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This cosplay mask fights pollution too
It's a ubiquitous sight in cities like Beijing: pedestrians walking under a thick blanket of smog with their faces obscured by flimsy cloth face masks. These masks aren't an ideal solution to dealing with the pollution, as they wear out pretty quickly and don't even filter everything. O2O2, an urbanist startup based in New York, is working on a connected face mask that's clean, (relatively) attractive and doesn't need to be continually replaced.
Smart garbage can turns trash into a game
Waste is a big concern for cities -- after all, no one likes looking at trash on the street. But it ends up there anyway for various reasons: bins overflow, sometimes they're hard to find and worst of all, some people just don't care what they do with their trash. Sencity seeks to fight this apathy by turning litter disposal into a game with its new TetraBIN, a connected trash bin that rewards you for tossing out your garbage.
A haptic wristband could help the blind 'see' the world
Technology to help the blind navigate usually focuses on replacing the sight they're missing or by adding auditory cues to an already cluttered soundscape. But for many sight-impaired individuals, the sense they rely on most is one that tends to be ignored by a lot of tech-based solutions: touch. It's a subtle way to convey a lot of information, and the design company WearWorks is looking to take advantage of this with its new haptic wristband, guiding people around via simple vibrational cues.
