Today was Google's annual developer conference called the I/O. It was a jam packed event with Google unveiling its latest tech on what it's working on. Mainly focussing on software like Android and apps but also implementing futuristic tech like self driving and Google duplex (more on that later).
Google over the years has transformed itself from just a search engine to a tech giant with leading in research and development for AI (Artificial Intelligence), maps, software (Android/Chrome OS), hardware (Pixelbook, Pixel phones, chrome cast etc.) and so on. It is so far ahead of some of its competition mainly due to it's consistent philosophy on investing and researching on the future of technology.
On the keynote today. There were lots of highs through out. I was blown away by how Google has managed to changed peoples lives (literally) and is really advancing on the AI front. My few favourites out of the whole keynote were:
- Waymo's self driving car
Apparently Waymo (Subsidiary of Googles parent company Alphabet) has fully working self driving cars that are operating on San Francisco, Atlanta, Washington state, Michigan and Arizona. Thats huge! These car are the fully autonomous self driving cars without a need of a driver. They even showed a video on the keynote while few early riders had the opportunity to try it. One guy was literally sleeping while the car drove him to his destination. This is the future everybody has been working so hard for. According to Waymo - they were researching, developing and testing self driving cars back in 2009 way before the likes of Tesla and many other top manufacturers.
The main worry with truly autonomous vehicle is the safety. And they quickly addressed that by saying these cars are at least 100 times safer than a human driver. They also showed how the car would behave in unlikely situations like - when theres snow or when theres a rogue car not stopping at a red light. The car has quite a few sensors so it already knows what to do in case of an emergency.
Not saying there wouldn't be any problems but looks like Waymo is way ahead of the game while others are playing catch up. I'm sure their research and continued development in AI and ability to use machine learning will make the the whole self driving car much safer and will likely hit major cities sooner than later.
- Google duplex (Robo-call)
Ever felt like if only your phones voice assistant would actually behave like your real assistant and do things for you? Well worry not. This is actually pretty scary and super freaking cool at the same time. In a keynote what they were trying to show was, the Google Duplex could do basic tasks like booking an appointment for your hair cut or making a restaurant reservation. How this would work is - the assistant would call the place in a natural human voice and it would have a conversation about booking a table or an appointment (as a real human would do) and later after the booking, it would send the details to the owners phone. So, to the other person (on the receiving end of the robocall) would have no idea it is actually a robot making a call that sounds exactly like a human, with ummms and pauses like a real human would do naturally while having a conversation.
This really shows how far AI and machine learning has come to and who knows where this will lead to.
- Google lens
Google lens is an AI feature introduced last year for Google photos but now has made its way to the camera app and this is really useful. The key features that I liked - if you hold the lens up to an object like a flower, it will know that it is a flower and show us details like what kind of flower it is and more information on that. You can literally point the lens to any thing and it will find the closest thing to whatever the object is. Like if you're pointing to a mannequin with a top, jeans, shoes, hat - it can immediately identify what they are or show us something that is closest to it. So, you physically wouldn't have to search everything one by one.
Other cool feature is, say you take a picture of a document but it is in an angle, the lens would identify that the picture is of a document and would make the document straight, more brighter and almost like in a page format so that it can be seen clearly and shared easily.
The street view like feature on the maps app was brilliant. Lots of times I've had a situation where the blue direction light is not exactly straight to where it should be so you're trying to walk up and down to figure out where you need to go. But with the Google lens you can literally see the 3d image of where you are and where you should be going which makes the whole process super easy.
- Android P
This is the next version of android after android oreo. They still haven't revealed what "P" stands for but my guess would be "peppermint". This year they have tried to focus on gestures for functions within the UI. Like Apple, Google is going ahead with the implementation of gestures. Things like swiping up for recent apps, sliding at the bottom for multitasking and pressing the bar at the bottom for home all feels quite similar to what apple has done with the iPhone X which was introduced last year.
Other thing they've introduced is something called adaptive battery. I think this is supercool. While the battery technology is not getting better quickly, so software hacks like these would definitely help in conserving the battery (much needed). What they're doing is dedicating battery power to the apps you use the most and to predict what you will use and when to optimize battery life. This will definitely help increase the battery life. They claim up to 30% more battery life with this new feature. I say bring it on!
Dashboard shows you how often you use particular apps. It also shows you the total time and gives you a chart of when and how often you're using that app. I think thats great as we often forget how much time we're spending staring at the screen. So, hopefully this will make us more aware.
App Timer is another feature that allows you to set how long you want to use that app. So, basically a timer for your app. After the time is up, the app is greyed out, which is a reminder that the time is up. This would definitely encourage people to focus on other important things rather than continuing to use the same app.
So, these were the key highlights for me from the keynote. They had bunch of other announcements which were great but would be too long to list all of them here. I will put the link of the whole video below so if you're interested you can check it out:
Reference: