging insects.
By Alice Menichelli, NoCamels

Israeli company BioBee has been developing this chemical-free technique for years, and is now deploying it in farms all over the world, using living insects instead of chemical pesticides, which could be harmful.

Selling its products to 50 countries worldwide, including Russia, India, Chile and South Africa, BioBee recently started to collaborate with Colombia, which will receive 600 million spider mites over the next year. The company was not available to comment on the price of the spiders, but some reports in the media have claimed that one gram of these spiders costs about $180 – more than five times the price of gold ($34 per gram)!

BioBee breeds a special kind of predatory spider called Bio Persimilis, which can keep pests under control in several crops, such as peppers, tomatoes, beans, maize, cucumber, melon, strawberries and eggplants. It is specifically effective against other kinds of spider mites, but contrary to these other mites, Bio Persimilis doesn’t cause any harm to the plants.

The Bio Persimilis spiders used by BioBee are as big as the spider mites they chase, about one or two millimeters long. They move quickly, hunt their prey and pierce it, sucking out its fluids.

Israeli startup’s suitcase follows you around

NUA Robotics seeks to eliminate travel woes with hands-free luggage
By The Times of Israel

Israeli startup NUA Robotics has unveiled a prototype for luggage that uses Bluetooth technology to sync with a smartphone app, locate its owner, and follow along.
The case also features an anti-theft alarm, a USB port for charging electronic devices on the go, and can send real-time data, including its weight and location, to the app.

“Any object can be smart and robotic,” the co-founder and CEO of NUA Robotics Alex Libman told Mashable on Thursday. “We want to bring robots into everyday life.”

NUA unveiled its design at the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas Nevada last week. Of the thousands of companies represented at the annual show, NUA ranked an impressive 323, placing it within the top 92% of all the companies in attendance.

While the suitcase is still in its preliminary development phase, the Jerusalem-based company hopes to have the product available to customers within a year.

Libman said NUA has wider hopes for its robotics technology, and envisions the design incorporated into other consumer products such as shopping carts.

Israeli start-up keeps bad bugs at bay, no poison needed

EdenShield’s GateKeeper kept almost 100% of crop-destroying pests out of greenhouses — without pesticides
By David Shamah, The Times of Israel

Farmers face a major crisis today — a “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t” crisis. Farmers need to keep their fields free of insects that eat crops and destroy their livelihood.
However, the pesticides that are effective against those insects are causing major environmental damage, killing off not only pests, but helpful insects such as bees.

Studies have linked the disappearance of bees around the world, known as Colony Collapse Disorder, to the overuse of pesticides. Because bees are the effective pollinators of fruit trees — scientists believe that as much as one-third of human nutrition is due to bee pollination — fewer bees means less food. But without pesticides, bug infestations would rise significantly, causing just as many crop losses.

Fortunately, an Israeli start-up has developed a middle way — a system that enables farmers to protect their crops, while avoiding the use of environment-destroying pesticides. And a new study

conducted by that start-up, EdenShield, showed just how effective are the company’s natural pesticides, which have been developed from plants and herbs.

In the study, greenhouses in Italy where tomatoes are grown using EdenShield’s GateKeeper prevented close to 100% penetration of pests and led to a reduction of over 80% in the use of pesticides. Control greenhouses demonstrated pest penetration of over 500%.

EdenShield, a portfolio company of Trendlines Agtech, develops insect-control solutions derived from natural plant extracts. The products are nontoxic, so they pose no danger to growers or consumers. And they can be used throughout the growing period, especially during the critical pre-harvest period.

According to D. Todd Dollinger of the Trendlines Agtech accelerator, EdenShield’s products “have the capacity to make a major impact on our food chain, making production more efficient and consumption healthier.”

The Israeli-invented device that’s saving American lives in Afghanistan

The Israeli-invented device that’s saving American lives in Afghanistan
By David Shamah, The Times of Israel

Then American troops are injured in the field, the first piece of life-saving medical equipment they may come into contact with nowadays is an Israeli-invented mini-sized manual ventilator. And not just American soldiers on the battlefield; the Pocket BVM has been used to treat thousands of people at the scene of numerous natural disasters, like in the huge earthquake that devastated Nepal earlier this year.
“The US Army decided that our Pocket BVM (bag valve mask device) would fit into combat scenarios much better than traditional BVMs,” said Dov Maisel, an American immigrant to Israel

who invented the unique manual ventilator with his friend and fellow United Hatzalah volunteer Akiva Pollack. “It’s really taken off since the Americans adopted it last year, and now we are working with several NATO armies, first-aid groups in Europe and Asia, businesses, hospitals, and airlines among others.”

To that latter category add El Al, said Maisel; the Israeli airline several months ago signed a contract with MicroBVM, the commercial supplier of the device, and now all El Al planes have miniature BVMs scattered throughout their cabins, so that life-giving oxygen can be provided to a patient quickly and efficiently

The story of the Pocket BVM is one of ingenuity, a drive for start-up success – and a “Jewish heart,” as Maisel puts it.