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Saving lives of those left in hot vehicles is aim of car tech at CES

David Scott

By Mick Akers Las Vegas Review-Journal, January 12, 2020—

CES 2020 was full of buzzworthy items that drew attention largely on their entertainment value, but there were some that can be used to help save lives.

After spending the entire week racking up the miles walking between the three main expo halls at the Las Vegas Convention Center — and seeing Hyundai’s jump into the air taxi realm, Mercedes’ futuristic car prototype, the AVTR and a bevy of autonomous vehicle technology — I came across a vehicle advancement that could be very useful in areas like Las Vegas.

Voxx International’s SOLO (Save Our Loved Ones) life sensing radar technology can be used to alert a driver that they’ve left a child or pet behind in a vehicle.

Heat stroke is the second-leading cause of noncrash deaths in children under 15, with 829 children (as of Aug. 12) dying worldwide due to being left in hot cars, according to Voxx. Temperatures inside vehicles can easily eclipse 135 degrees, especially in Las Vegas in the summer.

If the system detects a child or animal is in a car with a dangerous temperature within seconds of the driver leaving, the technology can:

  • Flash lights and honk a vehicle’s horn to get the driver’s and others’ attention.
  • Vent the windows to help lower the temperature.
  • Remotely start a vehicle after a short time limit.
  • Send text messages to registered contacts.
  • Send the GPS location of the vehicle to first responders.

The system can do so by detecting breathing as movements, classifying different movements and respiration rates.

CMS Sport CES Show
A Jeep Wrangler outfitted with Voxx International’s SOLO life sensing technology on display at CES 2020 on Jan. 9, 2020. 

The radar technology can be installed and be nearly undetectable to the human eye, according to Voxx. It can be installed in the headliner, headsets, seatbacks, or overhead, among other locations. It does not include a camera and is non-invasive in motorists’ daily lives.

CMS WorldGroup Headquarters
CMS WorldGroup developed the technology behind the SOLO system

Voxx showcased various other gadgets, including one that turns any backseat into a traveling smart TV, allowing users to control content through a smart phone app. It also announced it was joining forces with Amazon to bring Amazon’s Fire TV into the automotive market. While those are great advancements and entertaining, especially for long drives with families, none have the value of the SOLO system.

With the thousands of gadgets and technological advancements displayed at CES each year, if you look past the attention-grabbing products such as flying taxis and near-human looking robots, you’ll find there are some practical, everyday uses available.

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Barbara Corcoran’s Advice for an 82-Year-Old First-Time Entrepreneur

David Scott

In October, 2018, PNC bank sent an unlikely entrepreneur to New York City for a one-on-one consultation with Barbara Corcoran.

Shark Tank’s, Barbara Corcoran, Carol Staninger and Eric Staninger

Most retirees spend their free time taking up new hobbies or spending quality time with loved ones. Carol Staninger is not most retirees.

January 19, 2019 — Last year Staninger’s home state of Florida accounted for six of the 40 deaths of children left in hot vehicles, the second-highest in the nation according to the nonprofit KidsandCars.org. “These children lose their futures,” Staninger explains in Corcoran’s bright Manhattan office. “They’ll never walk on the beach or have children. Their lives end before they begin.”

Disturbed by these figures, the 82-year-old began conceptualizing a solution: a device that detects the presence of life within seconds of a driver leaving a vehicle via respiratory activity. Once irregular breathing is detected, a loud alarm and visual strobe light are set off in unison.

Carol has financed the production of the device, called SaveOurLovedOnes, using retirement funds. “I’m not in this to make money, I’m here to save lives,” she explains. “The most surprising part of this journey has been the acceptance and enthusiasm from strangers. No one has said that they don’t believe in what I’m doing. It’s been nothing but positivity.”

In a private consultation, Barbara shared her advice for Staninger and SaveOurLovedOnes.

Carol and son, Eric, explain the inner workings behind the SaveOurLovedOnes device.

“When you’re building the foundation of your business, put everything in writing,” she urges. “Many people can talk the talk, but if you don’t have it in writing and something goes awry, there’s no accountability.” From the bill of materials to prototype approval, bringing a new product or service to market involves a lot of moving pieces, making it easy for details to slip through the cracks — and even easier for opportunists to exploit the inexperienced. “You need to know exactly what will be delivered, when it will be delivered, and how much is being spent during every phase,” she continues. “Whenever someone hesitates to put something in writing, I know that I’m going to lose money.”

While it’s important to communicate clearly with internal stakeholders, Barbara also stresses the importance of communicating with customers. “I wouldn’t spend a dime developing a product without knowing who my customer is.”

Many hopeful entrepreneurs use crowdfunding as a means to gather insight on who is interested in their product and just how much they’d pay for it. “What I love about crowdfunding is that you can put the prototype out there and ask people to pledge 10, 20, or 30 dollars,” Barbara explains. “It’s a great way to see how much interest there is and to better understand where that interest is coming from.”

While crowdfunding can be quick and efficient, Corcoran also recommends considering more old-fashioned ways of gathering insights. “Take your product out into the streets. Go to a parking lot and demonstrate what your product does. Ask people what they like, and more importantly, ask them what they don’t like. You can use those objections to guide your strategy and to improve your sales pitch.”

While building a business from the ground up can seem daunting, Barbara believes that today’s entrepreneurs have advantages that their predecessors didn’t.

“You need to be present on social media if you want people to remember your product,” she advises. Data from Adestra shows that roughly 94% of small businesses use social media as a marketing tool. “Technology can level the playing field, especially for small businesses.”

With Barbara’s advice, Carol hopes to officially launch Save Our Loved Ones within the next six months. You can find more information on the company’s official website or by following their Facebook profile.

The SaveOurLovedOnes Consumer Electronics Show 2018 Recap

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With the development of Save Our Loved Ones, a car alarm to prevent children, seniors and the disabled from being left too long in hot cars, well under way, the team for SaveOurLovedOnes decided to showcase their idea at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2018) in Las Vegas.

A great product and an incredible story provided the backdrop for excellent exposure and success during the event. The inventor, Carol Staninger, has now committed her time to solving the problem of saving lives and her passion turned out to be a big hit in the Eureka Park section of CES 2018.

Here are some visual highlights of the trip.

The SaveOurLovedOnes team at CES 2018. From left: Charles Ferrer, Ali Ferrer, John King and Carol Staninger
Carol Staninger’s SaveOurLovedOnes life saving device was featured in the Corporate report from the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show.
Carol Staninger and the SaveOurLovedOnes life saving device was highlighted on the main stage at the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

A 83 anni al Ces con il sensore per non lasciare bambini in auto

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Dopo la pensione Carol Staningern è diventata imprenditrice

Las Vegas (askanews) – Mettere fine alla possibilità di dimenticare in auto un bambino, evitando una possiibile tragedia: per realizzare questo sogno Carol Staninger, 83 anni, una volta in pensione è diventata imprenditrice e ha inventato “Save our loved ones”, cioè salviamo i nostri cari, un dispositivo che rileva la presenza in macchina di un essere vivente, che sia un bambino o un animale dimestico, e fa suonare un allarme per attivare i soccorsi. Ha portato la sua invenzione al Ces 2018, la fiera della tecnologia consumer di Las Vegas, dove ha anche festeggiato il suo compleanno.

“Ho letto di molti bambini che muoiono dopo essere stati lasciati dentro le auto, è una tragedia terribile per chiunque e mi sono detta: ci deve essere un modo per individuare la presenza di un bambino o un animale e di salvarlo. A furia di pensarci su ho capito che l’unico modo per tracciare qualunque forma di vita è sentire se respira. Da qui sono partita”.

A gennaio del 2017 Carol ha fondato ANCER LLC, acronimo delle iniziali del suo nome e di quelle dei due figli Andrea e Eric e ha investito i suoi risparmi nel progetto. Charles Ferrer, presidente e Ceo del gruppo CMS Worldgroup, lo ha creduto e sostenuto, io prototipo presentato al Ces è nato in agosto.

“Quando ti allontani dall’auto si attiva il dispositivo, se non rileva il respiro dentro la macchina non succede nulla, se invece capisce che c’è qualcuno dentro emette un allarme sonoro con la cadenza di un Sos”.

L’azienda lavora per metterlo sul mercato in primavera ad un prezzo intorno ai 300 dollari, e migliorare il dispositivo collegandolo via smartphone ai proprietari dell’auto ma soprattutto a polizia e servizi di emergenza.

“L’obiettivo è installarlo in ogni auto e in ogni Paese, in tutto il mondo, così che nessuno sperimenti mai più questa tragedia”.

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Whoa, That’s a Game-changer!

David Scott Leave a comment

Before the public find their way onto the show floor at CES, the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) President and CEO, Gary Shapiro and Senior Vice President Karen Chupka took to the stage to open the event and highlight some of the work they have been doing on behalf of this growing industry that seems to be going from strength to strength.

Like the industry, this show is a record breaker year after year; the largest business event in the world, occupying almost all the event space in Las Vegas. There are over 2.75 Million net square feet of exhibit space spread across various venues and more than 900 new startups in Eureka Park. One such startup at CES this year is an 82-year-old, Carol Staninger from Florida, who created SOLO, or Save Our Loved Ones, a device that prevents young people, seniors or pets left in a car from dying. Carol is a first-time exhibitor at CES.

It truly is an amazing event with government leaders from the US and around the world including ministers from Canada, Columbia, France, Nigeria and Japan present.

With over 300 square feet of automotive exhibition space, CES is now the fifth largest auto show in the US, testament to the importance of technology to the automotive industry and vice versa. Technologies like self-driving cars and collision avoidance could reduce accidents and save lives by taking most of the human error out of the equation. As well as saving lives and reducing accidents, the technology around mobility, particularly urban mobility, offers greater accessibility to disabled, older or disadvantaged people.

Connectivity is huge at CES and there’s no better example than the smartphone, with 2.4 Billion people using one in 2017, all wanting the best and fastest connection. That’s why 5G is such a large topic of conversation this year, with phenomenal speed comes all kinds of new applications to the device in your hand. 5G will increase speed by 100x and some estimates say that one-third of the world’s population could have 5G within five years, depending on how governments act. In fact, CES has a keynote panel entitled “How 5G will Enable the Future” and we’ll be reporting on that tomorrow.

In 1960, only one-third of the world’s population lived in cities, now it’s roughly half and by 2050 the UN expects that number to rise to two thirds. Big challenges come from this and many see smart cities as a chance to develop solutions to issues like congestion, air quality, security, and mobility. The smart cities trend goes much further than just those companies exhibiting in the CES Smart Cities marketplace, it touches almost every other part of the show and particularly the car makers as they move from producer to systems provider and mobility providers.

Tech is over 10% of the world’s GDP, and with that comes the responsibility to tackle issues like diversity, privacy, security, and employment. Technology is solving some of the world’s largest challenges. Gary offers the example of the Minnesota doctors who used VR to train for the procedure to separate conjoined twins. AI takes on jobs we don’t want to and can’t do and much more including searching for cures to long-term diseases or finding human trafficking victims. What’s more, tech is becoming eco-friendly. Consumer tech’s share of US home energy has actually fallen 25% since 2010, which is amazing given the increased number of devices in use. To great applause, Gary announced that the industry was committing to reducing product emissions in line with the Paris accord.

The issues of jobs and automation often go hand in hand and the CTA was pleased to announce that member companies had announced the creation of more than 200,000 new jobs, while a McKinsey study stated automation would boost the economy. Yes, some jobs may disappear, but others that we hadn’t heard of ten years ago, like Drone Operator, Robot Technician, App Developer and Data Miner, will grow. Turns out there are already more than 12 Million App Developers worldwide.

Technology is driven by innovation and since 2015 the CTA has compared all 50 US states’ ability to support and nurture innovation in its US Innovation Scorecard.  Today the CTA announced its first International Innovation Scorecard, scoring 38 countries and the European Union. Innovation thrives in countries that embrace disruption and change, countries where diversity, freedom and individual right are cherished. The top thirteen countries are defined as Innovations Champions and the top five are Finland, the United Kingdom, Australia, Sweden and the United States. You can see all the numbers at www.internationalscorecard.com. This will be updated every year, and proof of this can be seen in Eureka Park where more than half of the innovators exhibiting are from overseas, many with the support of local and national governments and associations.

Gary closed his presentation talking about the important work they do with government, helping to guide legislation that protects consumers and encourages innovation. The CTA is working tirelessly to make sure technology is as accessible as possible, regardless of a person’s location, status or income. Judging by the number of government representatives present today, this relationship is symbiotic and appreciated by both sides.

The tech industry has much to offer the world and CES is a chance to see what it can do. It’s also a great chance to see the industry exploring the areas of responsibility and risk and dealing with those in an open and collaborative way.

Enjoy CES, more soon…

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A First-time CES Entrepreneur, Age 82

David Scott Leave a comment

By Chris Ip, Engadget

Carol Staninger comes to Vegas.

On the first official morning of CES, Carol Staninger stopped and started her motorized wheelchair through the cavernous Sands Expo and Convention Center, trying — sometimes failing — not to clip the herd of eager attendees who overlooked the octogenarian at chest height.

A service elevator took Staninger, with gray hair, a pale-yellow jumper and silver brooch, to the show floor. She politely received a flyer from an over-perfumed woman representing a French shoe company. She consulted her flip phone to find the rest of the team. And eventually, Staninger arrived at her booth in the trade show’s startup section, opposite an electric-skateboard showcase and a Korean company selling iPhone cases with embedded stun guns.

“I have arrived,” she said to her team.

More than 170,000 people from 150 countries are at this year’s CES, but it’s rare to see an 82-year-old startup entrepreneur. For Staninger, president of Ancer LLC — a blend of her name and her two children’s, Andrea and Eric — it’s her first CES. The last time she even passed through Las Vegas was the other side of the year 2000.

Raised in Winter Haven, Florida, she started working for a local hospital at age 19 and remained there for 42 years, mostly as a secretary. Her first brush with technology was in the 1960s, when she was introduced to an IBM electric typewriter. “I embraced technology, word processors and computers,” she said. “It just made things better.”

In the summer of 2016, well into her retirement, she read news reports of infants who died after being accidentally left in hot cars. Often left in safety seats that face backward in a momentary lapse of caregiver concentration, there were 42 such deaths last year in the US and 742 since 1998; the majority are children 12 months or younger.

“You see a little child, and you know this child will never grow up,” she said. “He’ll never walk on the beach, never have children, never grow up. His life is over before it began.”

Staninger began conceptualizing a monitor for children left in a back seat, shopping it first to the Florida Polytechnic Institute then to Charles Ferrer, president and CEO of Florida manufacturer CMS WorldGroup.

Called Save Our Loved Ones, its prototype is a motion monitor slightly smaller than a home fire alarm attached to the inside of a car’s roof. It links to a keychain fob. When the fob is 15 feet or more from the car, the sensor looks for movement and sets off an alarm if it detects even a slight chest expansion of 1 mm. Under a collaboration between Ancer and CMS Worldgroup, Staninger and Ferrer aim to release the product by fall 2018. They expect it to retail at $300, with the hope that it becomes integrated into car manufacturing in the future.

In the meantime, she’s thinking of new safety-oriented businesses too: for instance, a sensor for heavy mowers to sense depressions in thick vegetation and stop crashes. “One idea leads to another,” she said.

In her five days at CES, she and Ferrer are aiming to license or sell the Save Our Loved Ones — particularly given Staninger’s age and her investment of $170,000 in the project so far. “We’re focusing primarily on the larger communications companies, larger device manufacturers, to gauge their interest,” said Ferrer.

“I’ll go anywhere, speak with anyone,” Staninger said. “I’m just going to experience whatever happens.”

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A Eureka Park Inventor Unlike Any Other

David Scott Leave a comment

As you comb through Eureka Park at CES® 2018, you can discover the next set of game-changing technologies before they make it big—or meet the next wave of tech leaders before they become market movers. But look closely among the more than 900 startups from around the world, and you’ll find an inventor unlike any other – one who’s already had a quite a career.

Carol Staninger is the president of ANCER, LLC, a company based in Florida. She’s a passionate advocate for the welfare of children, after spending decades in the medical administrative field. She’s a fan of Popular Mechanics, Popular Science and Scientific American. And she’s not only exhibiting, but attending her first-ever CES.

Oh, and Carol is also 82-years-old.

“When I first became interested in science and technology, I thought CES was a fascinating place to go—but I never actually went,” says Staninger. “You read so much about it every January. I just never followed through and attended a show.”

So, why come to CES now? After seeing news story after news story about children and dogs accidentally left in hot cars, Carol decided she could make a difference—through technology.

She knew NASA could track astronauts’ wellness without being too intrusive, so Carol worked on a way to track the breathing of people and pets and sound an alarm if something were wrong. But Carol herself says her STEM training adds up to “absolutely none,” so she needed help moving from idea to invention.

While watching the local news, Carol saw a story featuring Charles Ferrer, president and CEO of Florida-based CMS Worldgroup. The two arranged a meeting, struck a deal, decided on a sensor-based device and found a manufacturing partner.

“We went from there, figuring out this step and that step,” says Staninger. “Finally, we got a prototype and we tested it out. So then, Charles decided we better go to CES, because it’s the place to go for consumer technology innovations!”

The result – a car alarm called Save Our Loved Ones (SOLO) to prevent children, seniors and the disabled from being left too long in hot cars. As for getting to market, the pair connected with longtime consumer technology veteran Ron Freeman, CEO of Instrument Sales & Service (ISS).

“First I thought, what a great product—and then, what an incredible story!” says Freeman. “After her own successful career in the medical field, Carol has committed her time to solving this problem and saving lives. I think her innovation will be a big hit in Eureka Park!”

And Carol’s goal for CES 2018 (other than seeing as much innovative tech as possible)?

“I would like to have somebody buy the company,” says Staninger. “Our innovation can go into every vehicle worldwide—it’s not dependent on one single brand or auto manufacturer. I’d love to see SOLO in every single car!”
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Where Others Failed, 82-year-old Retiree Carol Staninger Creates Device To End Hot Car Tragedies

David Scott 1 Comment

Where others failed, 82-year-old retiree Carol Staninger creates device ‘to end hot car tragedies’ of children; featured at CES 2018

CLEARWATER, Fla., Dec. 4, 2018 – Since her husband died five years ago, Florida retiree Carol Staninger has had some extra time on her hands. But she’s not the type to drift off aimlessly.

Carol was troubled to see continuous news stories about children who were being left behind in the overheated passenger cabins of cars and trucks, and after reading about one tragedy too many, she decided to do something about it.

She spent the better part of 2017 taking her concept to the folks at CMSWorldGroup, a Clearwater-based firm with expertise in the design and manufacturing of pretty much anything within reason. Now they have a final product – which Staninger has dubbed SaveOurLovedOnes™, that can detect any human or animal breathing inside a vehicle.

The sensor technology her device employs is different, better and more accurate from the temperature-triggered and pressure-plate sensors that have dogged other devices with a similar goal, proving unreliable. The system will check for the breathing cycle of individuals and pets when the driver leaves the proximity of the car. If there is any indication of life, the device will emit a loud sound and flashing light in a S.O.S. cadence of Morse Code.

The timing couldn’t be better, with the U.S. Congress and states like Florida already proposing legislation to tackle the problem head on, with specific requests in the bills for a device exactly like SaveOurLovedOnes™. And Carol’s been getting noticed by CES and the media.

Want to see SaveOurLovedOnes™ in action and meet Carol in person? Check both out at Booth #51881 in the Eureka Park section of the Consumer Electronics Show coming up – CES 2018, in Las Vegas, Jan. 9-12.