The main thing with YaC 2019: a hundred drones on the roads, Yandex.Module, food, smart home

    At YaC 2019, Yandex talked about what the company will do during the year. The company will have to resolve legal issues and bring 100 cars to public roads, launch the Ether advisory service, teach Alice how to manage a house, set up production of inexpensive dishes and combine this with Food delivery.


    Arkady Volozh went on stage in an unmanned car

    Yet Another Conference opened Arkady Volozh and told how Yandex is doing business with drones - this is now the topic that interests the CEO most.

    Drones


    In 2019, a hundred autonomous cars with NVIDIA equipment in the trunk will appear on the roads of Russia (Moscow, Kazan), the USA (Nevada, California) and Israel. They won’t do anything special - just collect data about their trips in a variety of conditions. The driver will always sit behind the wheel while driving, ready to take control.



    In fact, everything is ready for the start of the project, only in Russia it remains to settle down some legal subtleties. According to Volozh, the company is in talks with the State traffic inspectorate. As for specifically Moscow, Yandex is not yet sure whether they will provide them with the entire city for testing or separate areas of the city will be allocated for this.

    Yandex.Auto




    The conference also introduced a new version of the head unit for cars. Now it can be used not only to control the multimedia system of the machine, but also other systems. For example, you can ask the built-in Alice in Auto to open or close windows, unlock the lock using a smartphone, remotely start the engine, etc. When the car is evacuated, the head system will send an SMS notification, if necessary, it will automatically pay for parking and refueling, and in the future it will be able to pay for itself on the toll road. If the car model is equipped with sensors in the tires, then by the speed of the wheels and their direction, the Yandex navigator will be able to determine the position of the car even where there is no GPS signal.



    Some of the functions will be available in the first version of Auto after updating the software, but it may require reconnection for a more tight interaction with the car via CAN-bus. The second hardware version of Auto will go on sale in the fall.



    Food, Chef & Cloud Restaurants


    There are more gastronomic entities owned by Yandex, and it’s more difficult to separate them from each other. The network of "cloud restaurants" will combine the Food and Chef services - this will be something in between the dishes from the usual "offline" restaurants and sets for self-cooking. The only difference is that the menu will be built on the basis of data on preferences of Russians in food, and the dishes themselves will be prepared by cooks from partner restaurants. According to Yandex, the production capacities of restaurants are often idle, and the “cloud restaurant” will allow them to be used as efficiently as possible and profit from it.



    The most popular in Russia were borsch, cutlets, cheesecakes, and Caesar salad. However, in addition to this, it will be possible to order burgers, rolls, pizza, etc. The price for any of the dishes will be no higher than 250 ₽. Service will start this summer.



    Ether and Module


    According to Yandex estimates, before you watch any video on the Internet, a person spends 9-18 minutes to choose him. According to the developers, this problem will be helped by the Air service , which analyzes the behavior of a person on the Internet: visited pages, likes in streaming services, search queries, etc. The air is a program for a couple of days in advance, as well as a selection of films and programs. If you enter the query “what to see” in Yandex, the search will return a catalog of films and TV shows with classic ratings. But if you evaluate at least one of the proposed ones, now in addition to the rating on the cover of the film, there will also be the probability that you will like it - in percent.

    Yandex begins to give out the likelihood that you will like the movie or series based on the first rating

    . Yandex believes that it is most convenient to watch video on a TV screen. And although there are already many “smart” ones among them, it takes too much effort to support proprietary applications for various OSs. Therefore, YaC showed a radical solution to the problem - Yandex.Module, which connects to any TV that has HDMI. In fact, it is a small computer that can exchange data with Alice (wherever she is installed), and on which you can stream video over Wi-Fi.



    The module can be compared with Google Chromecast, but the Yandex gadget is larger, heavier, made of metal and equipped with a remote antenna. It doesn’t look so elegant, but theoretically it may be better to receive a signal from the source.



    Smart House


    The module is part of the smart home ecosystem that Yandex now plans to actively develop. For this, the company has already entered into agreements with manufacturers of devices for smart homes. Yandex is sure that a house becomes truly smart when additional devices are not needed for control - just a voice. Therefore, in the near future, on the various sensors, relays and other smart sockets, you can expect the label “Works with Alice”. In addition to partner devices, Yandex also offers its own devices: a smart light bulb, a power outlet and an IR remote control - all made in Germany.



    For the full-fledged work of a smart home, it is necessary that it contains the device on which Alice works. But not necessarily it should be the Station.


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