Instead of making people hunt all over Austin for the cool, weird and wild technology at South By Southwest, organizers bring a whole bunch of it to one giant convention center floor.
Wearables were a hot item on the floor. The Arki out of South Korea can monitor and help users improve their posture based on their arm swings.
“People are walking with bad posture, such as putting hands in the pocket, watching your phone, slouching your back,” Brian Kim with Zikto said. “All those bad walking habits cause you back pain, joint problems, all that, so we’re measuring the quality of your steps. It buzzes you when you’re walking with bad habits."
On the healthy food side of things, community-supported agriculture, or CSA, programs are growing. The Kakaxi is a device with sensors and a camera that its developers will be giving to farmers so that CSA members can monitor their food online as it grows.
“It has sensors internally that can measure key data from the atmosphere: temperature, day length, humidity as well as it can measure what’s in the soil,” Adam Smith with Kakaxi said. “Knowing the person who grew your food and knowing where it came from is very important in talking about a sustainable food system."
Pixie Dust Technologies' latest product is pretty much high-tech magic. It uses ultrasonic sound waves to lift objects.
“This device is three dimensional acoustic manipulation, so we use ultrasound to pick up and manipulate small particles," Takayuki Hoshi with Pixie Dust Technologies said.
Developers say once it can lift bigger objects, it could be used in the medical field, space and paces where touching something could mean contamination.