What should companies be thinking about, and what do they need to know, when it comes to achieving climate goals?
There are three things that companies need to know when it comes to setting climate goals. The first thing I would say is that if you're going to set a climate goal as a business, it needs to be a businesswide effort. It cannot live within just the corporate responsibility or the sustainability team as it often does. It really has to be incorporated across the entire company.
The second is that if a company is going to set a climate target, it needs to be able to commit budget and resources to meeting those goals. It can be expensive to incorporate these goals across operations, so that is something that companies need to be prepared for.
Finally, there must be room for creativity and flexibility. It’s important to recognize there are a lot of things we don’t know yet. You have to be able to jump in without knowing everything, which is hard for a lot of companies. It's risky, but ultimately worth it.
What's been the limiting factor to effect change and reach those goals?
Some of the rate-limiting factors are that all these companies are setting targets, whether or not they’re aligned with the Science Based Targets initiative, and everybody’s competing for renewable projects. But fundamentally the biggest challenge is that companies are trying to balance growing and turning a profit while also doing right by their stakeholders and the environment — but these two priorities are not yet weighted equally. We’re getting there, with shareholders and investors urging, but it’s not quite even yet.
What needs to change for it to be even?
Some things are happening already. Stakeholders are leading the charge here for more transparency and information around how products and services are made, for more data to be released publicly. Everyone from investors and shareholders to policymakers, employees and customers have interests here. How a company operates and how it makes its products are important questions, no matter the industry.
And how can technology help with that?
This is a big question. As a first step, companies need to look at the data and understand their sustainability baseline. For some companies, just getting their environmental data in order is a big undertaking, but you can’t really set a target until you know where you’re starting from.
Once a company understands its sustainability baseline, it is important to identify areas that the company can feasibly make more sustainable, and then address those areas. Implementing technology that improves connectivity and provides greater insight into operations will prove to be the solution for many companies. An example of this could be a manufacturing facility installing energy sensors into its machinery that can monitor energy consumption in real time and turn off different machines when not in use. Another example might be a farmer using drones for pesticide distribution. The drone collects and interprets real-time data, which allows for more efficient and accurate spraying so that crops are covered with less pesticide residue. It all comes down to digitization — as companies and eventually industries digitally transform, they will also become more sustainable.
What role does 5G play in combatting climate change?
5G is the core infrastructure to driving digital transformation, and as a result, will contribute in a significant way to combating climate change. We produced a U.S. report that highlights the many ways 5G technology can achieve critically needed sustainability benefits. The findings show that 5G will enable the reduction of 374 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions, save 410 billion gallons of water nationwide, reduce pesticide usage in the United States by 50% and increase fuel efficiency by 20% through optimized lane management systems and traffic management systems enabled by C-V2X. There are so many use cases that illustrate that when 5G is fully realized, it will help reduce emissions in massive amounts that will have an actual impact on the planet.
How has Qualcomm managed its own commitment to address climate change?
In 2014, we committed to a 30% greenhouse gas emission reduction goal for Scope 1 and Scope 2, which is tied to our own operations and the electricity we buy. Since committing to that goal, we have reduced our Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 20%. Last November, we took it a step further and set a net zero goal across Scopes 1, 2 and 3 by 2040, and we have interim targets set to align ourselves with the Science Based Targets initiative.
We were the first large cap semiconductor company to make a net zero commitment. We know the Earth’s population is growing: It's expected to grow from 7 billion to 10 billion people by 2050, which means there's going to be more energy being used. We set this goal to highlight that this an important issue and something we are prioritizing throughout the company. Things have to change, and we are doing our part to change the status quo.
What’s that journey been like?
It's been really incredible. We are focused on what we can do to reduce our own operational footprint and how we can help our partners across industries reduce theirs as well. Examples of this might be through leveraging 5G to digitally transform their business or developing energy-efficient products. What many people don’t know is that Qualcomm has been building energy-efficient products since our founding — power efficiency is in our DNA — so we are really well-positioned to play a larger role in the digital and green transformation of industries.
What's the one thing that companies implementing new technology to digitally transform their business and meet climate goals often overlook?
There is pressure to get things done quickly, but it’s important to pause and look at what makes sense for the business. Every company is different — what makes sense for Qualcomm, which is primarily fabless, may not make sense for another company with a huge manufacturing footprint. If you’re a retailer with a huge supply chain doing a ton of shipping, it’s a different model.
All of this goes back to sustainability and, frankly, ESG more broadly needing to be a businesswide effort, with people from across the company working on these issues. What makes sense for the tourism industry is not necessarily going to work for a semiconductor company. But both can reduce their footprint.
The Amazon Glow is the first interactive projection device sold by Amazon, and it could be a stepping stone for the company to use the technology in other areas.
This ultimately resulted in the Amazon Glow, a unique device for kids that combines an 8-inch LCD screen designed for a traditional video calling experience with an additional 19.2" projected touch screen that lets children manipulate objects, incorporate physical play pieces and even “scan” their own toys. The Glow allows kids to read books, play games and create art together with grandparents and other trusted adults participating from afar via mobile devices.
The Amazon Glow combines an LCD screen with an interactive projector.Image: Amazon.
The Amazon Glow launched as an invite-only early access product last year and became widely available in the U.S. at the end of March. It’s the first interactive projection device sold by Amazon, and it could be a stepping stone for the company to use the technology in other areas, including next-generation smart home devices, or even the enterprise.
It’s also a fascinating story of trial-and-error development, and small, scrappy teams ideating inside of giant corporations. “We knew what we wanted to do, but we didn't really have an idea how to do it,” said Amazon Senior Hardware Engineer Martin Aalund, a founding member of the Glow team.
The Amazon Glow was first announced at the company’s hardware event last fall. Amazon also used the annual showcase to announce countless other new and upgraded devices, but the Glow stood out, both for its technology as well as its intended purpose: Amazon built the Glow to give grandparents and other remote family members and caregivers a chance to be more involved in the lives of children ages 3 to 9. It’s a need that became very obvious during the pandemic — a time that also demonstrated how traditional video calling solutions weren’t up to the task in a more remote world.
“They're designed for conversation between adults, not for playing with children,” said Behrang Assadi, head of Marketing for Amazon Glow. “Kids are terrible cameramen. They tend to not sit still. They get easily distracted by other features of phones, and sometimes they just put it down and walk away.” Aalund agreed. “You get good pictures of the floor and the ceiling and up the child's nose, but very rarely of what you're interested in,” he said.
Sketch of a first prototype: a robot that would follow the child around during video calls.Image: Amazon
Aalund’s team wanted to overcome those challenges and allow remote callers to play a more active role, despite potentially being thousands of miles apart. “We wanted the adult to be able to reach into that child's space and have a meaningful interaction [as if] they're in the same room,” Aalund said.
After formulating that end goal in a white paper, the Glow team began with weekly design sprints, toying with a range of ideas and building prototypes to test them out. “We looked at using cranes and robotic arms to grab objects and move them around,” Aalund said. Then, the team had a first of many lightbulb moments: Why build robot arms if you already have a pair of human arms at your disposal? “We got some early feedback [telling us that] we can use the child as a manipulator,” he said.
Still, the team wasn’t ready to give up on the idea of building a robot altogether. The thinking was: If kids weren’t able to stay in one place, then why not follow them around? “I went out and bought a bunch of VEX Robotics kits, and we built up little prototypes and drove them around,” Aalund said. “We created a little mobile robot platform and drove that around with a camera on it.”
The team soon discovered, however, that a robot, especially one that followed a child around, came with its own set of issues. “We realized that there's challenges with a remote person navigating [the robot], especially in a real home that may have stairs, obstacles and clutter on the floor,” Aalund said.
Of course, that’s not a new problem to anyone looking to build consumer robots — Amazon included. “We later discovered there was another team working to solve a lot of those problems,” Aalund said. “But that's the Astro story.”
With robots out of the question, the team began looking at alternatives. One idea involved adding a camera that could follow the child around the room with a pan and tilt mechanism while keeping the device itself in place. Add a laser pointer, and you could even play I-Spy with the child. “We thought that was a pretty cool concept, but we were concerned with the laser and eye safety,” Aalund recalled.
Another Glow prototype: a giant projector.Image: Amazon
The team briefly considered a flashlight as an eye-safe alternative, but struggled to get it to work with its existing prototype hardware. “The little handheld mechanism we had wasn't really strong enough to move a flashlight around,” Aalund said. So he decided to fake it. “We can simulate this,” he recalled thinking. “Let's just grab a projector, shining down on the floor where we're playing games, and let's just create a flashlight and move it around the playspace to highlight things.”
The projector was initially just meant to be a quick hack to save a prescheduled demo — but the results were so compelling that the approach quickly became a centerpiece of the Glow hardware. “It set off a lightbulb,” Aalund said. “We could read books, we could actually play games where the remote person has virtual pieces and the child has physical pieces.”
Developing the Glow included a lot of tests with children and their caregivers, which helped refine the projection technology. At first, the Glow team was thinking about just using a traditional projector. “Initially, it was primarily for that remote person to reach in and augment the child's environment, to move light around, to move virtual pieces,” Aalund said. “[When] we put it in front of some kids, the first thing they did was try [to] pinch and zoom and touch and interact.”
That’s how the team realized it had to make the projector interactive, and effectively turn the projected space into a touch screen. “This was actually fairly far along in our development process,” Aalund said. The team ultimately settled on using an IR camera for hand tracking that could be used in a variety of lighting conditions, including the light emitted by the projector.
A lot of the testing of early Glow prototypes involved make-believe, according to Aalund. “We did a lot of ‘Wizard of Oz,’ man-behind-the-curtain things,” he said. “Rather than actually detecting what the child was doing, we would sit in another room. When we saw the kid touch a spot, we'd click a key and have it change what was displayed.”
Early on, the Glow team was playing with the idea to make the device look like a stuffed animal. Parents were not amused.Image: Amazon
Testing the device with kids required ingenuity. Getting buy-in from parents was just as challenging, albeit for very different reasons. Early on, the Glow team was playing with the idea of making the device look like a toy itself. “[For] our very first prototype, we actually took an Amazon [Echo] Show and put it inside a stuffed animal,” Aalund said.
There were some thermal issues with that approach, and having a stuffie that doubles as a projector also didn’t seem the best idea for good sleep habits. However, the biggest pushback came from parents. Anything that would look like a toy would have to live in the kid’s room because it clashed with their living room design, some of them argued. Yet others objected to that approach, because they didn’t like the idea of getting judged by their relatives if their kid’s room was messy. In the end, the Glow team settled on a more neutral hardware design.
While a lot of effort went into building the physical product, the team also worked hard on the Glow’s apps and games, which had to be optimized for both the projector and remote interaction. “We weren't able to just take apps and games that live on existing mobile app stores,” Assadi said. “We ended up building most of it from scratch.”
The result includes games like Go Fish, chess and whack-a-mole, some of which can only be played together with a remote participant. That focus on making the games part of a call was intentional, according to Aalund. “We didn't want this to be another game console or content consumption device,” he said. The Glow also includes access to picture books and chapter books, some of which offer some interactivity.
One of the more unique experiences gives children the ability to scan real-life objects, and then incorporate them into their digital art. Amazon also sells Tangram puzzle pieces that can be used to solve puzzles, and the company has plans to launch additional add-on packs that further allow users to merge physical with digital play, starting with coding bits. Also on the horizon: music games. And eventually, developers may even be able to build their own apps for the platform.
The Amazon Glow is optimized for children interacting with remote caregivers, but its technology could also be used for many other purposes.Image: Amazon.
This also opens up the opportunity to use the Glow for other target audiences. “There are some really interesting applications,” Assadi said. “My mind goes to senior assisted living homes, where senior adults want to interact with a caregiver, whether it's local or remote, and play games like Bridge.”
Ultimately, Amazon may even decide to take some of the lessons it learned from developing the Glow and incorporate projection into devices with other form factors. “We've had people within the company ask us about our hardware and software stack for all sorts of different things,” said Aalund. “From office environments to video conferencing, where this could make a great whiteboard, to tutoring. All sorts of different things.”
Amazon did explore using projection mapping for AR-like experiences in the past, and may be getting ready to revive some of those ideas, if recent job listings are any indication. Chances are that those ideas never amount to anything. Or perhaps they’ll take on a life of their own, and turn into something completely different.
That’s perhaps the biggest lesson from the development of the Amazon Glow: Even in a gigantic company like Amazon, there are small, startup-like teams that just throw ideas against the wall and see what sticks. Experiment with DIY robotics kits, wing a few demos, until finally a lightbulb goes off and something compelling emerges.
“We were very scrappy,” Aalund said.
