‘Guardian Angel Technology smart phone by 2020’

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Bhubaneswar: Think of a smart phone which can anticipate
anything ominous coming your way, being location specific, like a tornado,
cyclone, tsunami or heavy rainfall, and issue a warning before it hits you.
“Guardian Angel Technology” can make this possible and every
man, woman and child on this planet is entitled to get the relevant information
of interest,” Prof. Raj Reddy, a pioneer and said to be the tallest academician
in the field of artificial intelligence in the world, said on Monday.
“We visualize that all the seven billion people in the world
will have a smart phone in their hands by 2020 and this technology will make
life easier,” Prof. Reddy, presently at the Carnegie Mellon University, USA
said while delivering a talk on “Guardian Angel Technologies: Providing Right
Information to Right People at Right Time” at the SOA University.
Guardian Angel is a concept taken from the Bible which means
that every person in the world has been assigned with an angel to protect that
person.
The smart phone, using this technology, would automatically
start and stop and alert the person even if it was switched off. It can even
help a person know about the likelihood of an accident and avert it.
Prof. Reddy, an Indian-American computer scientist and
winner of the Turing Award, the equivalent of the Nobel Prized in Computer
Science, and decorated with Padma Bhushan, said in the increasing digital world
of the 21st century, every person should be able to get a timely warning about
potential calamities like cyclones and flooding, very much in evidence in a
state like Odisha. “The concept of getting the right information to every
person in a timely manner is a big idea. It assumes that all seven billion of
us should be able to get information of direct interest, filtering out all the
rest of the data glut.”
“A Guardian Angel,” he said, “is an autonomic, nonintrusive,
device-independent virtual avatar for every person on the planet that is
always-on, always-working and always-learning.”
“It whispers in your ear that a tornado is heading your way,
providing you a couple of hours time to pull out of that place and reach a
place of safety before it strikes you,” Prof. Reddy said.
The technology, using big data analytics, could help water
pumps irrigating cropped areas by informing them when to water the fields and
when to stop.      
Prof. Reddy said the technology would create a social
network of smart phones which would be talking among themselves and exchanging
information. “The guardian angels will be aware of everything happening and
communicate the information to the owner of the phone.
Right information, he explained, was all information
impacting life, liberty and happiness of every individual and it would contain
material about safety, security and well-being including natural or man-made
emergencies and about disruption of basic necessities of life such as water,
electricity, food, health and transportation.
The cost, however, was a factor, he pointed out, but said
though a sensor intensive smart phone cost 200 US dollars per unit now, it was
estimated that the cost would come down to 50 US dollars by 2020. Funding from
the government and other stakeholders including the smart phone manufacturers,
telecom service providers and IT product and service companies could help each
person get a smart phone free.
“And the increase in economic activity and productivity
would help these stakeholders to recover the costs in one year,” he said.

Prof. P.K.Nanda, Dean (Research) of the University
introduced Prof. Reddy to the large number of faculty members present on the
occasion. Prof. Damodar Acharya, former Director of IIT, Kharagpur and
presently Chairman, Advisory Committee of SOA University, Prof. B.K.Sarap,
Deputy Chairman of the University Dr. M.K.Mallick, Director (Admission) and
senior faculty members were present.

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