Kuaisou is really here, how big is the space for smart hardware?

When we thought it was just a legend, we didn't expect it to be serious.

If you haven't forgotten, on April 1 this year, a video of Baidu's "Kuai So" went viral online. Two white engineers described a pair of chopsticks that could distinguish food. As long as they touched the food, they could display the nutritional content, whether it was gutter oil, and how much salt it contained. When such a sci-fi thing came out, foodies who were hit by food safety issues asked where to buy it. However, the release date on April 31 showed that it was just a joke.

However, just when we were about to forget about it, this sci-fi smart hardware really appeared. Kuaisou made its grand debut at the Baidu World Conference yesterday. What made people a little excited was that it was almost the same as the one in the April Fool's Day video, and its functions were almost the same. It seems that Baidu's engineers are really honest.

What is the real Kuaisou like?

As shown in the video, Baidu Kuaisou is divided into two parts. The first part is a sensor-based measuring device in the form of chopsticks, which is mainly used to measure the form of food, such as oil quality, temperature, pH value, and salinity; the second part is an analyzer based on infrared spectroscopy, which is in the form of a chopstick holder in the Baidu Kuaisou 1.0 version, and can measure the pH value of water, oil quality, fruit sweetness and origin, etc.

Kuaisou connects to mobile phones wirelessly. After a brief touch of the food ingredients, you can see a series of food information including nutritional content, shelf life, matching taboos, calories, etc. through the mobile phone APP. For example, it can measure the type of fruit, how sweet it is, how many calories it has, and where it is produced. It can also measure the oil, whether it is gutter oil or blended oil. It is said that it can also measure what kind of meat it is. In the future, with a pair of chopsticks on my body, my mother will no longer have to worry about me buying fake beef made from pork sold by unscrupulous merchants, fruit with injections, and poisonous rice. It is indeed a must-have product for home and travel.

The general principle of Kuaisou is roughly divided into two levels. The hardware level is mainly a set of precision sensors, including temperature sensors, PH, electrode probes, GDSU infrared spectrometers, etc. The cloud level has a huge database, including various types of characteristic data of various ingredients, so that the data can be matched in the cloud to provide analysis results. The big data in the cloud can be continuously updated and learned, that is, some new varieties and brands can be identified, and at the same time, as a user, they are constantly uploading various characteristic information of the physical world. The continuous accumulation of these characteristic information will bring new value. For example, when many people are using Kuaisou to check oil, water, etc., the quality of oil and water in the whole country is very convincing in the statistical data.

Search evolution makes smart hardware borderless

The previous wave of craze for smart hardware was about self-quantification, with various bracelets, health scales, blood pressure monitors and other devices emerging one after another. However, self-quantification currently faces a bottleneck, which is how to find applications that continuously motivate people to use them.

At the recent Baidu 100 BigTalk, Professor Alex Pentland, a global pioneer in wearable devices, pointed out that wearable smart hardware is not just watches and bracelets, and does not necessarily have to be worn on the human body, but has more forms and functions. When our thoughts are still limited to the original visible products, the emergence of Kuaisou has once again opened up the imagination space in the field of smart hardware.

The coolest thing about Kuaisou is not quantification, but the application of quantitative data. In the past, quantification was difficult to impress people because it was just a list of data. We can feel how far you have walked and what your physical signs are without smart hardware. But Kuaisou brings us the search for results. This is actually the evolution of search.

In the earliest days of search, when we had questions about food safety or health, we searched using keywords and got answers based on descriptions. At this time, the connection between the virtual world and the physical world was established through people's abstract words. Later, with the ability to search by image, we could take a photo to search, such as Google Glass, Baidu Image Recognition, etc. At this time, the connection between the two worlds was established through images, but the quantitative data of the images was not accurate and in-depth enough. Kuaisou is a smart hardware device that is more in-depth and can quantify the physical world. It uses real data to search the virtual world. This is a brand-new smart hardware model.

It is foreseeable that the paradigm of searching for the results of quantitative big data analysis in the physical world will change the world. Imagine if there are more sensor devices and more data accumulation, Kuaisou can be transformed into a medical health monitoring device. Our saliva and blood can be tested to know our health status, our position among people of the same age, and our position in the country, and can provide more suggestions. Isn't this more valuable than a health scale or a bracelet? For example, Kuaisou can also evolve into a beauty assistant, detecting the condition of the skin and hair quality, and recommending skin care methods and hair repair methods. Wouldn't that please the girls who love beauty more?

Please continue to imagine, this model can achieve more, as long as the terminal capabilities continue to be strengthened, big data continues to accumulate, and search capabilities continue to evolve... this is the perfect combination of humanity and technology.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.