Do we really need smart homes?

Building trust with autonomous vehicles and Nintendo is switch-ing it up.

Steph Newton

Published in

Hardware News

5 min readJul 19, 2019

What’s New In Hardware:

Toyota and Denso are collaborating to form a new company developing purpose-built chips for autonomous vehicles. (Reuters)
Nintendo announced a cheaper version of its hit Nintendo Switch console. (Polygon)
The amount of trust we give self-driving cars depends on how well they communicate what they’re doing to us humans. (Fast Company)
Stacey Higginbotham wonders: Do we really need smart homes? (Stacey on IoT)
Waymo is putting WiFi into its driverless taxi prototypes in Phoenix to see if it helps people be more productive. (Fortune)

Offbeat Tidbits You Might’ve Missed:

If we want robots to get better at picking things up, we need to make objects that are hard to grab on purpose. It’s time for adversarial objects. (IEEE Spectrum)
A 3D-printed prosthetic hand can be taught to recognize nerve signals for particular movements much more quickly with machine learning. (MIT Technology Review)
A Bluetooth-connected hair straightener turns out to be easily hackable, which brings up a good question: why make a Bluetooth-connected hair straightener in the first place? (TechCrunch)

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Volkswagen has announced that they intend to invest $2.6 billion into self-driving vehicle startup and Ford’s autonomous car partner Argo AI. The two competitors will partner on electric and self-driving car technology, sharing costs on a global scale to move the industry’s disruptive transformation forward.
Digital olfaction pioneer Aryballe Technologies has raised $6.96 million in a funding round co-led by Hyundai Motor Company and IFF, a global leader in taste, scent, and nutrition.
Igloohome, a smart access company that sells a lock that enables homeowners to grant access to their homes remotely, has raised $15 million in funding. The round was co-led by Insignia Ventures Partners, Wavemaker Partners, and SEEDS Capital. They were joined by Kickstart Ventures, TH Capital, Pine Venture Partners, On Asset Management, InnoVen Capital, and several angel investors.
Luminar, a Silicon Valley-based tech company developing high-performance lidar sensors for cars and trucks, has raised $100 million in funding. Investors include G2VP, Moore Strategic Ventures, LLC, Nick Woodman, The Westly Group, 1517 Fund / Peter Thiel, Canvas Ventures, Corning Inc, Cornes, Volvo Cars Tech Fund, Crescent Cove Advisors, and Octave Ventures.
Quantum computing startup IQM has secured $13 million in seed funding. Investors include Matadero QED, Maki.vc, MIG Fonds, OpenOcean, Tesi, and Vito Ventures.
San Francisco-based developer and supplier of small satellites Akash Systems has raised $14.5 million in a series A funding round led by Khosla Ventures, Founders Fund, ACME Capital, Sriram Krishnan, and Correlation Ventures.
Autonomous aerial robot developer Exyn Technologies has raised $16 million in series A funding. The round was led by Centricus, who were later joined by Yamaha Motors Ventures, In-Q-Tel, Corecam Family Office, Red and Blue Ventures, and IP Group.
NeuroBlade, an Israeli startup building a processor for artificial intelligence applications, has secured $23 million in a series A funding round. Marius Nacht led the round. Intel Capital, StageOne Ventures, and Grove Ventures later joined the round.
UK-based graphene technology startup Paragraf has secured $16 millionin a series A funding round led by Parkwalk. Paragraf will use this capital injection to bring their first graphene-based electronics products to market.
PlanetiQ, a high-definition satellite-based weather forecasting and analytics company based out of Boulder, CO, has raised $18.7 million in series B funding. New Science Ventures and AV8 Ventures co-led the investment round with participation from several other new and earlier investors including Valo Ventures, Kodem Growth Partners, and Access Venture Partners.
Micro-grid operator Powerhive has raised $9.3 million in series B funding. Powerhive chief executive Christopher Hornor said Toyota Tsusho participated in the latest round with a commitment to actively participate in an upcoming project connecting electricity to 20,000 families via solar power.
Cisco has acquired Acacia Communications, a 10-year-old developer of hardware and software for high-speed fiber-optic networks — and of one of Cisco’s optical equipment suppliers — in a $2.6 billion deal. Acacia Communications will become part of Cisco’s Optical Systems and Optics group under its networking and security business to meet customer demand for more robust networks.
A group of major global car manufacturers including BMW, Hyundai, and the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance have invested $100 million into Maniv Mobility, a four-year-old Israeli venture capital firm focused exclusively on mobility.