i3 - November/December 2016 - 66

Business
Kids@Play:
Talking Toys
Create
Engagement
DON COOLIDGE:
co-founder, CogniToys by
Elemental Path
The supercomputing power of
IBM Watson has been shown in
many interesting incarnations,
but the three founders of CogniToys, Sean O'Shea, JP Benini,
and Don Coolidge, noticed that
no one was thinking about using
Watson's ability to understand
context in the kid's arena. The
company's connected dinosaur
toy was born when their team
won the IBM Watson Global
Hackathon in 2014. The vision
was to create a digital learning
companion for kids that would be
constantly evolving in terms of
content and context the more
the child used it. At the heart of
CogniToys are a speech recognition and synthesis engine plus a

dose of Watson's contextual language processing and a unique
personality engine designed by
the CogniToys team. In addition
to the software smarts, and a WiFi cloud connection, the dinosaur
has a microphone (hidden in its
nostril) and a sensor (hidden on
its belly) to "wake it up." Coolidge
says, "It's a process we'll keep
refining - it's not that different
than Siri or Alexa, who also need
to understand the context of a
query. We'll look at how well a
kid does in vocab or math, so
we can playback the appropriate answers to questions." Ultra
security-conscious, Coolidge
says the data is encrypted, and
they ask only minimal information
from parents when they set up
the toy from the smartphone app.
"Because it has cloud connectivity, we can push out new voices,
new games and stories." He adds,
"You've heard of the Internet
of Things, well, we call this the
Internet of Toys."

Digital Health:
Solving
for Sleep

MICK FARRELL,
CEO, ResMed

According to the U.S. Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention,
more than one-quarter of the U.S.
population report occasionally not
getting enough sleep, while nearly
10 percent experience chronic
insomnia. Insufficient sleep is
associated with chronic diseases
and conditions such as diabetes,
cardiovascular disease, obesity
and depression. Conditions such
as sleep apnea affect many
people. Traditionally, ResMed
focused on the clinical treatment
of sleep apnea. Now they're introducing a commercial, over-thecounter sleep tracker. In contrast
with sleep caps, wearable bands,
and over the mattress sensors,
The S3+ by ResMed is the only
contactless sleep device on the
market, says Farrell. The S3+ is a

portable device that sits on your
bed stand. It uses low intensity
radar to monitor the movement
of the chest wall during sleep.
Since heartbeat impacts the rise
and fall of the rib cage, the S3+
can track your sleep regardless
of position to measure how much
sleep you get and the quality
of that sleep. The product also
serves as a sleep trainer, teaching you to get to sleep faster by
listening to sounds that adjust to
align with your breathing. And,
like others in the category, the
device uses a modified alarm setting to make sure that you wake
during light sleep, not REM stage
sleep. S3+ also records the light,
noise and temperature conditions
in your room, and syncs with your
smartphone to provide tailored
feedback. "Since a third of our
lives are spent sleeping," says
Farrell, "we thought it was important to delve into what we've
come to call the Internet of
Medical Things."

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i3 - November/December 2016

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