Monday, June 1, 2015
3M's new technology chief has a bigger budget, bigger goal
At a time when many companies are investing a smaller portion of revenues in research and development, 3M Co has given Chief Technology Officer Ashish Khandpur more to spend, and he is aiming at bigger targets. Khandpur, a 20-year 3M veteran and chemical engineer who holds patents related to pressure-sensitive adhesives, is helping oversee a push to expand R&D spending to about 6 percent of revenue by 2017 from about 5.5 percent in 2012. That equates to about $160 million in additional spending annually. In an interview with , Khandpur said the fresh money will be used to develop "disruptive platforms", which can yield products that are sold into multiple markets and can change the competitive landscape. "Each of these platforms we have funded is a several hundred million dollar opportunity at maturity," he said at 3M’s St. Paul headquarters campus. It was his first interview since assuming his post in July. So far, 3M, which posted $31.8 billion in revenue last year, says it has 30 such programs in various stages of development, with $250 million in sales expected this year from those already commercialized. Khandpur pointed to Crystal Silk, a new surface material that is smooth to the touch, yet also designed to be scratch- and stain-resistant. It is used for computer touchpads, a new market for 3M, and also could have applications in appliances and other areas. 3M is bucking the trend with its plans to crank up R&D spending. Consulting firm Strategy& says annual R&D spending as a percentage of revenue among the world's 1,000 largest R&D spenders fell from 4.2 percent in 2005 to 3.5 percent in 2014. R&D spending did rise in absolute terms over that time. Already, 3M invests more than double the average 2.3 percent spent last year by 190 industrial companies tracked by Strategy&. Of other large industrial companies, United Technologies reported spending 4.1 percent of revenue on R&D in 2014, while General Electric's research budget amounted to 4.8 percent of its industrial revenue. For GE, that budget compares to 5.3 percent in 2013, and 5.1 percent in 2012. "Businesses, just because they are under pressure quarter-to-quarter of delivering their numbers, can get operational at times," said Khandpur, 47. "We want to make sure that as a company we don’t fall into that trap and we are able to fund big programs." Analysts are watching 3M's R&D spending to see if the company can deliver products with higher pricing and margins. "If R&D productivity is poor, that’s a huge disappointment," Edward Jones analyst Matt Arnold said. "Not only does it imply your pace of growth could slow, but it’s also going to be a drag because it’s significant money spent." Khandpur says 3M is taking steps to improve its chances of delivering significant new products, such as sharpening the individual focus of its 85 labs in 37 countries. The technology chief leads a monthly meeting of nine executives that recommends which major research programs the manufacturer should pursue, and which it should drop. 3M is also expanding efforts to get outside ideas. The company has roughly 50 technical centers globally that are designed to expose customers to 3M’s technology. In March, 3M unveiled plans for a new center in western China. One avenue Khandpur is exploring is creating products with digital capabilities. He is hiring people with experience in electronics, software and mathematics to augment the company’s traditional strengths in materials sciences. Among the projects underway are work on developing sensors that can be embedded in cable splices to monitor power lines, and Khandpur envisions respirators that can track the wearer’s vital signs or detect if the device is being worn incorrectly. "It’s not about creating a software company in Minnesota," Khandpur said. "Our thinking is our core products are intersecting with the digital world." (Reporting by Lewis Krauskopf; Editing by Joe White and David Gregorio)
Companies in cathode ray tube price fixing lawsuit reach $528 million deal
NetApp CEO Tom Georgens steps down
Uber targeted by Canada's largest city amid cabbie protest
Taxi drivers packed a courtroom in Canada's largest city on Monday as Toronto stated its case that the Uber ride-sharing service should be regulated, as are the traditional cabs with which Uber competes.Toronto is seeking an injunction to stop Uber from operating unless the San Francisco-based company agrees to comply with Toronto's demand that all Uber drivers be licensed and that the company itself obtain brokerage licenses to operate its service.Outside city hall, taxi drivers parked three-deep and beeped their horns, while others moved in a slow procession through downtown, clogging much of the business district. Akhbar Banijamaat, who left Iran in the 1980s with his family and has driven taxis in Toronto for 17 years, said he was the first driver to turn up for the protest."Some people support Uber, the mayor supports Uber," Banijamaat said. "I don't mind Uber, I think it's a beautiful idea, to whoever did it, very nice. But do it legal."Despite Toronto's legal bid to regulate Uber, the city's mayor, John Tory, has said that he accepts that ride-hailing apps such as Uber's are part of the contemporary landscape. As mayor-elect last November, Tory said the technological changes that enabled Uber were "here to stay." Uber is fighting for legal status, one jurisdiction at a time, as authorities worldwide weigh whether to treat its phone-based app as a taxi brokerage, and Uber drivers argue they should be treated as employees, not independent contractors.The Toronto taxi-driving protesters say UberX, a budget option in which drivers use their personal vehicles, is a threat to public safety. They held up signs explaining their displeasure or taped them to back windows as they rolled slowly around major intersections.Uber's other service uses licensed drivers. But Uber disputes Toronto's claim - similar to claims that Uber has been facing in other cities around the world - that it is operating as a broker. Uber says it simply provides a technology that allows drivers and passengers to find each other. While Uber waited for its day in court later this week, the privately held company, which is valued at $40 billion, said the taxi protest was counter-productive."Rather than blocking roads and preventing people from getting where they need to be, we're focused on meeting the needs of Toronto's riders and drivers, who are all too often left out of the debate," Uber Canada spokeswoman SusieHeath said in an email. She said the company wants to help "create a sensible regulatory framework for ridesharing."The hearing continues. The case is court file no. CV-14-516288. (Reporting by Alastair Sharp; Editing by Leslie Adler)
With ads, FINRA hopes BrokerCheck becomes go-to site, like Yelp
With a new ad campaign, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority hopes its BrokerCheck website will become a customer's first stop, like Yelp for diners or Angie's List for home owners, before they invest with a financial adviser.The Wall Street watchdog, known as FINRA, launched the campaign Monday with 15-second commercials depicting people making big decisions without doing their homework, in a bid to promote its years-old website that provides free information about brokers' employment history, credentials and customer complaints."People immediately go online to check out a new restaurant where they might spend $25 for a meal, but don't think to use BrokerCheck when they're handing over $2,500—or $25,000...to an investment professional to invest," FINRA Chairman and Chief Executive Officers Richard Ketchum said in a statement Monday.In one ad, which will run over the next five weeks on CNBC, Fox News, ESPN, and other cable channels, a man develops arms like a gorilla after taking medication for hypertension without reading the drug's side effects.In another, a bride blissfully walks down the aisle until the organist hired for the wedding begins playing the sports anthem for the chant, "Charge!" The TV shorts will run alongside print and online ads to build broader awareness of BrokerCheck's resources.The commercial campaign is the second change the self-funded regulator has instituted recently to address the site's usefulness. On Wednesday, FINRA submitted a rule to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that would require member securities brokerages to post a link to BrokerCheck on their websites and brokers' profile pages. The rule had originally proposed requiring brokerages to link to BrokerCheck from their websites and social media pages. However, FINRA removed the social media provision after firms said there was a general lack of guidance on brokerages' use of social media. BrokerCheck was established in 1988 in paper form as the Public Disclosure Program. The site uses information from the Central Registration Depository, the securities industry's online database for registration and licensing. (Reporting by Elizabeth Dilts; Editing by Bernadette Baum)
CA Inc names Xbox co-founder as tech chief
Business software maker CA Inc (CA.O) appointed Otto Berkes, one of the four founders of Microsoft Corp's (MSFT.O) Xbox console, as chief technology officer.Berkes was most recently the technology chief at Time Warner Inc's (TWX.N) HBO and worked on the development of HBO GO amongst other things. Before joining HBO, Berkes spent 18 years at Microsoft. (Reporting by Subrat Patnaik in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel)
Cheap 3D printed robotic arm controlled by the mind
For Easton LaChappelle, a 19-year-old from Colorado in the United States (U.S.), the difficulty with robotics has never been the technology itself - something he says he managed to master in a matter of months from his bedroom in his parent's house - but the cost.The technology used by most robotic arms and hands on the market - and many more of those in development - typically comes with large overheads.In the last five years, though, learning almost exclusively online in forums and emails, LaChappelle has managed to synthesize a series of robotic hands that could change industries and lives - and most of which cost just a few hundred dollars.While other developments in countries like Austria and Argentina have pushed the boundaries of prosthetic offerings, helping those missing limbs to start to regain use of them with robotics, LaChappelle has done so using 3D printing.And he's made one that he says can read your mind. It's called Anthromod."This reads right about 10 channels of the brain, so it kind of works kind of like a muscle sensor in that it picks up small electric discharges and turns that into something you can actually read within software, and then we actually track patterns and try and convert that into movement. So with this I'm actually able to change grips, grip patterns, based on facial gestures, and then use the raw actual brainwaves and focus to actually close the hand or open the clamp or hand," he told Television.One of the most important aspects of the Anthromod design is the way in which it's controlled by the software, which LaChappelle says is different from the types of control that exist in other robotic platforms.While it's the hand itself that moves, as more advanced controls are created it's the software that's doing the heavy lifting, using algorithms that make the arm easier to use. "A good example is we actually had an amputee use the wireless brainwave headset to control a hand, and he was able to fluently control the robotic hand in right around about 10 minutes, so the learning curve is hardly a learning curve any more," he said.The arms themselves might not look polished and ready for the shop floor - but LaChappelle sees them as cutting edge.His robotic arms are all prototypes, each fulfilling a different need according to their design, with some using a wireless brainwave headset, designed more for prosthetic use. Another of his tele-robotic controlled hands was created with dangerous environments in mind, where human-like robots could be sent to allow people to monitor situations and intervene from afar."I really tried to make this as human-like as possible - this is probably about my fifth generation of the full robotic arm, and this is controlled using a full tele-robotic system, so there's actually a glove that you wear that tracks your hand movements, accelerometers to track your wrist and elbow, and then an IMU sensor as well to track your bicep rotation as well as your shoulder movement, and that gets all translated wirelessly to the robotic arm where it will copy what you do," he said. One of the most impressive aspects of the arm is not the hardware itself, or even the software that controls it - but the fact that it can be 3D printed for a fraction of the cost of modern prosthetics.This allows him to make complex internal structures to the designs which would otherwise be impossible, using not just any 3D printer, but precisely the kind many expect people to have at home in the near future."So 3D printing allows you to create something that's human-like, something that's extremely customized, again for a very low cost, which for certain applications such as prosthetics, is a really big part of it," he told . "The full robotic arm is actually open source, and so people are now actually able to take this, reproduce it, and adapt it for different situations, applications, and really see what you can do with it," he added.The Anthromod itself cost only about 600 dollars to make, LaChappelle said.His work is documented in the videos he made at home, showing his handiwork - all part of his effort at making the invention open source - which means anyone can take his technology and customize and build on it.The idea, he said, is not to create something that can solve problems for those with prostheses and other needs for robotic arms like the ones he's invented - but rather to create a platform that people around the world can use to customize their own versions of to suit their needs."A big reason we designed this on the consumer level is because we made this open source, we want someone that has a 3D printer, or very little printing experience, to be able to replicate this, to be able to use this for new applications, to be able to adapt it into new situations, so it's really exciting to see what people will start doing with something like this," he said."For the actual arm, we designed everything to be modular, meaning all the joints can actually interchange, and there's a universal bolt pattern. So you can now create something human-like, or you can create a big 20 degree freedom arm for complex filming or even low cost automations. So we really want to make a robotics platform, not so much just a robotics hand from this," he added.LaChappelle hopes his efforts will contribute to developments in bomb defusal robots, heavy equipment and heavy industrial automation robotic arms, as well as exoskeletons.
Wearable device provides continuous fetal monitoring
Israeli medical experts have developed a wearable mobile monitor to keep a close watch on pregnant women and their fetuses as they go about their everyday lives.The PregSense monitor has sensors woven into an elastic harness to provide data around the clock on the status of the fetus and the mother's health in the later stages of pregnancy.A bluetooth-enabled device attached to the monitor collects and transmits data such as the mother and baby's heart rates to a smartphone and stores it on a secure cloud-based database accessible only to expectant mothers and their physicians.The device is the work of the Nuvo Group, led by Oren Oz. He says a smartphone app will eventually provide a visual representation of the data gathered by the wearable monitor."Now you can see both you and the baby, the heart and all the data. What you are going to get in the app eventually is visualization that can tell you where the hand is, you're going to see if the baby is awake, you can hear your baby's heartbeat anytime you want and obviously everything about you as the mom, the activity, if you are relaxed, how you sleep, your activity, your heart activity, everything about your pregnancy will be put into data," he explained as he demonstrated the device for mother-to-be, Michal.Oz founded the Nuvo Group with another pregnancy technological innovation, Ritmo, a strap allowing mothers to stream soothing music from a smartphone to gently stimulate the fetus.The Israeli tech firm hopes the device will reassure anxious mothers like Michal, in week 32 of her pregnancy, who require monitoring without having to see her doctor. "It connects me a lot more with the fetus, I'll hear the fetus whenever I want and it will be easier for me. I also won't have to be dependent on a doctor, at any given time I'll be able to connect, to see and hear," Michal said.The PregSense strap is designed to collect data to help physicians detect symptoms that may lead to complications in pregnancy earlier."It's the first time that you have a huge amount of data of women and babies together about heart rate, kickings, position for fetus etc and we will be able to analyze this data to predict about events of pregnancy, like pre-term labor like pre-eclampsia and more and we will be able to intervene in the right time," said Varda Shalev, a medical informatics expert and active care primary physician. She is an external consultant to the Tel Aviv-based Nuvo Group.The PregSense monitor does not use ultrasound like traditional doppler devices, which require pregnant women to lie still while physicians manually track the heartbeat of the fetus. The sensors use a patented algorithm to filter the signals it picks up into two heartbeat recordings. Its developers say the passive sensors avoid the potential harm to tissue posed by ultrasonic devices and is perfectly safe for both the mother and baby during continuous monitoring.The data collected is of high enough quality to be useful for clinicians and researchers."The sophistication of the technology and the sophistication of the sensors that we had designed for that is really making what used to be clinical data collection into passive continuous reliable home data collection," said Professor Nathan Intrator, a bio signal expert and chief technology officer for Nuvo Group . Nuvo Group's advisory board member Professor Simcha Yagel, who also heads the division of obstetrics and gynecology at Hadassah, Hebrew University Medical Centers, said the electrocardiogram (ECG) provides the added value to the device. "I think the new achievement of Nuvo is in the field of detection of the ECG traces of the fetus, not only the sound not only the ultrasound but truly an electronic ECG," he told during a routine ultrasound scan for a pregnant woman in hospital.Oz said doctors would appreciate not having to use traditional heavy machinery, such as the cardiotocography (CTG) or electronic fetal monitor (EFM) machines to trace the fetal heartbeat. Instead, they could track and diagnose patients remotely, allowing quick detection and intervention. "The immediate impact, the immediate benefit to doctors is that we are replacing the bulky CTG machines which are heavy and connected to the wall with the light weight mobility and continuous monitoring." said Oz. The consumer version of the product, known as Ritmo Beats, is to be launched for users by the end of 2015 and will cost around $250 USD, Oz said. The clinical grade FDA-regulated device, to be teamed with a group of physicians to monitor the data and alert the mother of any unexpected events, has a 2016 launch target.Oz is certain his invention will change pregnancy care management and "bring better care to more women at a fraction of the cost".
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