The market of intelligent assistance is rapidly growing. A new device has officially been announced to compete with the projects from Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. Lighthouse will use computer vision to detect and monitor activity within a home.
Intelligent assistants are an extremely popular topic in the past few weeks. Amazon released its Echo Show touchscreen speaker with Alexa on board. Microsoft has put a lot of effort to upgrade the Microsoft Bot Framework and the newly released Cortana Skills Kit. Lighthouse is another player that joins this race.
The company behind the project has also announced they’ve raised $17 million since founding. It was led by Eclipse Ventures with participation from Playground Ventures. At the company’s base is Andy Rubin’s incubator for startups called Playground Global. Andy Rubin is a former Google employee and a co-creator of Android who has run the incubator since 2015. It was invested in by Google, HP, Foxconn, Redpoint Ventures, Seagate Technology and others. The Lighthouse company has 30 employees.
The device was made by Alex Teichman and Hendrik Dahlkamp. The latter was an engineer at Google X and a winner of the DARPA Grand Challenge for autonomous vehicles. Both gentlemen met at Stanford University and worked on adopting 3D sensors and self-driving cars. The project has been actively developed since 2015.
Unlike Alexa or Cortana, Lighthouse is not a partner for friendly banter. It won’t tell jokes or play music. The device was designed to give insight to users when they are away from home. 3D sensors can identify people, pets, kids etc. For example, when a child enters the house, Lighthouse sends a message to the app. The device will recognize whether a family member enters the house or some unknown person. You can watch the promo video below.
The device offers voice communication so a user can send a voice message that will be played via speaker, a feature that many people have been asking to bring to Google Home since its release.
Users can order Lighthouse by paying annual installments. The first year costs $399, second $499 and third $599. Unhappy users can ask for a refund after a year of service.
Are you planning to get Lighthouse? Let us know in the comments!
Source: VentureBeat
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