Berlin, Germany, March 25, 2016: Smartphones are part of our daily lives. They are packed with sensors and processing power. In the future your phone will become even more seamless. It will automatically silence messaging while you drive a car. It will check in real-time, if your credit card transaction is legitimate. It will automate mobile payment sessions for you. So that you don’t have to press buttons all day. This future is fast approaching…
Modern smartphones produce up to 1 GB of sensor data every hour. Hence there are many academic studies showing how smartphone sensors can predict user’s behavior. Your watch, your thermostat, your phone, your car and your jacket will have built-in sensors and CPUs. But making sense of all the data in real-time is a huge technical challenge.
One of the commercial pioneers in this area is the German startup predict.io. Their core expertise is to process large quantities of highly volatile sensor data directly on a device. They use a smartphone’s Accelerometer, Gyroscope, Barometer, Wifi, GPS, Magnetoscope, GSM and many more sensors to predict user context. Their SDK for iOS and Android turns sensor data into ready-made status updates in real-time.
The technology can tell that your phone is in a vehicle right now. A messenger app can use that to not bother the user while driving. Which is great for road security.
It would also know that you arrived in a specific location. If your credit card is being used in another location, it can alert the owner. Maybe he wants to review the transaction that just happened miles away from him?
Or why do travelers need to remember to check-out from a train trip? The phone already knows the user has stepped out of the train.
Same goes for paying your parking fees with your phone. Your phone already knows you have parked or started driving. Why bother pressing buttons?
predict.io was launched in March at SxSW in Austin, TX this months. Also recently it got awarded at the Smart Mobility Pitch Event (SMPE) in Delft. This event had aimed to reward business ideas or startups with massive impact on mobility across the Netherlands. The national railways (NS) and car owners bond ANWB, looked for the best smart mobility.