The trial of a new barcode tagging system for tracking elderly dementia sufferers and those at risk of getting lost is under way in Tokyo.

Stickers on Toenails.

The new, free tagging system uses special 1cm (0.4in) square stickers which can be attached to a person’s toenail and are designed to stay on for 2 weeks. If the sticker was attached to items of clothing or badges for example, as well as not being discreet, there is a risk that clothing items could be left behind when the person goes out. The water-resistant stickers have QR codes which hold the address, telephone number and a unique identity number for the user.

Benefits.

All this means that if the person is picked up by police, a simple scan of the code will reveal contact telephone numbers, all relevant personal details, plus the location of the person’s local city hall. The benefits of this scheme are clear: saved time in getting the person back to their loved ones / their carers which means less stress and upset for the dementia sufferer, less stress and worry for family and friends. It also means some savings in costs and resources.

Ageing Population.

The last (2015) census revealed the extent of a challenge that Japan is now facing. Over 26% of the country’s population is now over the age of 65. This is the highest level since 1920, and experts believe that this number will grow to 40% by 2060.

These figures mean that the barcode tagging system could prove to be a very relevant and important idea for now and into the future for Japan.

Other Ideas.

There have already been other ideas and initiatives in Japan which have been designed to help with different aspects of the challenges of an ageing population.

Japan’s state-owned Post Group is an organisation that runs post offices, banks, and insurance services across the country. Post Group also provides a national Watch Over service. This service provides checks on elderly citizens for a small fee.

One other high profile initiative from last year was an alliance between Apple and IBM who teamed up Post Group with the aim of delivering iPads (with IBM-developed apps and analytics) to 5 million customers in Japan by the year 2020. The IBM apps on the iPads will give reminders and alerts about medications, exercise, and diet. They will also provide access to community activities and support services such as grocery shopping and job matching.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

As well as the UK also facing ageing population challenges (and the direct relevance of this story as a result), security and tracking tagging technology of this kind could have many applications across multiple sectors in the UK.

In terms of the story’s direct relevance to health in the UK, there are over 850,000 people living with dementia, and as well as the terrible human suffering it causes, is estimated to cost the UK £26 billion a year.

There are therefore opportunities for UK technology businesses and start-ups to develop products for the health sector which could help the UK to meet its own challenges by providing valuable help to sufferers and relatives / carers, and reducing care costs as well as making the best use of resources.

So-called economic ‘headwinds’ is one of the reasons why outsourcing company Capita is cutting 2,250 UK jobs but giving more than 2,000 jobs to robots!

Automation Job Threat.

One of the long-held worries about automation has been illustrated in a ‘futuristic’ way as Capita has apparently responded to a profit warning by deciding to cut and re-direct human jobs (200 are going to India) while at the same time giving jobs to ‘robots’.

Predictions from academics have centred on estimates of one-third of existing jobs being lost to robots in the coming years. It is also a cruel irony therefore that after a Capita report showed that 85% of employers believe workplace automation will create more jobs than it will replace, 2,000 Capita jobs will end up being lost to robots.

Workers did, however, express some of the fears that have now come to pass. For example, 72% of workers surveyed for the “Workplace More Human” report did admit to fears of possibly losing their jobs or of de-socialisation of the workplace with the introduction of robots.

Doing What?

Capita have not yet stated exactly what jobs will be replaced by the robots, rather it has issued a general statement that talks about trying to deliver a proprietary robotic solution to achieve scaled automation across its operations. Jobs undertaken by Capita cover many different areas for some high profile customers, including collecting the BBC licence fee and overseeing the London congestion charge.

Faster and Fewer.

Recent public comments by Capita CEO Andy Parker have indicated that robotic staff are attractive to the business because they will enable the pace of work to be increased and with robot help, less staff are required to do the same amount of work thus saving costs.

Technology commentators have also pointed out that robots don’t need breaks or holidays, they are available for work day and night 7 a days a week, and they don’t present the same risks or require the same rights as human workers.

Fall in Share Price.

These changes at Capita, which also include the sale of the asset services division have been accompanied by a fall in its share price to its lowest level in a decade.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Clearly there are strong economic, competition, and scale arguments for introducing the right kind of automation to the right areas of businesses. Some businesses are clearly more suitable than others to receive greater levels of automation in the form of what could be called robots.

There is an increasing trend towards robotic / automated aspects of services, manufacturing and retailing, and we are all becoming more used to encountering it, dealing with it and working with it.

In the IT industry for example, AI bots are being used, and in the transport industry there has been a move towards autonomous vehicles for public transport.

For businesses, more automation can bring many benefits e.g. in areas such as consistency, predictability, speed, capacity and cost savings. For employees, more automation may of course broadly mean fewer jobs, and more specialised jobs.

Amazon look set to launch a new type of high tech grocery shop next year that allows customers to use an app to record (and pay for) their purchases rather than having to go through a checkout.

What’s So Different About The Amazon Store?

The new Amazon store uses a combination of a special app and in-store technology to allow customers to shop and then ‘just walk out’ without having to encounter a physical checkout.

Customers use as the ‘Go app’ to enter the store and a series of sensors, computer vision and deep learning are used to record the customer’s purchases. The total is totted up in a virtual shop and charged to the customer’s Amazon Prime account.

Tested in Seattle – Rollout Soon Nationwide.

The testing ground for the new stores has been an 1,800 square foot store near Amazon’s own headquarters in Seattle in the U.S.

Although the test store isn’t a full grocery store (mainly ready-to-eat meals & snacks), customers have been able to shop there in the ‘new’ way this year. Some media reports have suggested that Amazon now plans to open as many as 2,000 of the new high tech grocery stores for use by Amazon customers across the U.S.

Amazon ‘Physical’ Retail Experience.

Although many people will know Amazon as an online retailer rather than one with physical stores, this latest move may sound high risk, particularly in the highly competitive grocery sector where there are some powerful and experienced competitors.

Amazon does have physical retail experience in the form of its own bookstore ‘Amazon Books’ which opened in the U.S last year.

Amazon also has some considerable grocery retailing experience in the form of its grocery delivery service ‘AmazonFresh’ which has been operating in the U.S. since 2007. This business has gradually expanded through many U.S population centres including Seattle, New York, Washington, Boston, the northern part of New Jersey, Philadelphia, Connecticut, Baltimore and in many parts of California.

In the UK, Amazon launched a grocery delivery service in June this year for 69 post codes in north and east London. The service is open to Amazon Prime members and costs £6.99 a month.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Amazon is therefore an example of how an online business can learn and grow and then enter the physical marketplace. This is the reverse of what many (grocery) retailers have had to do. This could also herald the arrival of a new kind technology based shopping experience that may prove to be very popular with customers and could force competitors to follow suit to some extent, particularly perhaps when it comes to attracting younger shoppers.

The Amazon model also ties customers in to its own system i.e. customers have an Amazon Prime account and need the Amazon Go app to enter the stores and use the service, and this could bring some interesting developments for other businesses to learn from in terms of loyalty marketing.

Researchers from the University of Newcastle have developed a credit card querying system that has exposed loopholes in online payment systems. The system could allow cyber thieves using a similar method to successfully ‘guess’ your credit card number.

What Kind of System?

One of the main goals of cyber thieves is of course to obtain credit card details, but what if there was a way to go in through the ‘front’ of online payment systems to get them rather than hacking?

The Newcastle University team led by PhD student Mohammed Aamir Ali have developed a system that simultaneously submits payment requests to multiple websites at the same time.

In tests, this system was able to start with the first 6 digits of the long card number, ‘guess’ the other numbers, and then try out different combinations of those numbers, expiry dates and security codes on other websites. The researchers were able to piece together this information because different sites ask for different credentials to verify a purchase, and it was therefore possible to piece the fragmented details from each of the many sites to get the full, correct credit card details.

The ‘distributed guessing attack’ software based system worked so quickly and so effectively that in tests (using only Visa an MasterCard) the researchers were able to obtain correct card details in less than 10 seconds.

Subverted.

The test showed in essence that the very purpose of payment validation in online payment systems can actually be subverted to help attackers to generate the security data fields require to make successful online transactions.

Alarms Not Triggered.

The researchers found that they were able to run multiple software bots with multiple queries on many hundreds of website payment systems without triggering any alarms or arousing any suspicion. The cards used in the experiment do not enforce centralised checks across transactions from different sites.

Information Shared.

As part of a responsible disclosure exercise, the researchers shared their findings with the top 36 (out of 342) vulnerable websites. Although 8 sites changed their security systems as a result the disclosure, the other 28 are reported to not have made any changes yet.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

As the researchers pointed out in their paper about the experiment, online fraud is now the largest category of card fraud in the UK, representing 45% of the total value of the fraud committed against UK credit and debit cards.

Although there is no evidence that this ‘distributed guessing attack’ method is currently being used, the experiment has serious implications for all businesses that have an online payment system on their website, or indeed for anyone with a credit card. Visa for example is the most popular payment network in the world and the discovered vulnerabilities greatly affect the entire global online payments system.

If cyber thieves were to adopt this system, the broad outlines of which are now in the public domain, it could also be the case that parts of credit card numbers that have been stolen in previous cyber attacks around the world could be used to successfully obtain the rest of the numbers.

BAE Systems has announced that it will be carrying out 17 trial flights in UK airspace of an aircraft that has been specially converted to enable it to fly autonomously.

From Lancashire to Inverness.

The test flights will be made using a modified Jetstream 31 aircraft. The flights are scheduled to take place between BAE’s base at Warton in Lancashire and Inverness in Scotland.

BAE have stated that the route will be through non-congested airspace at an altitude of approximately 15,000ft (4.6km). Each flight should take around 90 minutes to complete.

Human Pilots For Take-off and Landing.

Thankfully, the test flights will have pilots on board who will handle take-off and landing, and of course be available should there be any handling problems.

Why?

BAE systems have for some time been working to establish themselves as world leaders in the development and application of autonomous system design for unmanned aircraft e.g. through its advanced technology demonstration programmes such as like Mantis and Taranis.

These new tests represent another step towards the BAE’s vision of the next-generation of Unmanned Air Systems, and as BAE’s research and technology chief Maureen McCue has stated, the company is working towards the possibility of using their own unmanned systems in a highly controlled environment in the UK.

Uses Cameras.

Among the aircraft’s specially modified navigation equipment will be cameras to see other air users, and to survey weather conditions and cloud along the route. These will help the aircraft to fly the safest route.

Working With Air Traffic Control.

Those on the flight path will also be pleased to know that BAE will be working with UK’s National Air Traffic Services to see how well and how safely the autonomous aircraft performs.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

This test is part of a general move towards greater autonomy in transport, particularly public transport globally. Businesses could ultimately end up benefitting from much of the technology developed in these kinds of programmes, and it is likely that many businesses could benefit from the use of some autonomous elements in their operations / activities.

Successful autonomy should of course mean reduced labour costs, greater efficiency and consistency, and hopefully a high level of safety and predictability, all of which are attractive concepts to businesses.