Apple’s Siri was not created by Apple. It was the
result of 40 years worth of research by SRI International, a research institute
in Menlo Park that was founded in 1946. This research was part of SRI’s Artificial
Intelligence Center which received contributions from Carnegie Mellon
University and six other educational institutions. Although Siri is SRI’s most
famous innovation, it is far from its only one. Here are the top five
innovations to come out of SRI that are not named Siri…
Songbird Flexfit Disposable Hearing Aid
from Songbird Hearing
SRI gave birth to the world’s first hearing aid. You’d
think that hearing aids would be too expensive to dispose of, but that is not
the case with Flexfit, which allows you to throw away your hearing aid after
the 400 hour battery is depleted.
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Vinci Surgical System from Intuitive Surgical
Are you
worried that your surgeon will mess up on your surgery? SRI developed the da
Vinci Surgical System, which allows for minimally invasive surgery.
The robotic
mechanism needs a real surgeon to operate and cannot function on its own. Regardless,
future applications may allow people to get surgery with the actual surgeon on
the other side of the world!
POGO™
All-in-One™ System from Intuity Medical
The POGO
allows diabetics to use a tiny blood sample, to not have to worry about
individual test supplies, and to do their testing discreetly. The extremely
simple system allows diabetics to test more frequently.
Ground Penetrating Synthetic Aperture
Radar (GPSAR) from Mirage Systems
According to Mirage Systems there are over
11,000,000 acres in the United States that are contaminated with dangerous
chemicals. Current methods to clean up this waste are very expensive. The extremely
accurate GPSAR can map out large amounts
of area in a very short amount of time.
Touchscreen from Raychem
Before the iPhone came out you probably used
touchscreens only with GPS systems and ATM machines. Despite the clunky nature
of past touchscreens, they had to get their start somewhere.
All five of the aforementioned companies are
spinoffs from SRI. In other words, each of the companies became independent for
profit companies, separate from SRI, because SRI’s core function is to
research, not make money off of its innovations.
