Digital Assistants Explored to Aid the Elderly; Hacking for Dementia

Posted February 28th, 2017 at 12:25 pm (UTC-5)
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Today’s Tech Sightings:

Amazon's Echo, an Internet-connected digital assistant that can be set up in a home or office to listen for various requests, such as songs, sports scores or the weather, is shown in New York, July 29, 2015. (AP)

Amazon’s Echo, an Internet-connected digital assistant that can be set up in a home or office to listen for various requests, such as songs, sports scores or the weather, is shown in New York, July 29, 2015. (AP)

Home Digital Assistants Could Be Boon for Assisted Living

Voice-activated devices and digital assistants are quickly spreading and Elliptic Labs, which uses ultrasound technology to detect motion, wants to use the technology to help the elderly. The company is launching new software that can be added to digital assistants like Amazon’s Echo. The motion-detection program can send an alert from an elderly person’s home, for example, if it does not sense any movement for a prolonged period of time.

Nonprofit tech movement HackerNest is holding a coding session called DementiaHack in Toronto on March 4. The event is intended to raise awareness about dementia and encourage the development of products to help people with dementia and their caregivers.

This Tiny Chip Could Revolutionize Smartphone, IOT Security

A new chip unveiled at this week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, could significantly improve mobile security. The chip, developed by South Korean engineers at SK Telecom, can generate secure random numbers, which are then used to create encryption keys. These numbers have not been generated before with anything as small as this chip, a 5 millimeter square the size of a fingernail.

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Aida Akl
Aida Akl is a journalist working on VOA's English Webdesk. She has written on a wide range of topics, although her more recent contributions have focused on technology. She has covered both domestic and international events since the mid-1980s as a VOA reporter and international broadcaster.

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