This hand, the more you use it, the more you understand
This company specializes in "unpleasantness"
Can the unpalatable taste of plant-based meat be saved by "custom oil"?
Reimagine milk cartons
Scratch: In under-regulated industries, transparency is competitiveness
POWER
New York-based startup Esper Bionics has developed a Prosthetic Arm Esper Hand that "the more you use it, the more you know it."
Esper Hand uses an electromyography-based brain-computer interface.
When a user wants to control esper hand, their brain sends pulses to specific muscles to activate them.
To capture these muscle signals, esper hand is equipped with 30 non-invasive sensors. According to the co-founders of Esper Bionics, Esper Hand is now responding three times faster than most products on the market.
In addition to capturing signals, Esper Hand's "acceleration" also comes from the ability to learn.
Through the cloud platform Esper Platform, Esper Hand can collect and analyze user usage data, use algorithms to learn user habits, and continuously reduce the time required to judge actions.
When the Esper Hand encounters the same data received as the previous sensor, it will judge that the current situation is "the same" as the previous situation.
This 380g arm can be used to bend your fingers, pinch your fingers, hold your palms, clench your fists, and more.
Actions make people happy
This company, focusing on solving the "unpleasant"
According to a survey, nearly half of the 16- to 25-year-olds say that "climate anxiety" has affected their daily lives. The more serious the headlines, the more unstoppable they feel that things are.
In response, the startup Remark has made a small plug-in to help users cope with this emotion.
Called "UnF***the Future (UFTF)", this plugin pops up suggestions of action when users read negative reports on climate issues. While the theme may not be relevant, the pop-up proposals for climate action are so straightforward that users can choose to participate with a single click.
At the same time, the suggested tone is more playful than usual reports.
For example, it would say, "Congress is like a kid, and you have to emphasize something basic with it again and again, so tell Congress to support investments that protect nature and support clean energy."
Prior to this, the team also made an app called Remark (which did not go online to the domestic app store) to provide consumers with convenient "complaint assist".
If consumers see that there are products that are not sustainable enough, they can choose the company on the Remark and the aspect that is not sustainable enough (straw?). wrap? reclaim? ), the app will automatically generate an email and send it to the relevant company.
According to the official website, Remark has helped users get feedback from Walmart, Starbucks, Costco and other companies.
While running Remark, the team learned while chatting with users that people were more willing to act when they read negative content. This insight also inspired them to build UFTF plugins.
It seems that perhaps our "unhappiness" is the biggest motivation to change.
Future eating adventures
Most cultured meat is just protein, and we like to eat fat. Grease is demonized, but it's making a comeback.
Founded in 2021, California startup Yali Bio wants to create a "fat platform" that offers a variety of "artificial meat" and "artificial dairy" companies to customize oil and fat to make the product more delicious.
Currently, coconut oil is used in many plant-based meat products, but Yali Bio claims that future products will be more sustainable than coconut oil and closer to animal fats in texture and taste.
Yali Bio will combine synthetic biology, deep learning and genomics tools. In addition, since its inception, Yali Bio has established a library of microbial strains for precision fermentation and initiated relevant tests.
After completing its most recent $3.9 million funding round, Yali will build a new lab and begin to prepare for product development and marketing in parallel. Yali Bio plans to achieve full production within 2-3 years.
life hack
San Francisco-based designer Pushan Panda designed the concept drink box Bruk, offering a new way to make packing cartons easier to recycle.
Customers who are concerned about environmental impact may find the carton more sustainable because it uses less plastic than comparable plastic bottles. However, because of the structure of the cartons (with plastic coating), they are often difficult to recycle.
Panda says so.
Instead of using complex techniques to separate the plastic coatings and paper materials used in milk cartons, why don't we directly separate "plastic" from "paper"?
Bruk is one such solution. After use, the user pulls the paper tray apart by pressing the dotted line to recycle the two containers separately.
Scratch: Transparency is competitiveness
Scratch is an Australian canine food company focused on ingredient transparency:
Dog food in Australia is completely self-regulated and we are the only company on the mainland to self-disclose all the ingredients used in dog food.
In this market, most dog owners don't know whether 30% of the beef or 10% of the beef is in the dog food, let alone where the meat comes from.
Scratch's food ingredients are sourced from local suppliers and clearly state the ingredients on the packaging – not "meat", but what meat, even down to the animal parts; not "vegetables", but what vegetables.
This move allows the brand to gain significant differentiation and trust in the local market.
On this basis, Scratch also adopts the DTC model - through direct subscription, the brand abandons the large packages commonly used for dog food, and distributes them regularly in small packages to ensure the freshness of the products.
In addition, users can also enter the pet breed, age and weight directly on the app before purchasing or subscribing to the product, and the app will automatically calculate the recommended diet plan, reducing the user's own calculation work.
The official website also shared the recipe of the employee dog
Due to direct contact with users and regular delivery contacts, Scratch will also "ride" brand snack toys for "early adopters" in delivery, which is also a way to induce consumption that can bring good feelings.
Scratch also has some regular corporate responsibility components: 2% donation programs – 1% of revenue goes to organizations that help dogs, 1% goes to climate organizations; and carbon-neutral product distribution by supporting third-party agencies.
Sometimes in emerging markets, or in areas where regulations are not strictly enforced, building trust can already outperform many competitors.
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