My second day of CES was spent at Tech West, The Venetian Expo (formerly Sands) and the Eureka Park Startup and Country Pavilions exhibitions. These floors were dense with exhibitors supporting the widest range of categories at the show, including accessibility, AI, anti-pathogens, driver assistance, business, gaming, evaluation of health, medical screening, machine vision, natural language recognition, robotics, smart home, smart cities, speech detection, UX, water harvesting, water protection and XR.

Here are some of the exhibitors I had the opportunity to meet on the second day of this year’s show.

EAGLE

At Eureka Park, EAIGLE showcased a complete AI-based ‘all-in-one’ kiosk with contactless visitor management, automated wellness screening, vaccine verification, people counting, capacity management and screening. heat from the crowd.

Gasoline

Essence Security, one of the world’s largest providers of alarm system solutions, has won two CES Innovation Awards with its MyShield 5G connected smoke generator and 5G Umbrella connected personal security alert device, capable of connect directly to public security response points (PSAP) and to the central station monitoring providers. Be sure to check out this article from Security company chief magazine Paul Rothman to learn more about Essence’s Umbrella solution and its expansion into commercial enterprise security deployments.

InfiRay

If you’re driving an Audi S7 Sportback, BMW M760Li xDrive, or 2021 Cadillac Escalade, you’re already using InfiRay’s uncooled IR sensors for driver-assisted guidance. At CES, the company unveiled the first 8m uncooled thermal camera sensor, which could have far-reaching industrial potential for things like body-worn cameras.

Isorg

For the security and identification market, Isorg presented its Fingerprint-on-Display (FoD) modules for better fingerprint authentication of smartphones and improved dry finger performance in harsh conditions. The sensor modules support FAP30 and FAP 60; up to four fingers simultaneously touching the screen of a smartphone. Four-finger sensors scan four fingers of each hand followed by the thumbs (4-4-2). Each 10-print profile produces a seamless full record, which is why these scanners are the fastest option and the FBI’s preferred choice for enrollment. Four-finger scans also provide increased accuracy for identification operations.

Isorg’s next step is to showcase these innovations as a trusted partner for smartphone and security solution providers involved in mobile banking, border control, first responders and electronic access control.

Femtosense AI

CES 2022 has become a living catalog of AI accelerators, systems on a chip (SoC), and for some, like Femtosense, the introduction of an emerging category – the hyper-efficient AI processor for the edge. on-board, also known as the Sparse Processing Unit (SPU).

About six years ago, when coding for ADAS was deployed in luxury vehicles to help owners park, saving lives by braking early and avoiding people in reverse and recognizing objects approaching faster than Driver reaction time, the emphasis seemed to be on making stable projects, even if that meant millions of lines of code. Today’s vehicles can require over 100 million lines, a complex structure, and a dense neural network. Higher density means more processing power, resulting in cost, heat, power, and ultimately for an electric vehicle, less mileage.

For a 911 operator trying to hear if the call is an unarmed domestic argument or involves gun violence, having an SPU with an effective code that recognizes multiple people talking amid background noise can make the difference between the wrong team. intervention sent or lives saved.

Femtosense AI, with its SPU, was able to demonstrate speech recognition in the extremely noisy environment of trade shows, resulting in unaltered speech and background noise in real time. Legacy noise cancellation technologies are still sold in consumer electronics today, and they are closer to sound suppression than preservation of audio frequencies.

With AI-based video processing with objects moving in different directions amid complex burning buildings, such as during a riot, video evidence may not be rendered accurately. With the Femtosense AI SPU, the scarcity of settings and activation can reduce power requirements by 100 times and memory used by 10 times.

In addition to using ultra-efficient neural network processors, Femtosense AI provides everything needed to move from neural network model to SPU, tasks typically performed by a solution provider who may not be as familiar with it. processor development.

Visual behavior

Visual Behavior works with companies like Waymo and NVIDIA, creating types of robotic perception including automated guided vehicles (AGVs), advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

Visual Behavior uses a remarkable new paradigm focused on scene representation rather than sensors. It is an internal, persistent, symbolic representation of the world that is continually being updated. Their core technology is an artificial visual cortex, AI-powered software for understanding the scene.

Use cases include better driver safety in poor environmental conditions, better avoidance of multiple obstacles, and even object tracking among similar objects.

About the Author:

Steve Surfaro is Chairman of the Security Industry Association (SIA) Public Safety Working Group and has over 30 years of experience in the security industry. He is an expert in smart cities and buildings, cybersecurity, forensic video, data science, command center design, and first responder technologies. Follow him on Twitter, @stevessurf.

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc is a cult classic game that gained notoriety in the West thanks, among other things, to an online game that served as the first entry point for the English-speaking series. It was officially released in English on PlayStation Vita three years later, and is finally making its way to Nintendo systems for the first time on Switch. It’s a game that I have a lot of complex feelings about first playing in 2021, and unfortunately that’s only made worse by the fact that the Switch version has some pretty clear issues that betray one the cheapest, laziest port jobs I’ve ever seen.

For those unfamiliar with Danganronpa is a visual murder mystery novel with a limited cast of recurring characters. It opens on the first day of school with freshman Makoto Naegi preparing for his first day at Hope’s Peak Academy, an elite high school where every student is an “ultimate” – someone who is the best in a particular talent. Upon arriving, Makoto discovers that the school is not what it appears to be, and he and fourteen other Ultimate students have been trapped in a sadistic game led by a mechanical teddy bear named Monokuma.

Monokuma explains that they will be forced to spend the rest of their lives at Hope’s Peak and that he will only allow someone to escape if they kill another student and get away with it. Of course, once the murder has occurred, the surviving students must retaliate in a class-action lawsuit where they try to determine the identity of the murderer, known as “the blackened”. If they succeed in uncovering the blackened, the criminal will be executed. If they fail then black escapes and everyone other is executed instead.

The gameplay is divided into three phases: school life, investigation and class tests. During school life, you’ll spend a lot of time watching the main story cutscenes and spending time with your favorite characters to get to know them better. Once a body has been discovered, the investigation phase begins as you examine the crime scene for evidence and roam the rest of the school for leads.

Class Trials are Danganronpa’s bread and butter, and this is where the gameplay really shines and sets it apart from other murder mystery games. Rather than a simple testimony where you can carefully cross-examine one character at a time, class trials are defined by non-stop debate where everyone tries to say their peace about events at the same time. The nonstop debate takes place in real time and is actually a kind of first person shooter as well; the evidence you have gathered is described as “truth bullets” and you must shoot the correct truth bullet at a conflicting statement.

Careful aim and timing are important, as irrelevant chatter from characters around the room (called “white noise”) will physically appear on screen and interfere with your balls. Since all of this happens in real time with an actual timer, the emphasis is on being able to quickly uncover the mystery on your own under pressure. This encourages the player to really pay attention to the details of a case instead of wasting time flipping through each piece of evidence only to suddenly spot a contradiction.

There are also two mini-games that appear in Class Trials: Hangman’s Gambit where you answer a question by quickly knocking down the right letters, and Bullet Time Battle which is a bad paced game. None of these mini-games are very good, Hangman’s Gambit tends to be hilarious, and Bullet Time Battle is incredibly frustrating to the point that I’m pretty sure the beat timing isn’t programmed properly. Fortunately, these mini-games are rare, with each appearing only once per try on average. I think it’s telling that the sequel, Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, drastically changed how these two minigames work to the point that it literally calls a whole new minigame “(Improved) Hangman’s Gambit” .

But in a visual novel, nothing is more important than the story, so let me dig a little deeper into Danganronpa’s tale than usual. The greatest strength of the story is that the whole game takes place with the same core of characters. Unlike most mystery murders where new characters are introduced to fill the necessary roles with each successive case, Danganronpa’s recurring plot offers unique opportunities to make each case important to those who pursue it. Each character is blessed with being more developed than what you’re used to seeing in this genre of a game, and the fact that the murderer is still someone you’ve spent time with and learned to knowing increases the stakes of each mystery. . The victims are not anonymous people, and the killers are people you have learned to trust.

In addition, the circumstances of each murder were never really straightforward. It’s hard to go into detail without spoiling the story, but there was always a certain plot twist that made each case go beyond a simple question of “this person killed this other person.” “. The compelling plot threads and character motivations that slowly unfolded over the course of the game gave me a sense of urgency to see more, and once the game really kicked off I had hard to let go despite the problems he may have had.

And boy, did he have any problems.

Danganronpa’s writing seems to have a hard time managing the flow of information to the player, and I was often frustrated with what the narrative decided was worth focusing on. A major reveal towards the end of the game is heavily foreshadowed to the point that I’d be really shocked if someone came to the end without predicting it. You will be predict this revelation before it happens.

But when the reveal moment finally arrives, the focus is on the shock of the reveal itself, and a true half hour of dialogue is spent solely on getting the in-game characters to take the reveal at face value. So much time and energy is wasted in getting the characters to draw conclusions that you, the player, have made hours There is, then when someone finally asks what it all means – a question you’ve undoubtedly been asking yourself for a long time – they’re just told it doesn’t matter and the game doesn’t bring it up anymore. never.

Danganronpa’s characters have a terrible habit of not asking questions that any sane person would ask, inadvertently making moments that could have been clever as mistakes. A particular part of the story is about learning new information from the victim’s dying message, but this twist comes with the problem that there is no explanation for how the victim knows this information. The message itself doesn’t make sense, and there’s no reason the victim said it, and none of the surviving characters fix this, making it seem like a hole. in the plot although a big reveal much later in the game provides a reason the character knew this. This is an intentional foreshadowing, but because no one seems to be asking the questions a sane person would ask, it sounds like a mistake.

No character suffers from this problem more than Makoto himself. Since he’s the character from the point of view, everything that happens in the story is filtered through his thoughts and actions, and he’s pretty slow to take in. He never perceives any of the omens the game spoon feeds you, and sometimes he will actually resist looking at certain things during an investigation in order to prevent the player from discovering something the writers aren’t ready to. whatever you know.

I vividly remember a time when the characters were all looking for a missing person, and I was sure they were in a nearby storage room. Upon arriving in the storage room, Makoto found that the door was locked and he just noticed that it was “strange” and that he would not question her further. When I gave up and left the room, I ran into another character in the hallway who told me the missing person had been found in the storage room. A good point of view of the character should help the player to notice the details of the story, but the main character of Danganronpa spends more time actively holding the player.

So what’s up with the Switch port? Well, somehow there are some pretty significant framerate issues both when walking around school and during classroom practice. The framerate in practice gets especially bad towards the end of the game, as white noise begins to fill the screen more aggressively, making it difficult to properly aim your truth bullets. I know technically that’s the whole point of white noise, but I felt that hurting game performance wasn’t how the developers wanted to increase the difficulty.

It’s pretty weird that a port of a PSP game is struggling on Switch, but this version also happens to be based on the Anniversary Edition released to mobile devices in 2020, and some pretty big issues are being inherited from it. A strange lack of care has been taken to the new section of the character gallery, and the vocal lines are tagged with captions that appear to be generated from speech recognition software. “Lies will get you nowhere” is labeled “the lie will make you known” and “I refuse to vote” becomes “I protect the vote.” ”

Things get worse in the actual game script where there is a bug that simply causes any dialogue line with a percent symbol to fail to load. The dialogue stops where the symbol would be and skips the rest of the text box altogether until you move to the next line, making some conversations completely unintelligible. This bug also exists in the mobile version of the game, and based on current YouTube playback of the iOS version, it still has not been fixed. The only conclusion I can come to is that either this version wasn’t tested from start to finish or they just didn’t care to fix such an obvious and critical bug in two different versions of the game. .

I find it hard to sum up Danganronpa in terms of whether I like him or not. Its overall structure, both narrative and gameplay, is inventive and unique to the point that it feels fresh even a decade after its original release, but I’ve spent a lot of time with the game feeling frustrated and disappointed. Despite this, I was constantly obliged to return to it over and over again; I didn’t want to let go, and as of writing this review I’m already two chapters away from its sequel. It’s a game that, in my opinion, fails to reach its potential in any important way, but it also manages to overcome its own failures thanks to its strong sense of style and ingenuity.

Unfortunately, I have much less conflict over the quality of the Switch port in particular. While none of the issues are significant enough to really prevent someone from enjoying this game, the fact that such fundamental issues from a previous release have not been addressed makes it difficult to justify this release against the others. I think it’s worth looking and trying Danganronpa for yourself, but I can’t recommend doing it while playing a port of the poorly performing mobile version on Switch.

A unified, deeply integrated voice and conversational AI system will help brands put customers in control of their experiences

LivePerson, Inc., a global leader in conversational AI, announced two major strategic acquisitions: VoiceBase, a leader in real-time speech recognition and conversational analytics; and Tenfold, the world’s most advanced customer engagement platform for integrating communications systems with leading CRM and support services.

Through these acquisitions, three powerful technologies combine to create a unified, AI-enabled system for the customer experience: the superior voice recognition and analytics capabilities of VoiceBase, the advanced voice, messaging and messaging integrations. Tenfold’s CRM, and LivePerson’s conversational AI and asynchronous messaging. Brands can now enable natural, conversational consumer experiences that convey context and continuity across all channels, powered by a single voice desktop and automated messaging experience.

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The acquisition of VoiceBase and Tenfold accelerates LivePerson’s vision to help brands gain full ownership and visibility into engagements in channels of interest to customers, including voice and messaging. These companies are bringing voice intelligence and AI technologies to support LivePerson’s future voice capabilities within its world-class conversational AI messaging platform.

“Brands want to accelerate their use of voice and conversational AI with connective tissue deep in their systems,” said Rob LoCascio, Founder and CEO of LivePerson. “It is a great honor for me to welcome the experts from VoiceBase and Tenfold to the LivePerson family as we build the unified AI system behind 100% of conversations with the world’s most innovative brands.

VoiceBase

VoiceBase is a world-class business voice analysis platform, powered by advanced speech recognition technology, that transforms voice and messaging conversations into easily interpreted data and actionable insights. It works with leading brands like Grubhub, Twilio, Delta Dental, UserTesting, and Slice, and offers out-of-the-box integrations with major phone and contact center systems including RingCentral, Genesys, NICE CXone, Avaya, Twilio and now. No one live.

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The combination of LivePerson’s VoiceBase and Conversational AI capabilities gives brands unparalleled visibility into customer intentions, feelings, frustrations and successes from 100% of conversations via messaging and voice, as well as third-party voice, telephone or contact center systems. This insight makes it easier to improve the customer experience, uncover sales opportunities and increase revenue, as well as understand agent productivity and utilization.

“Eighty-six percent of shoppers are willing to pay more for a better customer experience, which means huge opportunities open up for brands as we combine VoiceBase’s voice analytics technology with the cloud.” Conversational and LivePerson’s AI, ”said Walter Bachtiger, Co-Founder and Chief Revenue Officer. of VoiceBase. “We’re excited to team up with a pioneering industry leader who shares our vision for improving conversations through actionable, AI-powered insights. “

Tenfold

Tenfold is a leading customer experience integration platform that enables organizations to modernize customer experience tools without having to replace existing systems. A partner of choice for leading CRM and voice service providers, Tenfold provides tremendous power to transform voice networks or contact center providers without impacting day-to-day operations. Its customers include leading brands such as Wayfair, TransAmerica and Sixt.

With Tenfold, LivePerson messaging becomes available to agents anywhere – integrated into a CRM, on the agent’s desktop, or into the brand’s own integrated systems. As a mixed system independent of the voice platform, the offering will also provide brands with unmatched flexibility to work with any voice provider and complement LivePerson messaging without affecting agent experience and productivity.

“Today marks an exciting day for Tenfold, our employees and our customers as we join LivePerson,” said Jeff Cotten, CEO of Tenfold. “We have solved a difficult challenge by delivering the most relevant data directly into every customer interaction, and with LivePerson, we will extend this model to messaging to deliver a true end-to-end customer experience platform. “

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[To share your insights with us, please write to [email protected]]

Dubler 2: Transform your voice into MIDI, instantly.

As an extension of their award-winning Dubler Studio kit, Vochlea Music is launching today Doubler 2 an advanced, software-only voice-to-MIDI desktop application that lets you turn your musical ideas into reality, using voice.

LONDON- Amateur or pro, the most instinctive way for a musician to communicate an idea for a melody, bassline or rhythm is to use their voice, our integrated tool for musical expression.

While musical ideas can be easy to sing along to, accurately capturing those ideas using traditional instruments or MIDI controllers can be difficult, even for the most accomplished musician.

“Voice-to-midi is like a dream come true, imagine how many times you have had a melody or vibration and you haven’t been able to translate it exactly the way you want. Now you can. “- ROMANTIST

Presentation Doubler 2, a standalone, software-only desktop voice to MIDI application from Vochlea Music that can turn your musical ideas into reality, just by vocalizing them.

Using all the timbral qualities of the voice, Doubler 2 allows musicians to trigger samples, control synths, play chords, manipulate filters and effects, lock a key, follow pitch, pitch bend, and control envelopes, velocity and MIDI mapping values ​​simultaneously, depending on how they produce their unique sounds.

“With Dubler 2 I can do chord progressions that unless I have rubber fingers I just couldn’t play.” – GAKA

Now with Doubler 2, musicians can intuitively hum a synth pattern, beatbox to trigger a virtual drum kit, or manipulate effects and filters with an “eee”, “ooo” or “aaa” sound. All of them live completely.

“I’m really in love with the CC vowel mapping feature on Dubler 2. I have mine set up so that when I sing ‘aaa’ you get some decay control and then others like ‘eee’ stutter. It’s just the perfect thing for singers and beatboxers. Really anyone who wants to express themselves with their voice.
– PORTRAIT XO

Doubler 2 works with all DAWs and training your voice to software takes less than 30 seconds, allowing musicians to start creating virtually immediately, delivering workflows at record speed, while simultaneously providing expression and control unmatched.

Users can access for free 7 day trial on vochlea.com and be able to quickly integrate it into their workflow by calibrating it with their favorite dynamic microphone, allowing them to immediately experience the power of their voice in their workflow.

“What Dubler 2 opened up for me, what is really, really useful, is being able to use my own microphone. Because as a drummer, if I sing while playing the drums, most microphones pick up all the drum sounds. Each drum has its own pitch, has its own tone, and it’s louder than my voice. But it allowed me to use specially designed vocal mics with close-up shooting patterns and allowed me to sing very close to the microphone and get pure Dubler 2 sound. ”- CHIMNYO

Features of Dubler 2:

• Your voice in MIDI, instantly: Dubler 2 lets you use your voice as a live MIDI controller with low latency for real-time live control.
• Autonomous : Dubler 2 will work with any DAW such as Ableton, Logic, Reason, FL Studio, ProTools, GarageBand etc.
• Use your own microphone: A new calibration process allows you to make Dubler 2 compatible with your favorite dynamic microphone. (The Dubler microphone will still be available for purchase).
• Suitable for you: Dubler 2 learns your voice in less than 30 seconds.
• Balance: 14 scales with advanced key detection and suggestion.
• Ground: Fixed keys for pitch assist and live pitch tracking to control melodic instruments and synths.
• Voice timbre mapped to 3 DC outputs: Control of voice activated effects, mix, filters and more.
• Advanced chords: Library of chord presets, voice options, custom chord options and more.
• Advanced pitch bend: IntelliBend– a smart pitch bend that will anchor you to a note until you want to get away from it and TruBend– a pitch bend that precisely follows your voice.
• Sensitive velocity and envelope tracking.
• Percussive recognition to select and trigger up to 8 samples.
• Multi-channel MIDI output: Allows simultaneous control of pitch and percussion.
• Use non-vocal sounds as triggers: Dubler 2 can also be trained to click, clap, tap, etc.
• More accessible: Dubler 2 will be software only with a 7-day free trial available for users before purchase.
• Customizable audio settings: Allows professional configurations with advanced audio interfaces.
• Compatible with external MIDI hardware and devices.
• Integrated audio: A selection of synth presets and a sample pack of 808, allow you to play with Dubler 2 without connecting to a DAW (a DAW is always required for recording).
• Ultra light on the CPU: A completely rebuilt engine with performance improvements, making Dubler 2 ultra light on the CPU.
• A new user interface: A more intuitive tab-based user interface and design, which makes Dubler 2 easier to navigate than Dubler 1.

https://vochlea.com/